Member Info for Hosai

FT describe Noblet as being HSBCs "most senior British dealmaker". - https://www.ft.com/content/83b09484-a541-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b

According to this article he was the 6th biggest Uk dealmaker in 2021. https://www.cityam.com/exclusive-new-data-reveals-the-top-10-dealmakers-of-2021/

He's also a joint broker to Boohoo for many years at the same time as Jon Goold was with zeus capital.

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/BOO/grant-of-options/15061053

"In early 2011 we bought a small brand called Myprotein. It had annual sales of c£20m, selling large bags of protein in a few key flavours, to hardcore gym-going young men in the U.K.. It's fair to say many laughed at us paying £58m for the brand (picture in this post is from the time of the deal)."

Wonder if this part is also an indirect defence of the price paid for Cult Beauty/Bentley Labs.

The Phil Noblet chap who is the head of UK/Ireland investment banking at Jefferies and who is "working with" CFO Damien Sanders literally likes pretty much every THG or MM linked in post - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-noblet-5b254333/recent-activity/

Also noticed Jon Goold has now commented - "Amazing to hit 1m unit sales so quickly - the power of the brand ! Congrats"

Anyone know if any figures have been given before on the cost savings from the fully automated warehouse verses not automated?
Will time well in the April update with the New Jersey site going live end of March

Probably reading too much into it with my inevitably biased perspective, but MM's increasing linked in posts seem increasingly...confident in tone?

"Thg is valued at circa 10x ebitda - what’s unfair about this as it’s currently FCF negative / not achieving double digit growth and hasn’t published guidance".

Stevescott Boohoo, ASOS and Ocado all pretty much the same or worse on this metric. Ocado not Free cash flow positive for 5 years, 5% revenue growth (admittedly more than THG prob predicting) and are making no EBITDA atm.
If you are saying THGs valuation of 10x EBITDA makes sense then you must value £5.11 billion Ocado at virtually £0.

My partner is from Hull. Having visited there a few times now the highlight is usually taking a trip to York...

I agree the Candy bid was real and funded (at-least according to the times). However the reason MM gave for rejecting ones such as Belerion's one didn't makes sense as THG being saddled with more leverage would be a problem for the new owners not the old shareholders. MM's duty is to the current shareholders best long term interest (the ones who would be bought out) not to theoretical new owners taking on more debt with THG.
His response only make sense if he was looking to buy out the company with the help of PE rather than have his shares bought off him.

I still don't quite understand the "it would have saddled THG with debt" argument MM seemed to make.
Shareholders would no longer care if THG had more debt if such a takeover happened as they would have had their shares bought off them, this would be the new owners problem.

True Stevescott, though in these specific examples Philip Greens offer was back in 2004. Whereas THGs rejected offer was 9 months ago, so still relatively fresh in the minds.
Interestingly similar to THG/Candy M&S didn't open the books for Green so he pulled his bid. Still remember some of the bears here trying to suggest THG wouldn't show the books coz of fraud etc as though it was a crazy action.

Would be very hard to buy it out cheap when they have already stated £1.70 significantly undervalued the company. Even if the Belerion bid wasn't legit as some claim, MM can hardly now pivot and say "yeah but that wasn't real".

Also we will never know what Candys bids were/was going to be. The times reported this at the time -
"Industry analysts doubted whether Candy, who had also touted ambitions to buy Chelsea Football Club, would have the financial resources to table a £2 billion takeover. However, sources close to the process said that Candy Ventures had submitted two fully funded bids, backed by a large institution and sovereign wealth funds.
A source said Candy Ventures, working with advisers at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche, had been working on a third bid at a significant premium to THG’s share price.
Candy invested in THG during its stock market listing and had been looking at the company for months before its interest was outed."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thg-shares-on-slide-as-two-bidders-walk-away-from-takeover-vl939frr8

"He should, with hindsight, have kept THG private for longer."

