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Some good, sensible grown-up discussion today on real news and then NoFear shows up with his prattle and emojis. Oh well.

“But why not just release this as part of a forward looking long term guidance”

A number of possible reasons. To do this they have to go through a consultancy process which they say they are about to start. They can’t keep it quiet after that starts. They could of course delay it all for three weeks but they may be very worried about leaks or even aware one was likely soon.

The whole thing is obviously a very sensitive and emotive exercise especially for those on the wrong end of it so time scales often need to be flexible and reactive to try and manage things as sympathetically as possible (which I hope is what they are trying to do). Just waiting three weeks may simply have not been an option.

"No, the £27m one-off cost is related to the additional £20m annual cost reduction (from layoffs) going forwards!!!"

But the original £40m of cost savings were also 'going forwards' as was not due until end of 2024. Also £27m is an extraordinarily high figure for just £20m annual cost savings - that implies average redundancy costs of well over 1x salary. So pretty sure they have revised the £40m to £60m and brought forward the timetable with all the costs within the £27m.

Would think the £27m one-off cost relates to the £60m annual cost reduction - not just the additional £20m.

*Apologies - the £56m was the last half-year result. The last full year adjusted operating profit was just over £100m so less work still to do to get to the 6% target.

They are aiming for a 6% operating margin. The RNS suggests this is still the case with the £60m a part of that. They still need to find more savings or to improve margins by other means as a 6% margin implies around £180m of operating profit and even after removing one-offs it was only £56m in the last results. So more work to do to get to that 'medium-term' target but at least they are on the way towards it.

They have told us the one-off cost is £27m so with 900 roles affected that suggests the average payout is around £30k so much higher than statutory minimum but probably fairly standard for organisations like Capita.

The redundancies happen Q1, not before Christmas.

No doubt some will choose redundancy but with 900 going I imagine most will be compulsory.

So despite the payouts it will be very unwelcome to most but, sad as it is, it is unfortunately a necessity as one of the actions required to get the business back to profitability.

:-)

Agree Broke. Seems a very odd thing to do if they are seriously thinking of acquiring BOO.

Strange man. I think you misunderstood Wolf’s post and mine (not for the first time).

You keep trying to score cheap points off people but just end up scoring speculator own goals instead. It’s quite amusing really so please keep it up.

As to being your ‘son’ I’m obviously not. If I was though at least I wouldn’t have to worry about paying any IHT anyway :-)

Good to see you agreeing with Wolf and even me for a change. As the article clearly states it is a tax cut that is an easy headline grabber but doesn’t raise much or stimulate the economy and, as we both keep pointing out, is often avoided - especially by the really wealthy/clued up.

Attention now seems to have turned to NI or income tax which makes much more sense.

A good win especially as it shows the hack hasn't prevented them from winning a contract like this. It's not 'massive' on size alone however as it is less than 1% of CPI's current revenue and what really matters is whether they can run it profitably and, as a whole, start reporting actual profits again (not just 'adjusted' ones).

Encouraging though.

Wolf - It may play well in the Tory heartlands but surely there are better choices of taxes to cut to help more people and stimulate the economy especially as one of the obvious ways to mitigate IHT is to spend it before you die and another is to gift it (provided it’s done early enough).

Certainly can’t see how cutting IHT would be of much help to a company like BOO’s revenue.

Actually i think Simon's post raises a lot of good points and is very articulate. The same goes for West's post. The only real difference is that one is more bullish than the other and so just represents a different, but equally valid, view.

My own view probably lies somewhere between the two. I agree with West that ASOS can tweak quite a few things to try to get back to decent profitability but there is no guarantee they will be successful - after all if it was that easy they ought to be able to do it sooner or even done it by now. Every tweak they make will have consequences and it's whether the positive impacts outweigh the negative ones.

On the other hand it is not all doom and gloom and whilst I agree with Simon that ASOS is in a very different place to Hotel Chocolat and to where it once was itself (in particular with so much more competitive pressure now) it is not close to a hopeless position.

