Member Info for Hexam

“Nah im pretty sure the interest rate was nowhere near 9 percent on the 325 rcf.”

Correct SCB - it was at SONIA on the £325m RCF so around 4 to 5%. It then increased when restructured last year to SONIA plus 4% (on a lower amount) and then increased again to base rate plus 7.3% on the latest refinancing (and on a still lower amount).

So big losses and a weakening balance sheet has unsurprisingly led to worsening terms on falling amounts of credit.

It depends which RCF you are talking about. The original facility started on 2021 but this was only for £100m and was soon replaced by a £325m one in March 2022. Exact dates aren’t as important though as the trend since the RCF was first set up which has seen increasing weakening of the balance sheet as losses have grown and despite selling assets and raising equity.

They need at some point to start generating positive cash flows and profits from the business to reverse the trend and the interim results will hopefully give some indication as to whether this can be expected any time soon.

They didn’t see a transaction that size for the very good reason that there hasn’t been a transaction of that size.

I don’t know what is going on with these RNS but it is certainly not UBS selling 7m shares one day and buying them back the next. Apart from being a very odd thing to do it is impossible given the daily volumes which are way lower than that.

There simply isn’t the liquidity so there must be a more mundane reason for the notices following on so quickly from one another - perhaps a simple error in the first one or some kind of technical change?

"lo and behold 7 mins later the soothsayer is back nitpicking"

well, if he's nit-picking in my direction then it's wasted on me as he's just a green box now and I'm not tempted to unfilter to see and risk getting into one of those life sapping circular arguments with him.

I stand by what I said. Nobody has invested or disinvested more than 1% (or up to 3% if they were below the first threshold). That is a fact. Nobody can therefore KNOW whether any of them were buys or sells. We are all entitled to guess and mine is that they were either trades with no spread (given the lack of notification) or sells (from the prices but none individually big enough to cross a threshold) - but just my view.

As I said, it doesn't matter anyway and the focus should be on company performance, not second guessing something that is largely irrelevant anyway.

I can only see one side of this rather pointless debate but all we know is that the big trades did not trigger crossing a threshold so we have do not know whether they were buys, sells or a mixture of both just that they weren't all in the same direction from the same player (as in total they were over 3% so even a single, new investor would have triggered an RNS).

The prices at the time suggested that most were sells but it may be they were simply shares being moved around between market makers and not subject to a spread (so just trading like you get in auctions).

In any event it doesn't matter as the key thing is that it hasn't lead to either a big holder scaling down (which would have been bad) or one adding a sizeable amount to their existing holding - or someone establishing a substantial new one (either of which would have been good). So focus should remain on performance which we won't know until results are released and which those trades give no clue to.

Yes Trisor, there is a cash impact this year of £14m but also there is a profit impact of £14m as there was no provision for a fine.

I've read several posts today claiming a £20m, £25m or some other amount being set aside for this but these statements are false. The accounts explicitly state that there was no provision set up for a potential fine and in last year's accounts they even went as far as possibly suggesting there wouldn't be a fine at all.

So the £14m is a straight, unexpected hit on all the numbers but at least we know now what that hit is limited to.

Any potential fine was never included in any provision for the cyber incidents and the costs so far have been £29m (before the fine). That said it is good that there is now closure and certainty on this and that probably explains the (slightly) positive movement in sp today (or at least the absence of a negative one) despite the £14m hit on FCF (and profit).

Yes FED, but why is AIM a mess and so uninvestable? Is it because of a problem with the market itself or the companies on it? It’s a bit chicken and egg and you seem to be suggesting it’s the former? Personally I think it is the latter with at best most companies either being highly speculative by their very nature and thereby hard to find the gems among the many that fail or, worse, they are lifestyle companies there to simply enrich the BOD at the expense of shareholders.

Regardless of the tax benefits, investing in such companies is at best just gambling or at worst downright reckless and certainly doesn’t seem a recipe for growing or even protecting assets for loved ones left behind.

BOO is somewhat different and much more like a main market company but the way it has behaved of late has more in common with other AIM companies.

No doubt it is affected in some degree by the overall AIM malaise but I would argue that is more because of the company it keeps there than the market itself and in any case the bulk of the problems causing the sp to flounder are from its own behaviour and performance.

So I’m afraid I don’t agree with pointing fingers at the market - it needs to get its own house in order first and foremost.

Hi Oke,

I'm not sure they give any breakdown for GMV post returns, just totals, as they focus on pre-returns instead. In any event I don't look at either much as I'm much more interested in revenue as that is the actual income for BOO.

Unfortunately it is hard to draw any conclusions from separate figures for marketplace, brands etc. as there are so many ways to present the numbers between them (especially around cost allocations but even it seems revenue too from my earlier post) and this is not helped by the lack of information in the accounts (and they seem to change how they present them every year).

So it's hard to know how something like '4% EBITDA margin' for marketplace and 'brands FCF neutral' really translates into overall profit and cash flow.

That's why I focus on overall profitability here more and understand that top down, rather than try to build it bottom up, as in this case there is not enough info (and it is not consistent enough) to do that reliably in my view.

That said if they dispose of poor performing parts of the business and pay down debt that should obviously improve the overall numbers but even that depends on exactly what is left behind (including costs that were previously allocated to those 'poor performing' businesses).

Sorry. that probably doesn't help much in answering your points but I just think there is not enough clarity provided in their numbers to translate what you are suggesting into overall results with much confidence.