Doubt he is thinking that. He raised a lot of money for himself/backers plus for THG from the market. Him and the original holders together gained £961 million from IPO. THG as a company gained £920 million from the IPO at 500p and then $1.05 billion (prob around £800 million) at 596p from softbank raise.

If they had stayed private THG would be a smaller company with less cash in this difficult macro period. However it's true that the golden share and potential control may now be concerning MM.

Interesting post on Celsius Crafty. Especially as they were/are making negative EBITDA, yet still got 11x in Aug 2022.

We had large falls last year on no news and the audit was fine.

Stevescott you def know a lot about THG but this is what I'm talking about in terms of you and Ste being bipolar.
I believe yest you were saying nutrition alone is worth 2x our current market cap.

That's the crazy thing...one could argue no-one would benefit more from Moulding giving up his golden share or stepping aside then Moulding himself due to the potential large re-rate in his shares.
I don't think MM is actually that bad (though better as entrepreneur than CEO perhaps) but the trouble is the city have decided he is bad now so that's very hard to shift.

Stevescott, I prob go on about Ocado too much but why do you think it is the market allows them a 5 year wait for cash flow positive but it felt like MM was pressurized to become cash flow neutral this year and positive next year?
Ocado has a £5.3 billion market cap to our £800 million odd MC, so it felt like MM had no choice but to pivot whereas Ocado is allowed to continue making losses while going for growth.
Pretty much same net debt for both, Ocado with worse current performance and lower credit rating.
Seems like people can see the light for Ocado in future years but refuse to see any light in future for ingenuity.

Okehurst I don't see why you keep saying we can't fund £80 million. THG has from last update £470 million cash on hand, plus access to £170 million undrawn so access to £640 million and after property sale in H1 will be £680 million.
The bulk of the £670 million odd debt doesn't mature until Dec 2026.
Therefore we surely can afford this, perhaps it would make the free cash neutral a lot harder but that's different from saying we can't afford this capex.

I think the Steves do know the business very well, though can be a little bi-polar in sentiment based on the daily sp moves.
I do think sometimes when people argue THG sp "should be down here" due to current year revenue/EBITDA they ignore that the market cap is £750 million odd.
You have other jam tomorrow stories like Ocado who had a worse year last year and aren't predicting much this year for revs/ebitda, around 5 years expected to cash flow positive, net debt about the same and a worse credit rating with £5.3 billion market cap.

Inflation will fall close to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target by the end of this year, an investment bank has predicted.

The rate will slow from the 10.1 per cent recorded at the start of the year to 2.3 per cent by November, according to economists at Citigroup, after a mild winter in Europe led to a sharp drop in gas prices.

Such a sharp fall would benefit the government as it looks to resolve strikes by public sector workers seeking pay rises in response to the biggest squeeze on household incomes since the 1950s.

The forecast is lower than that of the Bank of England, which expects inflation to drop to 4 per cent by the end of the year and to return to target in 2024. Economists polled by the Treasury in January expected inflation to fall to 4.5 per cent by the end of the year.

Citi predicted last summer that inflation would reach a high of 18.6 per cent this January, before the Liz Truss government announced its mini-budget with plans to subsidise household energy bills.

Benjamin Nabarro, chief UK economist at Citigroup, said a further sell-off in European gas prices had prompted the bank to update its inflation forecasts.

Nabarro now expects headline inflation to drop below 5 per cent in July. Last month, he expected that it would take until October for that to happen.

Households are expected to benefit from the fall in wholesale gas prices from July, when the energy price cap is expected to fall below £3,000.

The government plans to scale back support on energy bills from April, which will result in a rise in the cost of the average household energy bill from £2,500 a year to £3,000 a year.

The downward pressure on inflation will be further affected by a decision made by the Office for National Statistics that increases the weight given to gas and electricity in the consumer price index this year. The weighting will rise from 3.6 per cent of household spending to 4.8 per cent.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inflation-back-near-2-per-cent-by-november-us-bank-predicts-zjr3wjw5m