Member Info for HopeGreedNothing

Hex - you would have been happy to be continually diluted?

Figures earlier this week showed there have been just five new stock market floats in London this year, raising a paltry £81 million. That is thin gruel for the brokers who rely on deals to stay in business. Job cuts across the City are beginning to cut deep.
The government is planning a series of measures in the Autumn statement to bolster City competitiveness, but there are fears this may be too-little-too late.

The London stock market, once the world’s premier index, is in danger of becoming a backwater for equities
Britain’s top 100 companies would be worth towards £500 billion more if they moved their stock market listings to New York, shock analysis for the Evening Standard shows.
Amidst growing fears that the London stock market, once the premier equity index in the world, is in danger of becoming a backwater for equities, research shows the gap in valuations is worse than previously realised.
More and more large businesses are threatening to move their share listing away from London in frustration at the low value given to their shares.
The FTSE 100 market value is today about £2.55 trillion. Based on its combined profits and earnings, it would be £460 billion higher were US share values applied.
Alan Miller of SCM Direct, who compiled the figures, says Brexit and a focus on ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues have made investors wary of UK shares.
He said: “The world of investment did not take the UK’s decision to leave the EU too kindly, with confidence in the UK as a country to invest in slowly dissipating since June 2016. 
“However, the real gulf in valuations is between the US and UK. In the last seven years, the average US company coming to market is valued over a 3-year period at 25x earnings. In the UK it is only roughly 15x earnings. 
“UK companies on a like for like basis are valued 18% less than their Us counterparts. This anomaly ventures to suggest that if the UK companies were quoted in New York their valuation would probably be £460 billion higher than it currently is. No wonder investors have become wary.”
These low valuations leave top UK companies vulnerable to bids from private equity. In February Canaccord Genuity drew up a list of 20 top UK companies at risk, including Hikma Pharma, Computacenter, Playtech and RWS.
Last night Dechra Pharma said it is in talks over a £4.6 billion bid from EQT, a Swedish private equity house.
There are growing calls for the government to act to prevent an exodus of companies away from the City. In particular, pension funds, which are encouraged by regulators to buy bonds rather than shares, should be set free, say many.
Miller adds: “The Government must pull the led out to encourage reluctant visitors back into the fold. London must offer attractive regulatory requirements and taxation benefits as soon as possible.”

Alasdair Haynes of Acquis Exchange said: "This is a startling gap in valuations between the US and London and a worrying sign. Regulations need to change. I have been calling for a radical overhaul of stock exchange rules and I hope that the FCA and the government will address these issues with a sense of urgency.”
Miller’s detailed analysis, which can be read below, applies across most sectors. Even the UK’s unloved banking sector would be valued around 25% higher if they were listed in America.

It's sadly become standard practice for a select few within the world of hedge funds, media and bank analysts to regularly build negative coverage against UK listed companies, including THG.

The purpose of "the game" is simple: bet that a share price will fall, and make sure you win the bet by doing everything possible to discredit the company.

The more aggressive the claims & actions against a company, the bigger the share price impact. Strange work, I know, but it pays big. And if you repeat it time and again, against a plethora of UK listed companies, then the rewards are mind boggling. I put this video together for my 2022 staff Christmas presentation, drawing on Wolf of Wall Street.

This repetitive pattern across the LSE explains why there are minimal pension or institutional funds investing in the LSE. According to the Tulchan Stewardship Report, 30 yrs ago pension funds held 55-60% of UK equities. Today it's 2%. That's almost a 97% reduction!

In simple terms, the UK market has suffered from years of "over-fishing", where small groups of industry professionals come together to try and damage UK businesses, and their share prices. Nobody tells you about this when joining the LSE, but it finds you soon enough. The number of CEOs of other listed companies that have reached out to me since THG joined the LSE is remarkable. Each wanting to share their war stories.

The increasing flurry of companies leaving London, with Boards speaking out about the state of the market, is now bringing attention to the problem. You know things must be serious when some Boards are even daring to publicly speak out about it while still listed on the LSE, something that would have stirred an angry response as recent as last year.

Many in the City are blaming pension funds for the state of UK the market, calling on the Government to start forcing pension funds to pump hundreds of billions into UK listed shares, instead of overseas investments.

This is wild. Pension funds are run for the benefit of those who have made sacrifices throughout their lives, saving for their retirement. Pension trustees have a legal responsibility to deliver the best returns for pension holders - it's their money after all. If they believed the LSE to be the best place to invest, then they would be doing it now, like they did 30 yrs ago.

Forcing the UK public to bail out the UK market can’t be a credible solution, and won’t end well. Pensions will deliver much worse returns, negatively impacting the lives of the average Briton. Surely we need to address the overfishing problem first?

