Member Info for JoeNinety

The FTSE started and ended up. But not BP unfortunately.

Absolutely. I tried a limit sale at £1 just in case I was snoozing during the take-off, but it wasn't having any of it.

20% limit apparently.

Bought a few of these yesterday.

It was worth it just to read the comical comments here.

You have to pay for people to manage this.

They don't actually do anything.

It is complete garbage.

Why is this share price so volatile?

The small problem with this is that is contains the words 'according to the management' and similar sentiments, a management that has presided over three car crashes in 6 months.

If it were me, I would lose my licence.

But I'm hoping that you are right in the long term.

9:30 came and went, but we all get it wrong.

Yesterday, I opined that it would bounce between 20p and 25p for the foreseeable future, a prediction that didn't last the day.

Funny you should say that. It is more or less what I did after the last crash.

My guess is that this is going to bump around 20p to 25p for the foreseeable future, until those with enough money to make a difference see evidence that this firm has a future.

Seeing a firm based on employing talented people as consultants having to get external consultants to find out how much cash they have or are likely to have is not inspiring. What does the finance officer in this company actually do? How do the BOD pass their time in board meetings?

The only thing that will move this share price up is visible resolute and possibly quite painful action to secure future cash flows by managing debt, maximising profits and minimising costs, possibly involving cutting out a lot of dead wood. It might then move up, rather slowly given the track record of these buffoons. Takeover by a competent outfit that can do all of these things could also work, and rather quicker. It might be worth a bit of a premium to the right fit. I'm not expecting the mid-40s that I should have sold out at any time soon.

Just my feeling. I hope to be proved wrong (in a good way ... the alternative is aways possible).

You have my deepest sympathies. I am under by a small fraction of that but it still hurts.

I rather foolishly thought that any bad news from the review would have been more or less priced into the previous huge drop to the low 50s. It seems not. Complacency.

I could probably easily average down to 40p or less, but even that seems like a risk. The market sentiment almost looks like this company's very survival is on the line at the moment, though it did stabilise at 30p at the end.

Jumped in on these at low 50s and added a few more as it moved up. Now it is nearly back to my last top up. I'll probably sit it out but I might add some more depending what tomorrow brings.

You could ask ChatGPT how the fact that someone was prepared to pay four times the current price some months ago affects its analysis.

Whatever it says, don't bet more than you can afford to lose.

Dipped a toe in the water at about 51p, having seriously considered it at 125p a short while ago. I dodged a bullet there, but it seemed cheap as a suitor had been offering a lot more in the summer and hadn't disclosed any major issues as far as I am aware.

It seems very cheap now but it depends on how investigations turn out.

Maybe they were and 'bought the dip'. Is the buyback still going on?

Thanks. That future promise might be what the brokers are considering in some mysterious way.

But from the 'HY24 Results - Additional info' report, the Chinese operation provides about 10% of the company profits. So it has to grow quite a bit to make an impact. Perhaps it will, as the brokers seem to think, but over what timescale?

The report you cite seems to say that sales in China have been sluggish this year (or have actually fallen). The CFO attributes this partly to the company's move to longer-term financial products and notes that there is a job of work to be done to persuade the Chinese to bother with these. But then the CEO reports that this strategy is starting to reap "rich dividends". Well, it would have been nice if either he or the CFO had specified exactly what form these 'rich dividends' took.

Basically, it all seems a little confusing and I'm not sure that I am convinced by the promises of doubling my money, at least over a the short to medium term. In the longer term the 'gradually aging China' is a hard argument to refute and PRU at least has a finger in the pie.

In the 'HY24 Results - Additional info' report the company gives (under II(iv) IFRS shareholders' equity per share)

Group IFRS shareholders' equity per share (cents) ......... 588 (about 459p)

Group adjusted shareholders' equity per share (cents) .. 1262 (about 970p)

Taking this as a measure of share value, it looks like 459p is a base value and then it depends on the credibility of the future profit projection in the adjusted equity per share.

At the current price of about 630p the shares do not look particularly undervalued, particularly when you look at similar companies, several of which pay much higher dividend rates per share. The Prudential seem to have the capacity to pay a higher dividend but don't.

Maybe they have a better use for the cash. But, as I noted below, the shares have tracked the Hang Seng Property index tolerably well over the past 3-4 years and this suggests that something about this index controls their bread and butter results. It isn't expected to do much over the coming year and the directors don't seem to be doing anything spectacular to break out of this rapidly.

There also seems to be the $/£ exchange rate to consider, and this is expected to go the wrong way next year.

So 'not much change' seems on the cards for a year or so, though the brokers seem to have more profound insights. Are they looking a decade ahead?

50-100% discount that is. i.e. fair value up to 1300p or so.

What is the essential basis of the broker estimates that put this share at a 50-100% to its fair value? Are they at all influenced by their own holdings?

I have no idea how to value this company so I looked around for an index that might at least reflect the share price. The nearest I could find over the last year (maybe 3-4 years at a stretch) is the Hang-Seng property index. It is pretty close over the last year.

When I search for opinions on how that property market might develop in the short to medium term they are not exactly rosy, possibly improving during 2025.

The similarity could be coincidence, of course, and the BOD might have some tricks up their sleeve, but they are performing poorly against most other main indices.

Scroll up from this share chat. You'll find an icon called 'THG Short Positions'.

Yes, I'm in danger of getting my money back.