Member Info for Graviton

What news is that then ?

''It seems unlikely PHP would have gone ahead if they had been indicated that there would be a big problem.''

I would put that the other way around because CMA explicitly cleared the transaction to go ahead. If CMA were subsequently to disallow the deal, or force any large scale forced selling of assets they would be contradicting their own prior decision, and I suspect opening themselves up to legal action.

You just can't sit in CMA and approve a £billion deal one week, then change your mind afterwards.

If the government wants uk investors to invest in the UK, and if they want private money to help with investing into the NHS, I don't see that they/CMA have much wriggle room.

(Funny how the US allows it's companies to monopolise markets (freely and on a global scale) without giving a damn about competition requirements.)

Interesting point.

A lot may depend on forecasts for 2026 financial performance as everyone will be looking forward. One might consider a business expecting to declare a profit and cash flow for 2026 of, take a guess, say £32M with a clear profit growth route beyond that just from paying down debt alone, might justify a P/E of say 12. So room for another 20% SP appreciation whether or not that gets SAGA into the FTSE250.

Performance drivers include debt repayment, interest rates, oil price, inflation, and the currently still 'pig in a poke' terms of the insurance deal. All may align.

OK I missed the footnote...

2 The Group receives supplier income in the form of supplier incentives and discounts. These incomes are recognised as a deduction from cost of sales on an accrual basis as they are earned for each supplier contract.

So what - they have recognised rebates from suppliers for volume of sales before they have actually received them ? Wouldn't that impact cashflow rather than profit ?

Or they have recognised rebates for volume sales before they have actually earned them ? Effectively taking say X% off cost of sales on the basis the sales volume would earn that rebate, but then not achieving the necessary sales level ?

What do we think that weird phrase means exactly ?

What is 'supplier income' ? You get income from customers not suppliers ?

39p is a mad price with a P/E less than 5.

Interest rates down to 4% now.

Yes, there is normally a trading up date with the AGM.

That is misleading glowacki. MARS has about £2billion of property assets. The NAV is over 100p. Your attempt to make it sound like it is a basket case is wrong. A chunk of the debt just relates directly to property leases and loans.

Thinking of the next half year MARS will benefit from maybe £8m lower debt costs from debt reduction last year, more again from falling interest rates - say another £2M - another £2M+ from pension holiday. 10% turnover increase in last few weeks alone likely generates maybe £3M additional profit. Falling energy costs, and efficiency and cost saving improvements. Rise in taxes will be more than covered by this alone, so we can already be confident of over £40M for the half year and £60M plus for the year. Forecast is readily achievable. Now trading at a PE of 5 and a bit !

This is a ridiculous valuation - ridiculous. Anything below 50p is completely impossible to justify.

A company expecting to make over £50M after tax profit on a PE of just 7 would be worth £350M or 25% more than the current market price. And it has a NAV of well over twice the market cap.

50 is not a long shot at all. Good weather is hopefully helping trading and multiple tail winds at work now.

Is there no option to declare the German business bankrupt and just shut it down ?

I can't see why a business that is unviable and would already be liquidated should be kept going by taking ALSA profits.

As I say, there is no business case for a global mobility company, it makes zero sense. Management have made horrendous 'growth' decisions. I can't help wondering about the Cosmen role in this, didn't they say something like if you are not growing you are going backwards. All very well but growing by acquiring disasterous unprofitable businesses and mismanaging them has taken National Express (sorry ''mobico'') back to the dark ages.

So they have sold NASB at a huge loss with it’s value being over 20% less even than it’s goodwill value on the balance sheet, and even despite apparently ploughing £200M of capital investment into the business.

This only confirms my previous assertion that there is no strategic case for a global bus company because there are simply no synergistic benefits whatsoever.

‘Mobico’ as a concept was always startegically misconceived. A frankenstein monster of debt funded ‘growth by acquisition’ where the acquisitions and growth have proven completely disasterous for the company and for shareholders.

‘’Ignacio joined Mobico in 2020 and ...’’ has successfully destroyed 90% of the company’s value with a devastating effect on shareholders.

Is there anybody here that has managed to process the RNS and estimate a market cap range for the value of the business now ?

We have half a results announcement here, but I tend to think we need the other half before anyone knows what the vakuemof the business is ?

I think the sale is only a part of it.

The wider problem is they have released results information ahead of results. And by doing so they are dumping only bad news into the market with no context or forward statements. If Cosmen’s are buying any today then there could be a case for market manipulation.

40% down on an unscheduled annoncement of a sale of part of the business.

Many statements made in the announcement that should NOT have been released until the scheduled results announcement.

I hope someone sues the board/gets them disbarred as unfit directors.

Not happy about this RNS.

Why is this being put out 3 days before results ! IMO this is unethical behaviour by the board. They announced a date for results then effectively release results statements beforehand on a friday morning. OUTRAGEOUS and shows complete disdain for shareholders.

Someone said ‘The stockmarket is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.’

Some people think a year is a long time.

Don’t eat the marshmallow yet.

A dividend is pointless. Every spare £ of cash they make needs to go into debt reduction because it brings an instant 11% guaranteed return in reduced finance costs which goes straight onto extra profit the following year. For example, pay off £10M debt and gain £1.1M extra profit, at a PE of 9 the extra profit means an increase of £10M in market cap.

Even if the business stood still by paying off debt it could grow profit at 7%-11% per annum. What PE might you pay for such a business ?

Why do you only trade ? Why not try investing ?