The past 48 hours have been ironic. A recent negative press against THG & me has had dramatically the opposite effect than intended. A throw-away line in an otherwise typically wildly inaccurate press piece, resulted in a share price spike and an obligation to make an announcement, culminating in a c.45% increase in the share price on the day. Ouch!

Intel didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia (NVDA), too, looks to be backing off. While its ASICs were heavily used to mine Ether, the second-largest crypto, in a similar fashion to Bitcoin mining, an upgrade last year to the Ethereum blockchain network largely made that process obsolete. Even before the “Merge” upgrade, Nvidia took steps to make its chips less attractive to miners in a bid to support its core customers in artificial intelligence and gaming.
In an interview with The Guardian published last month, Nvidia’s chief technology officer said that crypto “doesn’t bring anything useful for society.”
Makers of two other popular ASIC chips used in Bitcoin mining, Bitmain and MicroBT, are both privately owned and based in China. A third, less popular type of chip is made by Canaan (CAN), which is Chinese and listed on the Nasdaq via American depositary receipts.
Shares in Canaan, which has a market capitalization of less than $500 million, have gained 32% so far this year. Investors would have been better off buying Bitcoin mining stocks.

A? rally in the price of Bitcoin this year has buoyed stocks such as cryptocurrency broker Coinbase Global and MicroStrategy, a software company that has invested heavily in the token. But, most of all, it has boosted Bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin has gained some 80% so far this year as investors have poured back into cryptos after a brutal 2022, leaving it far ahead of the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are up 2% and 8%, respectively, over the same period.
Companies exposed to crypto, whether through ownership of digital assets or reliance on the crypto ecosystem for business, have been major beneficiaries. Coinbase (ticker: COIN) stock has climbed 83% since the start of January and MicroStrategy has gained 124%.
Bitcoin miners have done even better. Among some of the most beaten-down names in crypto in 2022, they are now some of 2023’s biggest winners. Riot Platforms (RIOT) has gained 270% so far in 2023, while Marathon Digital (MARA) is up 224%.
It makes sense because miners stand at the heart of a process called “proof of work,” which runs the Bitcoin network. They use computers running on powerful chips—often warehouses of computers—to solve complex puzzles in a process that facilitates securing the network and processing transactions. Payments are in Bitcoin.
How difficult the puzzles are, which affects how much energy is needed to solve them, is largely determined by how many miners are participating in the process.
High energy costs, increasing competition, and months of low Bitcoin prices—the largest digital asset lost two-thirds of its value last year—put intense pressure on miners’ balance sheets in 2022. Shares in Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital plunged.
Argo Blockchain (ARBK) restructured in a bid to avoid bankruptcy. Its shares are up 35% in 2023. Others weren’t so fortunate: Core Scientific, among the largest miners, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last year.
While risks remain—and competition continues to be high—cooling energy costs and rising Bitcoin prices have made the entire enterprise more attractive again, explaining the significant bounce seen in crypto mining stocks. Argo was upgraded to Buy from Hold last Friday by analysts at Compass Point, who also raised their target prices on Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital.
Because crypto miners rely on computer chips—typically application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs—chipmakers may look like an alternative way to play the trend. However, some of the biggest names in chips seem to have distanced themselves from mining as the shine has come off crypto in the past year.
Intel (INTC) this week announced that it was discontinuing production of its Bitcoin mining chip series, the Blockscale ASIC, only a year after it was launched. The company, in a product discontinuation notice on its website, flagged that it would stop taking orders in October before stopping shipments next April.

OSG - thanks had a look.
Some responses to this are just fubar.
But then maybe I’m the crazy one. :)
Been a long day.

35m yesterday?
32m today

No shortage here.

M94 - let them talk it down, more buying opportunities.

OH - they busy re-enacting the battle of Thermopylae.

for the Septic tanks

Mmm….doughnuts Woo-Hoo!

JC - it’s worth a Chelsea Whopper at least.

+4% first Q. Get selling some merch MM.

GY - Richard Mille or Patek? :)

M279 - till yesterday Liberium were saying target 55p. Price targets are ‘bunk’ for these agenda ridden cowboys, trying to make themselves out to be some sort of Nostradamus’s.

GY & N82 - so is the number still 500m before they have to pay tax on profits?

M1 - how is he going to do that?

How much of those losses can be added to the don’t have to pay tax pile? What is the overall total now?

TR - yes, looks like that on the Golden share issue, but as you say vague enough to be view many different ways.

So all those that stated it would be given up in September maybe in for shock, or we will be premium listed in the next 4 months.