Member Info for Hardboy

"What is going on here?" I thought it was obvious.

They released a recent trading update which disappointed the market. Therefore the share price has gone down.

"Someone sensible please show me one good in this update"

I hope I'm sensible. I read the update and watched the presentation. I can't be sure without checking (which I won't do) what was the source of the information.

They have best in class technology - world wide. Green Hydrogen is going to grow exponentially. Governments around the world are pumping money into the sector. Their technology is compliant with countries' legislation throughout the western world (except Australia which they are addressing.) They have transformed their operations in the last year, are more focussed, more streamlined, have reduced costs. They have the capacity to respond quickly to enquiries. They are talking to and have existing relationships with huge businesses (e.g. Linde, Shell)

Having said all this of course they are still loss making, their share price is way below historic highs. Most of the euphoria on this board today is way out of proportion to the announcement. But they sound as if there is great potential and they are in a position to take advantage of it.

Hope this helps.

2 red ties, 1 dark blue/black. You'd think they'd send a message by wearing green!

Always good to see cash ahead of expectations with their policy of returning excess cash to shareholders.

Of course there is still this inquiry into Vet practices going on - anyone know when the results will be out?

The old saying is "buy on rumour sell on news." as often official updates are predicted in advance, and then seem to disappoint. At the beginning of this month we were trading around 120-125, Now we're at 140. Things are going in the right direction.

That's made me feel better as I was toasting Mr Burs with Lagavulin.

On their results: pretty much as expected I think. Disappointing, but hopefully just a minor blip in the scheme of things. They've just been on Business Live and seem to be pretty optimistic about the future.

"pubs are additional and I don’t feel have much impact"

I tried to help pubs sell their spirits on Burns Night! Trouble is I can never remember which malts are Diageo's

Driftking: "Think we need to look at pubs and what is happening with the consumer trend"

The whole of Europe accounts for around 20% of Diageo's sales. What happens in UK pubs does not have a lot of affect on Diageo's profits.

Hi Truro,

with the current workload of projects, management have had to go through a shift in focus. We've basically gone from a sales business to an operational business, so focus & priorities have to be different. I wonder how they are all coping.

My noble Lord,

The vast majority of my investments are long term holds, companies I expect to do well long term in the prevailing environment. And when you hold shares a long time you get to know the price action, so I try to take advantage of share price volatility by increasing my stake and reducing my net investment with these short term trades. I don't always get them right, of course, but I could see yesterday's drop was over done, and once I was convinced the price was beginning to recover, I bought. Typically what I do is buy X shares for £Y, then set a limit order to sell 0.9X shares at a price which recoups £Y.

Hopefully the recovery will continue, though I expect it to take some time to get back to £4.

Looks like a steady recovery suggesting markets felt it had been oversold yesterday. The outlook may not be as positive as it was a couple of months ago,. but this is still a very profitable growing business, and fundamentals suggest even at 400 it is undervalued. I bought a small tranche yesterday, and sold most of that tranche making 4.3% in a day. It was really to increase my holding slightly without increasing my net investment.

4.3% in a day may not sound much but (compounding it) it is equivalent to over 400 million % per annum. If I could make that sort f trade every day I'd be very wealthy very quickly.

Reading through the posts on this board I am struck by what short time scales most people seem to think in. Warren Buffett, possibly the most famous investor in the world, said, "The Stock Market is a device for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient."

Yes, when ever a company says profits will be ahead of expectations it's good news. I'm a bit concerned that turnover is not going up. The world's population is for ever increasing, therefore the amount of food consumed is going up. As nations get wealthier they eat more meat, so the amount of meat being eaten in going up. One would expect that normal trading for ANP should see sales going up. But it seems that profits are increasing through selling more profitable products, and tightening the belts.

A rule change to allow the 2 biggest shareholders to buy more shares, and 2 trading days later we see a very big volume and a large sp rise. I suspect we should see an RNS in the next few days to confirm one of them has been buying.

Apologies if this is a bit of a rambling post - I'm trying to set put my thoughts and interpretations, but they are not clear cut, so I'm hoping writing them down will help clarify my opinion.

One of the great things about H&T's business is there are so many different bits to it, which don't always wax & wane in unison. On of the difficult things about understanding H&T's business is there are so many bits to it which don't always move in unison.

Pawnbroking is doing well. FX is doing well. Gold is doing well. Retail had a good November, but seems to have dropped away a bit in December. Is this a blip, or start of a worrying trend? Money transfer is subdued.

Yes they have been affected by the rise in the minimum wage. which means costs have gone up more than inflation; but this should be more of a one off hit.

Uh-Oh's great post suggested H&T's customer base is the less well off. Maybe as a whole, but they quote an average watch price of £1600, so that's not the case in all areas of the business.

So it's a bit hard to work out; but overall profits are up 40% - that is massive when talking about such a long established business. So it's been a good year. The question is where from here? If the economy is going to remain subdued, than pawnbroking should continue to do well. with much of the world intent on destroying each other, the gold price should remain fairly high, so Gold should continue to do well. The question mark hangs over retail, especially with a significant expansion plan underway.

I think the drop in share price from the high 400s to low 400s largely pre-empted this profit warning, so today's drop is over done, and I think this is a buying opportunity. 40% increase in profit gives an EPS of over 50 - so a current PE of about 7. If they hold their dividend (& I think they'll increase it) we get a yield of around 4.25%. The share price as I type is also below the net asset value. So I am convinced given all the known knowns this is a good entry price.

It would be great if they could let us know how well retail has done in January as soon as they know, but I guess we'll have to wait till the finals for the next update.

anyway, I've backed my thoughts and added a small amount just now.

But they were out today.

Looks like a bit of a curate's egg. I suspect the profits being ~ 10% below current forecasts will see the share price drop today, though I guess most of it is priced in.

Never mind overall Full year profits are going to be up about 40% which gives an EPS over 50, so the share price should be considerably higher.

I assume this is mainly due to people selling of their new 35 shares for a small profit.

"can you explain how a business with >£200M in the bank is being hit hard by interest rates and borrowing costs? "

ITM need to sell electrolysers to become profitable, if interest rates are high industry as a whole reduces investment, so there is less likelihood of selling to industry.

Having cash in the bank can of course soften the blow as it earns more interest.

Last year it was 18th which was a Wednesday, so Wednesday looks logical.

I can not understand this price weakness.