Member Info for GoCPI

As expected, last year's FCF and profits were shiite. An additional £100m cost cuts - AH means business I suppose as this Woke shiite under JL just wasn't sustainable. ANother year of negative FCF because of £50m payouts for layoffs this year, dividends are best case next time this year, but that is much needed. Experience division will be getting a proper haircut I'd imagine.

Wow..additional £100m efficiences/cuts identified!!!

"VOTE MOULDING OUT AT AGM" - Let's be real, that's never going to happen. We'll have to live with his endearing vision of his being the Kong that takes on the City and comes out on top. Maybe we can hope that the UK macro OR a US listing helps out, but that's our best hope (after Kong).

I'm spending my time away from watching the screen with an ever depreciating portfolio value. I'm spending this valuable time watching over and over the THG production of Kong crushing the City and knowing that I'm in very safe hands with Mouldy and his master vision of creating shareholder value by taking on the City. Take heart chaps, this will come good soon. You only need to listen to his resident PR team on this board and only have positive thoughts!!! Negativity is not on and isn't tolerated.

And yet it is at these levels and that is the cold hard reality. The market could care less for your and my opinions - its the hard financial numbers that could be incoming that's as much as the market wants to know and will base the share price. The SP is currently reflecting multiple failures in delivering numbers and until that changes, we're not going anywhere on a sustainable basis.

My hope is that this change starts Wednesday, but then my hope could be misplaced.

Good luck, Sharehead. I know as holders we all want to see good returns and IMO, outsized returns may yet happen, but I think we'll have to wait till the H1 results at the minimum to see them.

". I’m thinking 50p test in the next few months"

Unless this one is blockbusters report with a Utopia level FCF forecast and I can't see that happening in this report, IMO, 50p is a bridge too far. We'll need a confirmation that CPI is on a sustainable FCF trajectory and I'd think that the market needs validation from AH's first half year report to see if he's actually delivered to vindicate that level of SP. We'll need a solid report on Wednesday and an outstanding report in August for the SP to really go above the 50p level. It could get there eventually, but the market needs multiple data points validation and I can't see that coming on Wednesday. Steady progress is more than welcome.

"We already know what 2023 looks like: a series of unfortunate incidents. All we can hope for this week is no fresh surprises plus a rousing growth oriented vision from AH. "

The first is spot on IMO, Capitalizer. However, if the second bit in your statement above were to happen on Wednesday, rest assured this won't tread water till H1 results in August OR till this time next year. If the market does get to hear even a bit of positive outlook on cost control/margins, the SP should rally. Under 36 hours for the big reveal.

"the only way to get rewarded by the market is to tell the market that you are leaving then it will reward you by hiking your SP 20%/30%"

@Crafty - Can you please not tell your big boss that you'll forego some of your hard earned stock options here if he actually grown a pair and make his intentions clear that he intends to list on the NYSE/Nasdaq? Let him know it may be a bit painful to regularly put out proper financial updates, but it's highly rewarding for him and us lot. And we'll be eternally grateful to you!!

Please give this a serious consideration.

I've been adding some here today - not a nail chewing time for me. ;-)

@Jackbob - "If net debt is £210m at 2023YE, cash at hand is therefore £390m or 49% of M.cap." That's not how it works. Net Debt just means --- Total Debt (Excluding lease liabilities) Minus cash on hand. At the end of 2022 Gross debt was £679m and cash on the balance sheet was $473m. Net of hedging gains of £24m is how you ended up with £180m net debt on the balance sheet. This has now moved up to £210m. Assuming that the Gross debt held at £679m, cash on hand would've decreased to circa £445m.

From 2022's AR - "Net debt before lease liabilities and adjusted for the impact of hedging was £181m (2021 net cash: £44m). The increase in net debt year on year is driven by the investment in property, plant and equipment, leases and intangible assets in the period totalling £176m."

End of 2023 net debt will be circa £210m as worked out from the 1.8 multiple of the adjusted EBITDA number from the January update. The biossance acquisition will be a big chunk of that delta!!

It's a good thing to cut jobs/costs as needed, particularly if there are efficiencies gained - Meta's year of efficiency was 2023 and we know the outcome. Revenue growth jumped on the back of changed focus of advertising in 2023 to measurable success, and the cost cuts massively helped with profits. Can we grow revenues in 2024 - I sure hope so particularly if there are rate cuts. To me that's the missing piece. The market isn't convinced and hence the drawdown in the SP whenever there's a chance. Maybe Mad Mouldy's only hope for salvation is the macro helping him and that is the hope for us lot too. An NYSE listing will most certainly help, but I don't think he has it in him to move away from the hardly any forecasting work he does on the LSE. Anyway, the only thing to do here for us is to be patient and wait for either of the above 2 to happen - Mad hat is not going anywhere and an MBO/Bid isn't likely with him at the helm. Who knows where we can go in the near term though!!

