Member Info for hjkl

For once the market has looked beyond the headline accounting numbers and looked at the real ones such as cash flow.

BP's results are fair enough and the uptick is justified. However in my view they are not quite as good as Shell's and yet they fell on the news. Oh well swings and roundabouts.

As far as I know there are no major hurdles to moving from a methane grid to a blended grid (up to say a maximum of 20% hydrogen). Nearly all modern boilers can adapt to a blend without need for replacement and apart from the odd reinforcement project the infrastructure can cope.

Moving to 100% H2 would be technically much more difficult. New boilers and the infrastructure is not suitable (both from a material perspective and from a volumetric as hydrogen is much lighter than methane)

But 20% is still a lot of hydrogen and would be good news for the providers whether it be electrolysis or something else.

What goes down must come up.

Have to admit I'm surprised by the price performance since the audit event. You just never know which way the verdict will go - this time the potential in the company and the sector has won out. Painful for any shorters out there.

Too early to call this but is there a sniff of the market overall looking beyond the current stagnant growth, interest rates etc ? It always moves ahead of good news appearing on the ground.

Like this company and what it does.

Apart from minor things like name changes the only thing I hope it does is that it doesn't load up on debt again. That way if you're a small company you can still ride out the commodity cycle and no need for distressed sales etc.

Very solid results, good dividend payer.

Market does what the market wants but eventually value is recognised. Sometimes it takes many years but so be it.

Barclays results are superficially OK but the concern has to be they might be much worse next time.

Nice business conditions for banks at the moment : significantly higher rates for loans whilst interest on customer deposits has only nudged upwards. The worry has to be that either through competition or regulation that things will get tighter.

Doesn't really matter to me if Shell doesn't hike the dividend more.

It's true that at the moment analysts value oil cos partially on div yield but at the end of the day it's just swings and roundabouts : today's share price only really matters if you want to sell today. What counts is that they use the money wisely - share buybacks are not silly at the moment as in my view the stock is still undervalued, reduce debt further and build up the balance sheet.

I don't see them wasting money on white elephants / mega acquisitions. Plenty of analysts speculated that they overpaid for BG but boy has that investment paid off.

Always learning. Vaguely aware of Bestway but these type of RNSs usually prompt me to find out a bit more.

One of the UK's largest private businesses : £4.5 bn annual turnover, multinational with interests in wholesale, pharmacy, banking, cement, real estate ...

Who knows what'll happen but I've always wondered about the leveraging potential of Sainsbury's huge property portfolio.

Oil price swings this pm. Rumours of production quota increases but sharply ticked back up in the last hour.

Maybe increases not happening / not as much as feared. No doubt we'll find out soon enough.

Just seen on another board that the exact numbers are

Tax allowance before 91.25 for every 100 spent
Tax allowance now 91.40 for every 100 spent

Intention clearly was to keep it constant but you can't do that exactly unless % tax rates go to decimal points etc.

For Shell what's crucial is the magnitude of the tax allowances.
These things are always tricky to decipher - complicated tax regime mixed in with political smooth talk but as
far as I can see it's relatively good news.

If you recall the tax allowance on new investments was around 90% under the 25% excess profits regime - Labour, the green lobby criticised that as being too generous so you might have thought the whole thing was in danger.

With the increase to 35% there is no additional tax allowance granted but what is already there is maintained.

For example say previously the value of tax allowances was £100 - it now stays at £100.

If I'm right I'd say that's a fair result. Agreed ?

topofthecharts, bhants et al. Interesting stories and it's putting me off for the time being - you just never know your luck.

It seems that low level antisocial is becoming more commonplace by the day whether it be going on a cruise, to the cinema, people letting their dogs run riot at the park and so on. Trouble with a cruise is you're probably stuck with it for the duration.

Usual clamour for another windfall tax after the results but how will it work ?

Most of Shell's profits are overseas and the profit they make here is mitigated / removed altogether by tax rebates on decommissioning expenditure and the 91% or so clawback on the latest windfall tax if new investments are made.

The problem is you can't just say let's tax Shell and BP - the tax code has to be generic and any increases will hit the smaller companies in the North Sea much harder because they don't have these allowances.

In my view the most likely scenario is that the wft will be extended by a couple of years. It is also possible that the rebate %age for investment is reduced but that is a more problematic issue for the govt as they want to encourage as much domestic production as possible.

Thanks topofthecharts.

topofthecharts. Just wondering what are the regulations / conditions like now on the ships.

Covid certification required, more hygiene restrictions onboard, food handling, passenger number limitations etc etc ??

I guess some of these will be regulatory requirements and some will be discretionary company measures.

Thanks.

I have sympathy for shareholders here, management and the posties.

I have absolutely no sympathy for the unions. They are leading their workers over the cliff.

Net cash on the balance sheet, strong growth and gross margins of 94%.

Not a widows and orphans stock but if it can continue to get and keep the best people to design the best products
then this is going places.

....will have a go at explaining the share price. Less than 18 months ago the IPO was at 410 p - it wouldn't have been set at that level if there weren't enough investors willing to back the company at that price. As far as I know since then the company has delivered very good business performance. The balance sheet is rock solid.

And yet.

Net debt $0.3 billion

Not exactly stretched is it ?