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Unfortunately as discussed before there is a threat here of a Boohoo/Founders takeover. I have a few boohoo so would benefit a little but no-where near as much as if Rev B is allowed to naturally rise.

Assuming no new issues with the audit and it's just slow, then this could and should quickly be over £1 when compared to peers such as Warpaint and Elf Beauty. However there will be a buying frenzy on open I believe and some of the buyers will be Boohoo. I think this could spike this up to say 60p before Boohoo would have to enough to have 75% if you added their holding to the founders.

They would then be able to vote through a deal to buy the 25%, though I believe it would still have to be at a premium or they could be issues legally, so lets say 80p? They would also have to do this extremely quickly because others would still be buying.

Therefore obv for anyone who got in low this wouldn't be relatively speaking a bad thing however I see it as the only danger, (other than of-course more audit concerns but am fairly optimistic on this now) I believe medium/long term this would go much higher on its own.

Silverlight maybe he was being professional before but after so many months he's lost his patience? He might also not think the replies to PIs will be relayed here.

Will be interesting how they address looking beyond interim end of Aug 2022 results and give the "outlook" for full year FY2023 ending Feb 28th 2023, considering they must already know what happened.

Maybe they pretty much just tell us what the revenue etc was and release proper results in due course?

CPI they are clearly addressing the bottom line as the focus now. Also growth isn't negative, you can't judge on one quarter where for Beauty they are withdrawing from loss making areas. They are still predicting overall 1.5% growth this year for the group and grew last year so no negative growth.

Cash flow should be neutral this year and "significantly positive" next year. This clearly isn't why THG is down, consider that Ocado is predicting to be cash flow positive in only 5 years, has basically same revenue as THG, made no EBITDA last year, has a worse revs/EBITDA outlook this year, worse net debt situation and has a worse credit rating than THG but has a £3.38 billion market cap verses THG market cap under £800 million.

Clearly market is giving value to Ocados long term future potential even if uncertain, however they seem to refuse to do so for THG ingenuity and the rest of THG.

JD is def undervalued, though food for thought that it was established in 1981 and took until FY2017 to get to £2.38 billion revenue (FY2016 was £1.8 billion revenue). Though worth pointing they seemed to consistently have a fairly decent margin as they grew. So it took around 36 years.

Meanwhile THG was created in 2004, (worth noting Matt M says the first few years were a complete waste), and got to £2.18 billion revenue in FY2021. So took around 17 years.

Have to give Matt M some props for this, also considering JD has now got to £10 billion revenue 6 years on from 2017 it shows the way growth can compound in latter years.

Seems like they've managed to keep having high EBITDA margins - (18-+20%) over the years while they are still growing. EBIT margins at 10-12%.

However as we know THG, Boo and ASOS and others online struggled with margins since late 2021.

Wonder if there's anything these online retailers could copy from JD for margin improvement or if it's more a case that shoes are intrinsically a great margin?

JD sports are still 75% in-store purchases and Footlocker at 80%. If we could go back in time would have been great if THG had used their softbank money to buy a physical stores company (or invest this way) rather than Cult Beauty (though obv in time the Cult acquisition could look good again).

The confusing this is, the holders likely rejected an offer over £2, why do they not buy up more shares at 58p?

Interesting to note Andrew as I said in other post Rev B only launched in Boots end of Feb 2022 so we still won't see the impact in the FY2022 results we are waiting for, but will see it in the 6 months interim ending Aug 2022.

Revenue could potentially have increased a fair amount with so much expansion to factor in, as people inevitably are still using estimated figures for FY2022 when considering how much revenue etc Rev B in general make.

Oh no 404 will be furious to see this, he's very protective of auditors.

I wouldn't say it's the least positive, it said "now in its end stages", obv we will find out if that really meant anything though. Also said "during" the month rather than the end of.

404 are you suggesting it's impossible for an auditor to be slow or at fault? If the auditors being slow is what is holding this up then what is Bob Holt meant to say other than they are waiting for BDO?

Rev B did previously update us on the different issues that had come up with the auditors pre-investigation and then the investigation itself obv. Since then we've not had any specifics, it would seem strange if Rev B were suddenly hiding any new issues that cropped up from the audit when previously they let us know the issues (it seems unlikely there is anything new when a specialist forensic team already spent 3 and half months looking into it), especially with sp suspended anyway so they wouldn't be worried about sp falls.

Therefore seems to me the most likely thing atm is indeed that the auditors are being slow.

Just to add to the Walmart point - from May 19th Rev B will be selling from their website the "Fortnite collection" products, which will also be available for ppl to buy "from their nearest Walmart" from May 27th. Can't hurt to be adding this to their new Walmart sales.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/lifestyle/where-get-revolution-x-fortnite-collection-release-date-products-details-explored

Tbf to Iain he's actually responded to some of the comments even from apparent Pis, even if unable to say anything substantive:

Richard Ben - "Hi Ian, another great comment. Just one thing though, why is the BoD not communicating with the remaining 35% of shareholders on the Apollo offer price? Not all of the 35% are in THG to make “fast money.” I have held onto my THG shares for a long time but some more communication would be most welcome. Regards"

Iain Mcdonald: "Hi Richard, thanks for your comment and your support as a shareholder. As a board we are bound by the oversight of the takeover panel. That’s why I’m unable to comment on price discussions. Apologies, this isn’t me being uncommunicative. Hope you understand."

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7063767218701918209/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7063767218701918209%2C7063802236555943936%29

He's one NED but they have Lord Allen, Dean Moore, Gillian Kent and now Sue Farr as 'outsiders' so have made progress.

Interestingly Sue Farr is given as one of the three directors under "leadership and governance" (along with Lord Allen and Matt M) and description is this -

"Sue Farr has been appointed as THG's Senior Independent Director. The Senior Independent Director is available to shareholders if they have concerns which have not been resolved through the normal communication channels or for which such contact is inappropriate. A description of the role of the Senior Independent Director is available here."

So Sue Farr the go to person for disgruntled share holders?

https://www.thg.com/investor-relations/leadership-and-governance

Not sure if will necc get better Polish - they seem to be focussing on margin a bit more -

"Our focused approach to enhancing profitability has led us to de-emphasise certain geographies where we are unable to benefit from the economies of scale associated with our local distribution hubs. Consequently, our headline rate of growth in THG Beauty should be viewed in the context of improved profit margins."

Think revenue overall for THG will still increase this year though due to Nutrition increasing in both revs and margin.

Cult was at 2-3 times sales. Prob was overvalued but not at the time (in 2020). In a few years time it could look less overvalued, when interest rates will likely have fallen back and high inflation will be looked back on like the lockdown (something that lasted a fair while but now in a sense seems a distant memory).

2-3x sales for such assets could become the norm again. It doesn't seem there is much threat to online beauty/nutrition, there is still the underlying threat to the high street even if it's bounced back the last year.

THG market cap now less than half of Fever trees, even though Nutrition alone makes more revenue and EBIDTA than Fever Tree and Myprotein is a bigger online brand...

I should have clarified Iain posted this comment.

Iain had this comment on this post - "Cheers Philip, appreciate you taking the time to read and reply. Ultimately it’s a brilliant business and the degree of adversity it has had to deal with is unbelievable. Very confident in the future, bid or no bid."

Sounds like still seeing the potential of a bid from somewhere?

Sadly doesn't look like the weekend papers will be helping us out with an effective price rejected leak.