Let's not worry about CRafty - must be racking up plenty of free stock options from Mad Moulders. Possibly 30 options per reply and 100 options per a proper promotion post. At this rate, Crafty will overtake my holding in the not too distant future. ROFL.

I'll leave the incessant posting to the naysayers as well as the uber positive holders, the PR team included. Good luck chappies.

"Agreed, but this has always been the case, JL chose to ignore this and sold off the family silver just to keep going without solving the underlying problem." -- This is spot on, IMO, and is the biggest reason why we're at 20p and not at 50p or higher.

@Culley01 - you're broadly right and I suppose at what point you invest in depends on your outlook for both the economy as well as where the new leadership may take this. I've placed my bets, and it is a bet that AH will turn out to be better at running CPI than JL was, and we have some historical precedence for this. We will soon know though and the downside of waiting till the signs are almost all too clear is that the SP may have bolted upwards by then.

@TerryM1 - I think enough has been said about JL and all his past failings, and I do agree there have been too many to mention, and the outcome of these is why the SP is where it is at now - multi-decade, if not all-time lows. Cost cuts were kicked off a good 12 to 18 months too late, IMO. However, if you're looking at CPI as an investment now the only thing that really matters is what the new CEO can or will do with this remaining business and what levels of profitability (FCF) it can generate in the coming HYs and FYs. That's what the market wants to know and that's all I'm keen to hear about in the upcoming update.

I may give AH the benefit of doubt till the H1 2024 results, but if there's no progress by that time I'll be out for good. Who knows, he may just surprise us on the 6th??

"So where has all the money gone from sales from 1 January 2019 to now?

By the by; NOTHING that any of us idiotic Pilgrims write on here will in the slightest way have an effect on the share price. They are simply the musings of fools...."

On that account, there's no point in anyone responding to your musings, Kipper? ;-) Backward looking metrics are not a basis for stock investments and all that..

Anyway, 2 more trading days and we then might have an initial answer to the business/FCF outlook question under AH.

JL was a failure and the less we speak about his prognostications about CPI hitting pre-rights price soon, the better it is for us - IMO. ALl that matters for the SP is how much FCF we generate going forwards and the rest is just noise. There's plenty of wishful thinking on here, but until that's backed by sustainable cash generation from the business, we won't go anywhere. Using AI as part of service delivery is fab, but is means jackshiite unless we can deliver profitable growth.

Saving CPI from bankruptcy wasn't such a big deal when you look back at it - it needed assets to be sold at a resonable price and that's what we had. It's now pivoting to profits that's key.

On the flip side - Kipper sounds like he just to wants buy more at a lower price as I find some of his comments ill-informed ;-). For starters, JL did buy a decent chunk after the disastrous August update last year - the buy was around the circa 500k volume. And I'm not sure what makes you think that Capita can't announce a material market moving piece of news (a £220m revenue enhancing contract) via a RNS, even if it's in a closed period ahead of results - a head-scratcher, IMO?

Anyway, I'm not here to litigate posters' intentions. I'm long and waiitng to see what Wednesday brings. Backward looking numbers don't matter, to me anyway, but what I'm keen on is to pick up AH's thinking on where he wants to take CPI and how to wants to get there. Maybe all of this won't be forthcoming next Wednesday and we may only know more in August, but that will be about the end of the rope for me if that is another disaster. ;-)

Good luck, however you play this!!

Probably an interview with Helen on this date to cover FY results?

"If Q1 Results are not so good and not much other news comes then the SP will drop again - IMO" - Yes, agreed there PC. I don't think any of us can predict what can happen in the near term with Q1, but the US direction of travel from an economy and business spend viewpoint is more positive than it was during 2023 - pretty much all of economic growth in 2023 was US consumer driven. It's the US business spend greenshots that we should all keep a close eye on.

WPP is a lot more globally exposed (circa 40% is US revenue) and I wouldn't personally consider them as a like-for-like benchmark when assessing SFOR's prospects. But, I do agree that we need to hear from MS about the ad market and tech sector spend in particular, is trending in the US - we'll have that in a few weeks time and that will set the tone for SFOR's SP in the near/medium term.

GLA...

Not to worry chaps, you have his CraftLess PR team pushing his narrative here relentlessly everyday. An apt shiiteshow from the king of corporate governance.