Member Info for Hexam

I think you’ve misread the headline I’m afraid.

It is not saying that the UK market is strong, in fact quite the opposite. The ‘UK strength’ it is referring to is Primark’s own strength in that market (compared to its performance in Europe) such that it has managed to increase its market share in the UK in a “difficult clothing market”.

This is not necessarily bad news for BOO though as it is not clear what market they are referring to (if it’s just Primark’s i.e. high street then online may be much better) or even how accurate those market figures are. Also BOO’s relative performance may of course be very different and we’ll have to wait to see whether it has outperformed or underperformed.

It’s actually even more obvious as the H1 decline is 19% not 23% (that’s the fall in post returns GMV but it is the pre-returns figure that they focus on).

Even if their numbers were right it says a lot when they make such a thing of what is still a double digit percentage decline.

You seem annoyed with me FED but why? What have I said exactly that you disagree with? My recent posts simply lament the misleading presentation of results either deliberately with the excessive spin put on them (including through changing continually how they are presented) or accidentally through all the errors.

You ask me my background, well part of it was being responsible for financial results and their presentation - including their accuracy and interpretation - which is why I’m shocked and irritated so much by BOO’s and am so sceptical of anything they say now.

I want the sp to go UP but I’m frustrated that management have failed so much with the performance of the company and to then add insult to injury dress horrific results up to suggest they are actually great (like certain posters also do).

If they start producing genuinely positive numbers, rather than just trying to dress up poor ones, then I’ll be among the first to applaud.

I agree they slip and slide all over place with how they present their numbers to try to put them in the best possible light but then again most companies do that, at least to a degree.

What surprises me more though is the frequent, blatant errors, like the numbers on that slide. It’s like they are either rushing stuff out too quickly or employing someone without a GCSE in maths to put them together.

To be fair SCB, what the business said about GMV improvement was mathematically impossible so maybe what they said about youth brands declining by 41% was also impossible?

Seriously though, their reports and presentations contain so many obvious errors, let alone misleading representations, that it is hard to take at face value anything they say.

SCB - I was referring more to profitability (PBT and EBITDA without all the exceptions, not gross profit) and cash flow which is what I’m more interested in and both seem to have bottomed out, broadly.

Revenue may be getting worse but part of that at least will be because they are focusing on more profitable (or less unprofitable) business. They can’t afford revenue to get much worse though as there is only so many savings they can make (and much has already fed through) or that targeting of business can achieve.

“Post the improved numbers then??”

Depends what is meant by improved? They have improved in the sense that they’ve stopped getting worse but not in the sense of actually getting better.

So they’ve halted the slide but more needed to go back in the right direction. A Christmas or other trading update will be a good sign but the absence of one would probably suggest they are not getting any positive momentum just yet.

“Can anyone read the south coast nudists words?”

Yes anybody with half a brain - which is about half more than you seem to possess.

And still persisting with the cheap and childish references to SCB as a female - no doubt you are a child of 70s who just didn’t move on when the rest of the world did.

The difference is that they had money when they bought Debenhams.

I never said £50m was misleading, in fact it seems quite cautious given they are already doing £30m - but projecting it to £1bn is misleading is in my view.

They might indeed be able to achieve £1bn profit IF they completely change strategy and turn themselves into a virtually different company but that seems like investing on a bit of a wing and a prayer to me - especially when they have given no indication of moving in that direction.

And even in the unlikely event that they lease properties at free rent it would still require a lot of capital to go big on what is supposedly a dying high street.

It’s strange that for ever on this board posters were saying BOO will recover because the high street is finished but now the answer for some seems to be to go on to the high street (and where Debs has already failed once). Strange.

Yes, the £50m+ targeted is EBITDA but it only relates to the Debenhams brand and they are aiming to hit this in the next three years. The brand is already on track to do £30m this year (as it was £15m at half-year).

So they are aiming to improve by just £20m or so in the next three years. So doing a further £950m to reach £1bn EBITDA seems a tad out of reach even if the other brands contribute.

Or put more bluntly, suggesting this could ever be a billon pound profit company, let alone within five years, is just plain daft.

No - you have no way of knowing if testing is ongoing or if it even started (there is no RNS that confirms installation of software - what they actually said is reproduced below) so you ARE speculating.

“The process has reached the stage where these three companies will now be needing to make their mining rigs available to QBT's testing team at its laboratory in Milan, with access to their relevant source code. This will allow QBT to install the software version of Method C AI Oracle, the launch of which was announced on 12 November 2025, onto the third-party mining rigs. This will be the first step to allow each miner to assess the performance of the higher quality hashing rate provided by Method C.”

And shareholders WERE diluted.

“The October 2023 and January 2025 placings were priced above prevailing market levels, meaning existing holders were structurally protected”

You really don’t know what you are talking about do you Jambone? Gobsmacking.

“Progress is happening — it just isn’t public until results are validated.” How do you know then that progress is happening if it isn’t public?!?

For all you know any testing has now ended and been unsuccessful. You are simply guessing that they are actively testing anything at the moment - live or not. Stop posting opinion as fact.

Just because it’s ’lazy’ doesn’t mean it isn’t true (and I note you haven’t denied it).

As to the point, the rate of cash burn has been VERY consistent the past few years and so in my view it is not unreasonable to assume it will stay that way - or at least not go down significantly especially given the increased activity they have talked about.

So whilst you’re right that nobody can be absolutely certain about an imminent cash raise, I think we can be pretty confident.

*the posters

I’ve unfiltered you Mikey and am surprised to see that you have turned into Jambone - which presumably you were all along?

Your lengthy, speculative, hypocritical and fundamentally flawed analysis says much more about you I think than you posters you are attacking.

PS - there WILL be a raise in the next three months. Only those who are oblivious to reality or simply cannot read accounts would argue otherwise.

Whatever the reasons for selling I’m pretty sure they don’t include trying to prevent the triggering of bonus payments in three years’ time!

There may be an iceberg ahead, then again there may not. You’re once again reading into an action or pattern something that isn’t necessarily there (or, in the case of your previous argument, definitely isn’t there). But believe whatever you want but what you suppose in both cases is just your own speculation - not fact.

“Im not sure hexam how can you call consistent patterns madness.”

Because it is. You’re seeing patterns but misreading the cause and effect. You don’t buy 400m shares and cause the price to drop.

Please see Ian’s post which explains it clearly.

As I said FED, we clearly disagree but that’s ok and we won’t have to wait too long to find out which one of us is right (and I agree it would take more than just one further notification for me to be proved correct).