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What's happening with this 13% jump and a stop in trading? Any news?

Good one from Peel Hunt - if Mad Mouldy can't/won't help, sell-side may just have to come to the rescue!! Will Mouldy go - not a realistic chance in hell I don't think and longs will just have to live with that.

Pearls - All you had to do to get the upmove going today was state how miserably the SP was behaving!! The market is paying attention to the value here.. ;-)

It's interesting that Stephanie is running this alongside Adolfo. HP is still around, seemingly, but can't be a good sign for her that her junior is tasked to run this meeting.

On another note, this is a research note from Edison that HP reposted last week on LinkedIn. Its a good read.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7173345242807549952/

I have no problem with Rampy Crafty coming back from her hard-earned holiday paid for by THG stock option bonuses for the THG PR team - everyone deserves a bit of cheer. This board has become a one-way bear train with the talk-track dominated by bearish traders and a bit of relief from that isn't unwelcome.

In the meantime, I'm rabildly holding on to a crazy dream I had that Mad Mouldy actually announces a division split strategy next month !!

"How many of us thought S4 was undervalued at 150 then 100 then 70 yet the stock keeps going down" - JCJ - you're right on that count and this may well be right that we could continue heading lower and none of us on this board can say with any degree of conviction that we're at the bottom. Only a change in tone in terms of an upswing in the ad market outlook can change the overall stock outlook to the upside for SFOR. The stock selling off today to near all-time lows isn't a positive sign, but what the leakers (or leak 'knowers') may not contend with is a sign that the market is willing to look past bad news for last year, and how it would react to any green shoots this year.

This is the largest position in my portfolio and since my average is the low 40s, I can't complain much in comparison with holders with much higher averages. I'm hoping that MS will pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat next week and gives the market green shots galore. ;-) I've had 2 recent misses in my stock holdings - CPI and NEO.To -- I'm hoping that it's third time lucky for me with SFOR. GLA...

Who knows, but it doesn't bode well for FY 23 as we expected it to be and it's all about the guidance for FY 24. Fingers crossed!!!

Nice one, 1msn. Ta. I've still been adding to my position here, slowly selling out from my blo0dy useless investment over at THG - one with a moronic CEO at the helm. I'm hoping that my judgement call turns out just fine and I'm optimistic it will come good, really good even. ;-) It's stuck in a range near all-time lows and that's worrying, but given my much smaller bet on SYNT came good as I was counting on a bounce in an oversold share in a sector (chemicals) that should recover after a very bad 2023. And this Seeking Alpha note from the value investor is a good take on the sector and with the US likely to skirt a recession in 2024, this is the year for tech to spend more on us. ;-)

"“Homebase loss - unsubstantiated rumour currently, based on a glassdoor post that you could have made“

It’s true. Replatformed to Custom Cart on 4th March. Wasn’t a major contributor to Inquinuity…"

And maybe that's one of the big reasons why Vivek was fired, ostentisly - I can't really see him quit on Ingenuity, and TBH I have no issue with someone getting fired if that someone isn't delivering for shareholders? The key point here is Mad Mouldy should be the first to be fired as he's done nothing for shareholders when the chips were down and it really mattered for a CEO to show his mettle. At least he let it out on his LinkedIn post that there were question marks about his ability to be a PLC CEO - I can't see why there's even a debate on that topic. If the mad hat quits/is fired, you'll see the SP jump anywhere around 50% on that day. However, that is but a pipe dream and we'll (most of us anyway) have to live with these losses for a while yet I'd think.

For now, the bears/shorts have everything going for him. Enjoy the weekend, chappies, there's more to life than Mad Mouldy!!!

" Can't make up my mind whether to buy more SFOR, THG, ASC etc. All are looking ridiculously low." If I was looking for a sound management team who're not linkedin happy, SFOR will be top of my list. THG needs Mad Mouldy to go, but he won't. I imagine he'll come out all guns blazing with 'great results' next month - that's the only leg he has to stand on!!!

"" So has anything changed ??? -- Regrettably I think the answer is no"

Yespsb - that may well be the case, but it is much needed nonetheless. To me it's a recognition that they can't be cavalier and repeatedly ignore the market's wishes for good corporate governance. If the SP goes nowhere in the next few months, then the calls to strip Mad Mouldy out from the board/CEO position will only grow louder. With the mad man at the helm I don't really expect rapid wholesale changes to their operating structure as he's mostly just talk, but this is a welcome step nonetheless.

Thank goodness, this is the first of many steps need to establish a modicum of believable corporate governance at THG. The correct next step is for Mad Mouldy to resign as CEO and bring on board a professional/seasoned shaerholder focused exec - only that can set the SP on a sustainable path back to the £170p levels that he rejected as being undervalued only circa 18 months ago.

@Trisor, "I have emailed IR demanding a truthful answer" - Why would you/we honestly think they'd know any better? THey are a lot more clueless than we are - that much is very apparent. In their minds they even hit their guidance. The reality is that these are markets at work and targets are missed, this is the outcome. I won't advise patience or any such as this is now in unchartered territory, but we don't have much choice but to wait to see if AH can turn this around OR if we'll be left holding the proverbial bag! Ground control to Major Tom!!

