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This is what baffles me about the approach of some on here relentlessly investing in a company that is clearly still at sixes and sevens. There is no quick turnaround here - if at all. Increasing volumes means increasing your cost base. There's simply no single way of increasing sales to that extent without buying cheap, toxic business. I can't imagine the brass at SIG will fall into that trap again. You need local expertise, a motivated sales force and local autonomy... none of which, as far as I can see, is currently present. It's too top down. Local managers are hog tied. They can't offer the service customers need to attract decent, high margin sales that need high service response.
When I worked there I'd dip in and out. You can buy a shed load of shares for not a lot of dough and small positive moves in the market meant I could take profit reasonably regularly. It is indeed a shadow of its former self, you're right. As I've mentioned in previous posts - many, many key people left and they are making an effort to bring some back but the cost of doing so - blimey o riley.
£0.35p!!! Load up!
They're UK market remains flat. They're under attack from competitors on price the likes of which they haven't seen for many years at a time when they HAVE to increase the margin being earned. Service levels are abysmal, stock buying and holding still incredibly hit & miss and the much trumpeted "changes" not filtering through to where it matters, the frontline.
SIG remain a business with genuine structural issues when competitors are running great businesses. They'll stagger from this crisis to the next I would imagine hoping for another genuine national crisis to blame for the continuing awful performance.
As I've said before - look at their direct competitors and ask how on earth these UK businesses, in the same markets, outperform SIG year in year out.
It's all gone a bit quiet on here. Maybe the turnaround will come this year.
Oldguard - indeed I am a year out. In my defence though I looked at the 2019 result and assumed the pandemic had hit SIG a year earlier than the rest of us. It does feel like three years though, doesn't it?
Oldguard - you're not genuinely claiming H2 2021 is a massive turnaround to 2019 when all the branches were shut/staff working from home? You can't on the one hand accept 2019 results as one of the worst ever because COVID then laud the turnaround in 2021 against 2019's numbers. That's silly.
Bit of a weird reaction to posts that don't exactly align with your world view to accuse a bloke of creating hundreds of accounts.
I don't have much of an idea about investors/fundamentals/debt or anything else particularly financial. I simply popped on here to comment on the size of the job the new management team has on their hands.
Decades of customer trust was wiped out during the previous management's tenure. Central inventory, moving credit control abroad meaning customers could not make themselves understood on really important matters, the desertion of the business by brilliant people... the list goes on. They didn't just lose market share - they lost whole markets.
I've felt some sympathy for the new regime. They include some brilliant people. I've also some sympathy for them trying to turnaround such a big operation in the short time they have. I was incredibly sad but relieved to leave and I genuinely mean it when I say I hope things get better for those guys on the front line.
I've got nothing to prove to you, Wally.
As I said I hope for the friends I still have working at SIG that all the issues are sorted out swiftly and the business returns to profit.
Up until recently I had service at SIG measured in decades rather than years but like many, many people felt I had no other option than to pursue a career elsewhere. The question for me before I'd invest in SIG is why on earth all of their competitors around them have been posting record years while SIG remain unprofitable. The rapid expansion of some independents proves that the business is out there for well run companies with expertise at their heart.
The issue for SIG are two-fold; the availability of stock is still at best patchy and will take many, many months to resolve and the second is the mass exodus over the last three years of the expertise they based their success on. They were prepared to see renowned industry experts leave the business by the 100's and now find themselves in the position of having to pay top, top (top) dollar to get some of these guys back into the business.
SIG was built on individuals who knew what they were doing running their businesses to the benefit of their customers. This changed dramatically three or four years ago and those guys with that spirit and drive are now sitting somewhere else doing it for someone else. You simply cannot recover overnight from losing such significant people from your business. Those people were the business.
I wish SIG well. I have no interest in seeing them suffer further. I have no interest in seeing investors on this board or indeed longstanding staff members (and friends) lose more money on their shares but its naive in the extreme to think that the sunny uplands in the UK are just around the corner.