It's been through some exceptional challenges that have affected many companies but the environment appears to be improving and hopefully so will ASOS's fortunes - and helped further by their own actions too. So whilst I think it will be very hard to recover full glories and anywhere near historic share price highs I think they will do well enough to make this a decent investment from here.

It's all opinion though and we are all bound to differ in those but at least it's good to here coherent arguments put forward to be debated rather than the childish insults, silly predictions and uninformative one-liners that are the usual stock-in-trade of many rampers and de-rampers. Not to mention the endless drivel about MMs and shorts as well as dissection of individual trades. If you believe in the company then you will be rewarded when the company comes good - what MMs may or may not be be doing, and the rest of it, is just irrelevant short-term noise (unless you're a day-trader).

@wildtiger - you’re hilarious. You’ve got a habit of citing mysterious people in the know and each time it’s less believable than the last.

It’s just a shame your ‘contact’ couldn’t have let you know this latest example of insider info (that you are admitting to using illegally) a day before you invested so much and not a day after. I’d get a new imaginary friend if I was you.

"I still believe btc will do well, but not this stock."

Then why were you buying so much of it recently and saying you finally got back to 500K shares yesterday and were aiming for 16p? What changed your view on ARB so much overnight?

He also said, only yesterday - "see you guys at 16p soon".

These kind of posters are simply a menace. Unfortunately there are plenty of them around who ramp to the heavens but are really just after a quick trade. It's quite fun though when they get trapped - which is quite often.

300%? Hardly think so. Nor even as much as the loss if they had followed the advice of those urging others to buy at £1, £2, £3 and more.

I have no time for pipedreamer's mystic chart waffle dressed up as science nonsense but his advice and predictions haven't been nearly as ridiculous (or wrong) as some others have been - and they are still making them. Hopefully nobody's listening.

This board is full of crazy predictions and advice. Watch out, heading for 14p. 100p by Christmas. £6.50. Last chance to buy below £3 and maybe my personal favourite when the price was about a quid:

"Buy now. Make millions. Retire wealthy. Remember this post". Well, I remembered. It also came with a price prediction of 400p by the end of 2022 and £10 by the end of 2025.

All from posters still posting (apart from the 14p one).

So maybe telling people not to touch it at 28p doesn't sound quite so embarrassing after all?

"Comparable to the Bitcoin Miner market, I believe Argo has a long way to go to reach top 5 bitcoin miner levels."

It's not just a long way, it seems an impossible journey to me. To really take advantage of the next bull run they need an extensive fleet of up to date machines already in place, the capital (or access to it) to enable that or a sizeable HODL to appreciate as BTC rises - preferably all three. They don't have any of these things whereas the top 5 (maybe even 10) each have at least two. So whilst the bull run will help ARB it appears too little, way too late and the most they can really hope for is to survive a bit longer. It's just a delay though as whilst ARB speeds up a little the best miners will accelerate much faster and be out of sight. Eventually the combination of increasing difficulty and their inability to grow enough (or at all) will mean they see revenues fall despite any BTC gains.

At the moment they have next to no cash or HODL and large debts that need to be repaid in the next few years so it's unlikely any of the excess cash they are generating now will go towards new machines and even if BTC more than doubles this is unlikely to change before the halving instantly halves revenue. They are maxed out on loans and could only raise £5m from a placing recently - absolute peanuts compared to what other miners are raising - so can't raise any meaningful sums to help (though they may get a few million for their Pluto holding - but just another drop in the ocean).

That doesn't mean there won't be any good trading opportunities in the months ahead but these exist for all miners (and much safer ones). Anybody looking at ARB as a longer term investment would be well advised to look closely at their current financial position and compare it to other miner and then try and play out various scenarios (bullrun, crash, status quo, halving etc.). They all look ugly to me, just some uglier than others, but if anybody can come up with a coherent case for ARB (beyond the simplistic and short-sighted 'BTC goes up so they make more money') then would be great to see it.