Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Today's RNS reveals 20% LFL sales growth in Action. Tremendous. There is an Action shop in the small town in France where I have a house, the shop is always doing great business. It was after seeing that that I bought shares in 3i. They are now starting to build a network in Spain which ought to be fertile ground as well. I wonder when 3i will sell or float off Action, it must be worth a bomb now.
From The Telegraph:
"A call to evidence was issued last April, with the aim of clamping down on youth vaping.
A new consultation, honing in on specific proposals, will put forward the disposable vape ban.
The ban would apply in England, with other devolved administrations having to set policy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A law change would likely be needed, but it remains to be seen if time could be found in Parliament before the next general election, expected in autumn 2024."
apparently, Singer have just put out a research note with a TP of 200p.
The last lot of zero-cost options, from October, are mostly exercisable at 62p and 70p. One might assume that those figures were worked out as being the very lowest share prices envisageable, taking account of the likely outcome of the Samsung case, something those involved would almost certainly have been able to forecast pretty well at that time. The present sp is still pretty low.
The Times hasn't been 'right-wing' for years now. The Murdoch empire has followed Bloomberg in moving sharply left since they sensed that the younger generations (and most politicians of whatever label) are hooked on the globalist agenda.
One potential bright spot is the pension. Broker Singer says contributions will reduce the deficit from £154m in FY’21 to just £78m in ’23 and that “a 0.5% shift in actuarial base rate assumptions would lead to the deficit swinging to a surplus at today’s date” - see page 148 of RCH annual report.
GS:
One further point of speculation on the RCH inherited pension schemes. I wonder whether the assets of these schemes include some shareholdings in RCH itself. I believe it is often the case in UK, that company pension schemes hold shares in the companies themselves. Should that be so here, then large chunks might well have been taken already out of the deficits over the last few weeks.
GS:
Just to add that there are, I understand, six separate inherited pension schemes, presumably with varying degrees of deficit. So it may well be the case that as each one reaches a zero-deficit position, that particular scheme would then be transferred over to a company like Rothesay. That is, there might well be a piecemeal, case by case resolution, rather than RCH waiting until all the six schemes reached a collective zero-balance position before acting. As we know, one scheme has already been disposed of in this way.
Hi GS.
I am not an expert on pensions in any way but I had understood from my good friend that the GEC Scheme had been in some ways in a position similar to that of the Reach scheme, that is a fairly large scheme out of proportion to the company then supposed to support it. In the case of GEC, the residual company was called telent (small "t", one of those!) after Simpson and Mayo had gutted Lord Weinstock's legacy. The trustees set out a plan to get the scheme into balance, through contributions from telent but also from some good investing, that is with invested assets being equal to actuarised liabilities, and then at that point it was taken over by Rothesay tel quel, transferred wholesale, assets and liabilities, and telent had no further liability of any kind. I would imagine that Reach are working towards this kind of solution and this morning's remarks about the pension deficit are, imo, very positive indeed. The effect on future profitability of the shedding of the pension scheme is tremendous.
I hope this is helpful.
Jane.
That's better!
Not sure how impressed investors are meant to be by a video of the CEO presenting and talking rather like Prince Harry and spouting on about ESG and mental health and talking about being at the start of our "journey".
Lone Star offered 200p. I reckon that outfits like Lone Star would aim to make at least 50% on their investments so one might say they would have seen value in SNR of at least 300p per share and have been confident of getting that value from the business. Therefore it must be up to the BoD to now do as well, given all the fine words in King's statements in the RNS just issued, and get the market to recognise that value of at least 300p. To do that they would need to more than double the SP from here. I doubt that many would see them as being up to the task.
The major investors reported to be in discussion with the BoD ought to be throwing the book at them and, for example, having all management bonuses and incentives suspended until the SP reaches, say, 250p. That way, the BoD can demonstrate the truth of their assertion that Lone Star is failing to appreciate the worth and the value of SNR and of its BoD. The BoD would need to put their money where their mouth is or else simply leave the stage and let others do better than they are capable of doing.
..............in self-defence and in self-interest.
The question the BoD ought to be asking themselves is why the market seems not to believe their assertion that the Lone Star offer “fundamentally undervalued Senior and its future prospects” and why it is that the market values SNR (and by extension the value of the BoD itself) at about 27% below that offer. As quite often in situations like these, the BoD are not actually representing the best interests of shareholders but instead simply circling the wagons in self-defence.
Oakley Capital (OCI) is also worth looking at.
Undervalued investment trust likely to sell off remaining nvestments and then wind up and distribute proceeds to holders.
Under the radar but now starting to move up.