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The PM’s big speech on levelling up yesterday was very thin. The only spending commitment was £50mln on new football pitches. A government supported national shipbuilding revival seems a very distant prospect indeed….
“ Boris Johnson’s flagship “levelling up” speech has been criticised by experts for containing scant new policy as concern grows among Conservative MPs that the guiding principle of his premiership risks becoming little more than a soundbite.
Two years after first committing to levelling up, the prime minister travelled to Coventry to deliver a freewheeling speech heavy on rhetorical flourishes but light on detail, and urged local leaders to send in their own suggestions…… some MPs are beginning to worry about whether the plans have any substance.”
Hi - I am not a shorter. I was a big long, now I’m a much smaller long, I resent selling my remaining position here and would now rather see some kind of shareholder action. I hear people talking about shorters. I think it’s very hard to do any meaningful short selling in a micro cap stock like this, where there is no liquid market in borrowable shares to short sell. You can sell a few on CFDs but it would likely be quite small fry. I’d be surprised if short-selling was the issue with the share price. More likely there’s just a big unwind of old buyers like me and those who participated in one of the earlier new issues (guilty) who have woken up and smelt the coffee or done more research. That and a total lack of any positive momentum in the business or price. I am posting here to exchange points of view for Infa and registered on LSE to do so. I may well be wrong in my assessment. In some ways I hope I am. I’m always listening to other viewpoints. Final point: I see a lot of people questioning motives of posts on here. Maybe that’s what some people do, but I think they’re wasting their time: in my experience these message boards have a much more limited influence on the share price than people realise. When someone posts a genuinely new piece of material information here (rare) that is picked up by large investors then maybe it could move the dial. But punters like me screaming “this is rubbish / brilliant” is just noise.
If a Killick decides to sell a few million shares it will move things, but message boards won’t hardly ever feature in their decision making. If I thought my posts could change the SP, then I’d start talking bullish as I have several grand at stake!
Poker - absolutely right, I misquoted and should not have relied on my memory of why I originally though it was a weak statement. But now I see the actual phrase again, I remember why I was so suspicious: the words are very selective. ‘Annualised’ means they could be breakeven (in cash terms only) for a very short period, perhaps a month and maybe even less and still claim the target was hit. Given the lumpiness of the cash outgoings and incomings that should be easy to fix and wouldn’t necessarily mean anything positive in terms of financial health. It sounds to me like a slippery target from a slippery and desperate management.
Poker, problem is the corner Infa have painted themselves into. They have bought serially-failing and highly capital intensive businesses. Revenue does not equal profit, and as we have seen recently it more likely means loss. I dread them winning more scraps of shipbuilding business which will require them to raise more capital and incur losses until such time as they reach serious scale (imo never). The management saying they ‘expect’ breakeven on an ‘ongoing basis’ by year end is empty guff. The company looks screw&d. I think there’s a battle looming where Wood and co will extract as much cash as they can for themselves, probably award themselves a lot of options at the new price (ie reward themselves for the SP fall), and quite possibly take the business private for themselves and others (not you and me) taking the valuable assets such as ML and a few bits of yard land at knock-down prices, and trash-canning the rest. If this happens, there will have to be an attempt at some shareholder action but AIM is somewhat rigged in favour of the company execs.
This is a sobering (long) read..
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/james-meek/who-holds-the-welding-rod
Killik is, as far as I’m aware, an execution and advisory stock broker. Not a fund manager. In other words, they are more likely to be holding the stock on behalf of an individual or family rather than for their own investment team. 12% is a very big holding, one wonders what the game plan is.
Hi - can any of you with more knowledge of shipbuilding than me (near zero) help me understand where Infrastata sits in the value chain please? I understand they own the yards where the work could be carried out, but how much actual building of ships would they do if, for example, they won the new Britannia tender? Would they use their own workforce, or hire contractors or have to partner with another shipbuilding company? Presumably it requires a lot of different specialist trades. What’s their value add, and so how much of the contract value might they typically retain? I’m sure it depends on the situation, but a rough idea would be useful. Thanks in advance