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9 days to find the next jam tomorrow story

Wise words, these retail heavyweights get it.

Interestingly as a precursor to Leighton being brought in the Issa brothers realised their own limitations and stepped aside, despite their shareholding. THG a bit of chicken/egg situation with unfortunately weak chair and sticky CEO that lacks necessary humility or self-awareness. But him going surely remains the biggest potential catalyst here.

Market seems to have over reacted here. Asda will be a very difficult long term turnaround job with no guarantee of success. Whereas this a well oiled machine, and on the most recent numbers has been marginally gained market share. Nectar a prime asset too.

Maybe tellingly £500m would almost exactly cover the €600m bond due in 18 months. Sensible thing would be to pay that off, rather than refinancing at today's rates. Especially while top line contracting. Not the most exciting growth story to be reduced to a minority holder in nutrition - but on balance imagine market would see it as a positive if debt overhang gone.

I haven't seen any evidence from a source other than Matt Moulding that whey price pressures will be reducing in the short term, so I think we need to put that chestnut to bed.

Dry whey obvs different from sweet but those futures accessible and a pretty decent proxy to gauge outlook https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/agriculture/dairy/dry-whey.html

But like any commodity there are a vast array of inputs affecting supply/demand making it very difficult to foresee where that market goes. Much more interesting imo are the factors the company can actually control.

Totally unrelated stock but Intel today one of those interesting examples of the difference that can be made by the appointment of a widely respected CEO with a track record of delivering shareholder value.

This is primed to be delisted taken private on the cheap. Look at the major shareholders. After what Luke Johnson oversaw at Patisserie Valerie not sure why anyone would trust him with this.

Perhaps Mike Ashley is on balance simply a terrible investor and market views him as the sort of guy you need to inverse.

I do wonder what Ashley's grand strategic plan is. (If he has one.)

He is so exposed to whims of UK consumer and seems determined to load exposure on top of that exposure. The thing is it's never the high growth global kind (thinking Amazon, Baba/PDD), nor is it ever UK consumer staples (eg Tesco, Haleon). Only ever a particular kind of UK consumer discretionary.

Clearly he likes to build big stakes to throw his weight around, and these down-on-their-luck plcs enable that. Plus long term his strong track record speaks for itself. But for past year or so by most measures he's had a shocker, especially with likes of Asos and Boohoo. Only time will tell if these stocks will come back, but can't help but wonder if he's become a kind of relic, clinging on to a UK retail age that might have passed.

Fwiw there are ways investors can protect themselves from these scenarios. When deciding whether to invest in a company, it has become just as import to study the shareholder register, as it is to check how the company is trading. More important if anything.

If there are one or two dominant shareholders and they're not a reputable name, the risk of delist is far greater. I've sold perfectly good companies because of this risk. This is why regulators should step in, the overall mistrust is draining away liquidity and UK micro cap markets risk falling into a death spiral.

When it comes to Hornby I did warn months ago about Phoenix's dominance here. Even said this might as well be a private company - so it proves.

I do feel for anyone caught up in this. There is a trend of certain management and dominant shareholders cynically using general UK market malaise to take companies private on the cheap - at the expense of minority shareholders. It's making Aim as a whole almost uninvestable for the little guy.

Credit where it's due new exec chair seems much more proactive and commercially minded than previous CEO. Deals like this exactly what the company needs.

Ghost of Maxwell

https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/media-hub/press-releases/2025-press-releases/extra-25m-will-be-paid-into-the-mgn-pension-scheme

True Glanbia have much more control over supply chain, right back to the farms. There's only about a degree of separation between them and the actual cows. A more trustworthy source than Moulding with his form for truth twisting.

At one stage I did think TDR looked primed to offer on this, especially while they were increasing their stake. Particularly following period when Lookers and Pendragon were taken over.

Plus while interest rates were low, there was that kind of deal frenzy post-Covid, and sense Vertu could well be in play if only for being last big listed dealer on shelf.

Since then I'd say quite a bit has changed. TDR seem to have issues elsewhere, particularly with Asda - which I'm sure will take far longer to flip than they originally imagined. That seems to be a proper repair job, losing market share and already eye watering debt growing. Overall their portfolio heavily exposed to the whims of the UK consumer which has been a hit and miss segment to say the least. Imo future deal financing would be a serious challenge for them while they have Asda on their books.

So I don't think there are any takeover shortcuts here. Vertu will have to trade their way out of this. On that front it's hard to see any catalyst on the horizon, not just for Vertu but for UK car dealers as a whole.

Annoyingly as far as S4 goes, for first time 2+ years Sorrell might actually be able use out his old fallback excuse of macro uncertainty with some legitimacy this time around. Just when you thought that old chestnut couldn't possibly be stretched out any further.

Of the Sunday papers, Sunday Times ditched their share tip column last year. Telegraph's Question has an abysmal record so not getting mentioned there not a bad thing. For general papers that just leaves the Mail which is more of a comic than source to take seriously.

Generally a company's share price being close to all time low generally not seen as bullish by people outside of these boards.

Also bear in mind companies get added to (and demoted from) the indexes every quarter, they can't all be written about. There are 350 top flight companies fighting for attention. There is nothing to get worked up about here, in fact this particular company not getting a media mention on this particular day doesn't indicate anything at all.

It's crazy how illiquid some of these small caps are. The meaningful buys that moved the price yesterday totalled only about £100k, but that was enough to add about £15m to the market cap. (figures not exact before anyone says but you get the point). The plain stock acts like a leveraged play, no wonder it's so volatile.

Why stop at Metro? Might as well go for Lloyds too. Go global even with firepower from that raise, chuck in JP Morgan while he's at it.

To be frank someone buying £200k is not meaningful enough to be worth debating too much. I'd be wary of using that as a reason to follow them into the trade, especially when they'll be getting something tangible in return (salary, board seat). Whereas the average joe buying shares imo seems to being set up for more value loss, as has been the case with this plc consistently since inception.