Member Info for Globex

That makes sense she's following Sorrell's cues. A fresh CFO does seem a no-brainer when this role will have changed dramatically over last few years now they're no longer expanding or making large scale acquisitions. Ideally they'd whack in someone trusted with reputation for scrupulously good forecasts. And someone who is able to answer back to Sorrell when he gets it wrong.

If they did that then poached a heavy hitter from likes of Publicis to appoint as CEO, then moved Sorrell from Exec Chairman to a consulting NED type role to kill off succession question mark, we'd really be cooking on gas.

I don't think golden share itself should be a problem. It didn't hold back share price back in 2021 and does no harm to some US megacaps.

Plus with listings rule change helps it no longer prevents it entering indexes - although unfortunately a largely moot point now way past the point this would even qualify for FTSE250.

What does need a revamp imo is the board. Guidance misses can be forgiven a couple of times in a tough market but the sheer number of misses now means heads should roll. Market clearly signalling change needed. CFO seems to have the credentials so might not even be her fault if she's being fed a repeatedly overly optimistic take by Sorrell, but seems an obvious candidate to be shown the door.

While they're at it second in command being a "Chief Growth Officer" needs looking at, obviously looks absurd when things aren't growing.

Acast has scale from being excellently well run and widely respected in industry, which naturally attracts more podcasters and therefore advertisers which creates a positive feedback loop, helped further still by deals like their Amazon partnership.

With costs largely fixed up to a certain point they can use this scale to leverage up just like any successful software biz.

Audioboom lack the same advertising network and reputation so are left fighting for scraps. The more successful podcasters they've had can just be poached by likes of Wondery: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-13310195/Audioboom-shares-dive-podcast-maker-falls-loss.html Without certain podcasters there is zero USP, so they have to pay those that do stay generously which erodes margins.

It's worse than that with the options, as they're routinely moving the goalposts downwards. For example the £15.55 ones magically now £2.40 (30/04/24 RNS). Also needs factoring in how they dish out more to directors annually, volume outstanding continually expands, to extent they now amount 10.4% of shares outstanding.

The challenge is how do you quantify investment that went into Ingenuity and separate that from investment which overlapped to benefit the group as a whole? (That's a rhetorical question btw.)

Knowing THG they'll probably muddle through and reverse engineer by simply applying or writing off goodwill retroactively to mirror whatever form the deal takes, if a deal does take place. After all goodwill can be written off the balance sheet just as easily as it can be added.

The company already has an eyewatering amount of intangibles on the balance sheet anyway. Loading it with more will unfortunately only add to the cynicism around their accounting when much of what's already there should have been impaired more aggressively to reflect how overpriced certain acquisitions were.

Maybe the brilliant management team would be appealing to a buyer? 🥴

You know something has gone catastrophically wrong when CEO salary is more than 5% of entire company market cap. With near zero revenue means they would need to dilute 5% annually just to make payroll for one employee! And that doesn't even take into account the inevitable discount, or include all the share options they dish out.

Might as well shut the doors now, all a bit embarrassing.

Yes for sure he must have an excellent amount of contacts. Keep him as a symbolic figure and he can carry on with the grand stuff like chatting to other CEOs, political figures, media - all of that can continue.

But the key part for me is all the high level stuff / geo politics insight / network etc is not doing much for the success of the plc, nor has it created any value for a few years now. A conventional board structure including a CEO more operationally focused CEO could change that imo.

All of this is largely hypothetical anyway, it's not as if he'd give up his position willingly. Would need a Biden/Democrats style revolt, but as we know with the way this is structured not happening.

I agree and said similar a while ago that I honest believe him stepping aside could be a catalyst. Give him a face saving symbolic title like Rupert Murdoch's Chair Emeritus where he can consult say once a month like a NED.

He must be very hands off at the moment anyway to judge by the time spent on articles, podcasts, interviews, podcasts etc. Fair enough given his age there is only so much he can physically do.

Instead have a conventional CEO as global head and main representative of the company. Someone who can really get in the weeds of operations, steady the ship, and avoid the repeated mistakes like poor forecasting. At the moment it still feels like the various acquisitions aren't all gelling under the one umbrella. Someone needs to sort this. All of this would put to bed the ongoing uncertainty of succession.

@M1Rob In 2018 when the merger first took place he put in £40m ($53m at time). He's added a bit more since then but that was the bulk, so yes at today's valuation he's well underwater with his stake.