It goes without saying that we'll need a lot more people like HHH81 to throw in the towel before there's a turnaround - that's how the market works. I can't see what more we can expect in the near term though - AH kitchen sinked it, put reality out in the open, and of course the bears are ruling it at this time. There's no news till the June update and the price falls more or goes nowhere (sustainably) in that vacuum. I'm resigned to this being a 2025 turnaround story, albeit starting in earnest with the H1 update in August.

" I brought back all of what in high teens and low 20s " I meant to write 'I sold a major chunk of my holdings and then brought back all I sold in high teens to low 20s' from October last onwards - all with a view that the new CEO will be able to turn this around.

Chaps - TerryM1 sussed out the uselessness of JL earlier than I did and I remember having debates with him earlier last year about how well he was turning this around (this was after the hack), whilst TM1 stood firm. And he was right, and the H1 results last year only brought JL's ineffectiveness into the light. I brought back all of what in high teens and low 20s with an expectation that AH would be one to turn this around, and I think he will.

To paraphrase with the RBC sell-side analyst wrote in January - AH came in, looked under the hood, found so much shiite and muck tucked away that he couldn't make any difference with the time he had before the update last week. He put out what he and Xenia thought they could/should cut, cost-wise, but that obviously wasn't enough for the market. No complains there and the market did exactly what it should've. I'm now in a similar boat as many others , neck deep in this and sitting on a circa 30% loss on my large holdings. If there's one thing I've learnt about the market, it's just that you never try and predict the bottom, and given the uncertainty over when we'll be CF positive, we're at the mercy of the macro and the June update. How know how low we can go from here - 10p isn't in the realms of fantasy, TBH.

Nothing sinister about the sale - as it says in the RNS, it was to cover the tax liabilities on the shares that vested now from her stock incentive plan from 2021.

@dbuk2000 - thanks for your post. From my 'research' early in the new year, I can think of Mark Billingham and Kathy Quashie as the 2 senior execs who were let go in November. I won't even be tempted to ask if you were either as it doesn't matter, but your observation of cost being cut in the wrong places, i.e. not in chunky middle-management tier but in the lower end offshoreable end of the business is very telling about JL's approach to running Capita. Running Amec Wheeler Foster's oil services business and 'turning that around' is a different proposition to turning CPI around - he just needed the oil market to bounce back and capex spend for oil services will inevitably follow. Not so here.

And on this much heralded 'transformation' of the business to focus on the Public sector and the 'Experience' sector, the reality is that the experience side of business on the consulting side of things certainly is highly cyclical. Maybe JL didn't have much luck going for him, but a real visionary CEO, backed by his CFO and the board should've anticipated that CPI is now a cyclical business since half the business is private sector and will be slammed during economic downturns. Et voila!!

Unlike the IR team, I saw the writing was on the wall when I saw the financial health of CPI in the FY 2023 results. And that was after 2 bad misses in a row. I didn't really sell up this time unlike in August last year and I've taken a hit like many others on here, but I'm 'hoping' that AH pulls off a real turnaround and helps the shareholder lot!!

@JG68 - thanks for reaching out to IR. It was a pretty useless reply, but I can't expect anything more from IR - FY results came out in line with guidance? Jesus H Christ - what are they smoking in the IR office? The spin, the obfuscation and the level of incompetence in their responses is emblematic of the clueless way in which the company was run by JL. They should take out one of the 2 IR team - probably Helen as she's likely the higher cost resource. I can't see the point of 2 IR team members for a company with an absurd market cap that no one really seems to give a shiite about, and why would they with the continuous misses on profitability/FCF numbers for years on now.

I think that AH can pull this off and with the help of his old mate, Xenia, has shown he's got the balls to at least shake things up a bit and focus on shareholder value creation - something that was absent from JL's lexicon.

I don't think so and I can't see any point of doing a share consolidation - I'm sure neither will AH. He needs to get his head down and focus on cutting costs to ensure that we generate sustainable cash flows from 2025 onwards.

I did say to Sharehead and the other uber bulls not to get caught up in their self-spun story around AI doing wonders for CPI and generating millions for them - if that wasn't the biggest BS posted on this board, I don't what else is!! All that matters for CPI's share price is solid CF generation something they've repeatedly now proved incapable of delivering.

I made a wrong judgement call after the November layoffs announcements that CPI has done its bit to cut costs and that more may not be needed, but the reality was that once AH looked under the hood, he and Xenia quickly determined that there was so much more to be done to ensure a sustainable business and hence these additional £100m cuts were identified.

I don't know what you think, but for me they need to fire the current CFO, Tim Weller. As a steward of all things finance at CPI, he's been nothing short of a disaster. Xenia was a CFO and she should step up and take on that role as well - I'd think they would wait until after the June strategic update before they make any move with TW.

RBC was spot on in their research note in January about FCF being difficult to come by and they were proven correct. Let's hope, for all our investments' sake, that AH and Xenia can pull what the previous overpaid management team couldn't do - actually turn this beast around!!