All I'm saying is that the numbers reported to Companies House in DBZ for the marketplace are inconsistent with what they have reported in the group accounts for FY24 and H124. There is clearly something else being included within DBZ compared to what they are showing elsewhere. Saying they are 'distorting' the numbers may be too strong though all companies present their results in the best possible light and BOO are certainly no strangers to doing that with their adjustments, changing the splits each year, focusing on different metrics depending on which ones look best, removing PLT etc.

Why should I be grumpy? I'm over 60% up on QBT, not 60% down like you said you were.

As for the drum bit, it's not me that posts for attention or likes....

Well OSD I just hope your boat doesn't have half as many holes in it as the stories you tell.

(Btw I am already invested here and was so long before you so no danger of me following your lead in this - or anything else come to that.)

"Gross Merchandise Value is used to measure revenue through the Debenhams marketplace, defined as total gross revenue from customers pre returns Gross Merchandise Value for the year amounted to £359,687,000"

Actually SCB, looking more closely at this the numbers just don't add up. They are claiming the £360m here to be the GMV (pre-returns) through Deb MP for FY24 but the whole GMV (pre-returns) for FY24 through Debs (including labels) was only £488m, leaving just £128m for the labels - BUT they reported for H1 2024 that GMV for labels was £136m so MORE than the £128m implied for the full year!!!

Furthermore the split they give at FY25 suggests Marketplace GMV of £476m for FY25 and only £251m for FY24 (NOT £360m) with labels GMV of £178m for FY25 and £237m for FY24 (which is much more consistent with the £136m reported at H1 24).

My conclusion, rather than some of these numbers simply being wrong, is that the £360m reported under DBZ is not just the marketplace GMV as we would understand it (and as reported elsewhere in the overall company results) but includes something else. So I don't think we can simply take the DBZ numbers as being synonymous with the marketplace - and not just for GMV - instead it is better to stick with what they tell us in the overall accounts in so far as they break it down.

Phimx - If you had poured over his 'self-congratulatory posting history' you would have come to this only last week where he was talking about either ditching his investment here at at a loss or putting it in the bottom drawer.

"is it time to invest my losses else where - 60% down and no immediate signs of additional communications due from the board.

The alternative is to lock the name QBT out of mindset and either have a nice surprise one day - as I have just had with IMM or wait to hear that they no longer exist - which ever it is it won't be any great shakes -we will still be able to go to the shops when I please and buy whatever we want :)

GLA.

OSD - contemplating the chop !!"

That was on Friday but on Monday he allegedly invested more! Must have been all the exciting news over the weekend that changed his mind or more likely, as you say, nothing he says can be taken at face value. Just a walking contradiction that loves the sound of their own voice.

I agree FED, cash flow is key, particularly for companies where it is tight - like BOO - though I don't like the FCF measure as, like EBITDA, it misses stuff out and also like EBITDA what exactly is missed out varies by company. For BOO those things are interest payments, lease payments and share purchases by the EBT (and tax paid).

Must admit though I prefer to look at profit rather than cash, especially for healthy companies, as although ultimately they are the same thing (only the timing differs) cash can be distorted so easily by big changes to WC, large capital purchases etc. Obviously profit can also be distorted by write=offs etc, but they are easy to allow and adjust for if appropriate.

By profit of course I mean PBT (or PAT) not EBITDA which is more a metric for company PR purposes than being useful for investors in my view.

By the way the Debs figure I quoted was unadjusted EBITDA not adjusted EBITDA and I was only referring to it as that was what Oke was talking about.

"Ideally the market needs to see Debs market place results ex internal brands on the platform"

Actually Oke you can but only on Companies House data where the marketplace is reported separately (under DBZ) and long after the main results are posted.

The FY24 numbers were EBITDA of £10.45m on GMV of £360m so margin of just under 3%.

Heath warning though is that the most (if not all) of the overheads get reported elsewhere so it is really a marginal profitability measure rather than a fully costed one.

Well there are still 11 people that have 'liked' his post (so far) though I suspect none of them actually understood what he was saying or implying (if any of them did then perhaps they could explain to the rest of us)?

They also seemingly don't care that of all his previous predictions that WERE decipherable, none have actually come anywhere near to being true. Still he sounds important and as if he has some special/inside 'knowledge' and that's enough for some blind followers to hit the recommend button. I suppose that's how cults can be so successful - never mind how much gibberish is spoken, if the believers are so keen to believe and the 'leader' talks with enough gravitas then they'll follow anything. Could actually apply that to FG as well come to think of it!

"What a difference a day make volume wise & noise"

That's because there was a pump and dump yesterday. Pay attention.

Yes, yet another pump and dump and a rather feeble one at that - each one seems to be weaker than the one before. Must try harder...

"He wasn't paid 4.5m in remuneration as you claim."

This is one of the reasons I filtered him. It is in black and white in the annual report that he was paid £4.5m in remuneration in FY25 (plus what he was paid in salary before he became CEO) and yet from what you say he is repeatedly denying this incontrovertible fact rather than just admit he is wrong and/or he has got the deflectors up fully.

Dan was paid £4.5m in a mixture of cash and shares for FY25 plus a further in £290k in shares that don't vest until after Feb 25 (so those will be included in following years) plus whatever he was paid before he became a director. Anybody who doubts this just needs to read the remuneration section in the annual report.