Jcj07 that was Sorrell mate but fwiw agree with you (and him)!

His message seems to be that they first need to address the issues, tidy it up and most importantly return to growth first. Then maybe at that point they'd consider US, as it's not been ruled out. Sounds reasonable to me. With a market cap this small in meantime it would only be a tiny fish in massive pond, far too premature at this stage imo, doubt any US analysts would even look at it. At least here in the meantime it gets the coverage.

Re Sorrell comments on US listing:

“I don’t buy the argument necessarily that a US listing instantly changes the dynamics. If you look at the case studies, some do better, some don’t. If you’ve got a business that’s growing, that’s well managed with a strong business in the US, it will do better in the US because they have a more liquid market”. Source: https://archive.is/55cPJ

Have another drink Dave

"I see you're doing the rounds this morning"

Dusty.

I just noticed you posted this at me last week.

I thought I already told you stick to OBD, rather than these sly digs about other posters.

Why are you even digging through my posts? Bit weird. Anyway I checked when you made that claim. That morning a company I've followed/traded for years published its interim results. I was discussing those results on that board. So what?

The funniest part about you trying to have a go about my post history is that yours is a continuous firehose of absolute sh*t. 😁

440+ posts in last 30 days alone of non-stop drivel. Yet because of your absolute lack of social awareness it's entered your head you're in a position to play at being critic? 🥴😂

Here's a thought: all this reshuffling of segments could be a precursor to an eventual plan to split the group. CEO is a pretty grand title for head of an internal division. Could be they intend to report each segment separately for year or two first, give a clearer breakdown, help investors shed some light on where growth/strengths are, then start carving larger bits off.

In this scenario Cala would just be the start, and they'd end up demerging major components.

Would probably end up unlocking value and be more investable at the end of it. Conglomerates a bit 20th century. Not everyone wants to invest in both an insurer and asset manager at once for example - if you were starting today it would be more logical for them to be separate entities.

But Simoes would end up running a smaller company at the end of it. So ego a potential demerge obstacle, and more generally a good reason why the opposite - mergers/acquisitions - much more common.

Could also be argued it would be a bit of a shame to break up a company that's been around since 1836

You must be joking if you think I'm apologising for anything.

Let's see what company itself said about these trades:

"..Denise Boughtwood has undertaken a number of trades in the Company's ordinary shares of £0.0001 each ("Shares") that have not been previously notified or otherwise disclosed to the Company as required by Article 19 of the Market Abuse Regulation..."

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/DGI/late-notification-of-dealings/16444087

They couldn't be much clearer - a breach of the rules has taken place. If they are wrong, sue them.

Claiming ignorance of regulations is just a type of defence - whether that gets accepted or not is a matter for the regulators - but doesn't mean rules haven't been broken.

Another factor that may be coming into play now is traders anticipating it being booted from FTSE250 in next rebalancing. I would say a demotion now looks highly likely and these indexing moves tend to have a compounding impact.

Re the 95% - of the portion of those that aren't personally related to Moulding and/or being paid by him, recent events definitely indicate things might not be as cosy any more, and that even their saintly patience might be running low. That presentation alone, referring to Ingenuity separation as a response to stakeholders, it was like a hostage video.

Another epic one was Starbucks CEO replacement last month, did 25% in one day. Moves like this on such massive market cap companies really goes to show how much significance market places on having a decent CEO.

I think that's a very fair point Jcj07. There does seem to have been a breakdown of information discipline.

Whether that stems from Sorrell himself, who knows. Ultimately it's his responsibility to oversee expectation management and perhaps not helpful that in the kindest possible way he's an absolute blabbermouth.

The company's inconsistent outlook is what routinely leads to the share price volatility more than the actual underlying results imo. It's key (and doable) that they fix this - otherwise there is a lot to like in the bones of the business, especially at today's valuation

The mangling of outlook always seems to be the biggest issue. Leads to this permanent state of insane volatility. Media inevitably pick up on it because the share price stories write themselves and Sorrell is always putting himself out there, it risks becoming a kind of clown stock.

I don't even think the market would mind so much about this type of revenue drop when it's combined with margin improvement and strengthening ebtida. What market really doesn't like is sense trust being broken by inaccurate forecasts. So simple to do it the other way round - just under promise and over deliver (see Simon Wolfson at Next), everyone's happy that way.