Member Info for JonnyGee

Lol, there are a few boards on here like that. While I do feel the German acquisitions are probably not bad strategically, they are indeed now forecasting £12mio (17%) below the previous consensus standalone '25 revenues, plus the CRS business is clearly low margin, since the company is indicating "mid-high teens" margins in 26, pre one-offs, so if you do the math, 2025 combined EBITDA will only be around the level of 2023 (£13mio) and that would be a 17.8% margin, so at the high end. As others have noted, if they do actually manage to land some decent and sizeable contracts, the picture could improve, but until then the market's not going to cut much slack and rightly so.

Broadly speaking, yes, though the RNS is worryingly silent on the Maverick decline rate - hopefully there will be some more info on today's call. One can only hope Maverick's decline rate is no worse than DEC's. FWIW this board has been pretty silent on the continually deteriorating DEC decline rate - Ive been in DEC long enough to remember when it was around 6%, but as they moved out of their core territory it started heading south to double digits. Ho hum - let's see what else they have to say. It certainly upscales the business and gives it some bigger US visibility which may be no bad thing

Ahh - thanks SEA7 and Nice 2. Yes, a company site should be the most accurate (not always the case though) so will use that. Appreciate the heads up .

@SEA7. Thanks for this - am curious where you are sourcing this? Im using Stockopedia and MarketScreener (which aren't consistent with each other!) and neither show Hargreaves or UBS.

Bit of a mixed bag in the RNS. They did actually miss revenue forecasts - only by a small amount but got hammered since thats what the market does right now. I think the more concerning news was the MSALABS (their great new strategic hope...) running undercapacity which wont help an already lower margin business. I do think the Barrick LOI which, if closed "will utilise the majority of Group's combined mining fleets", could be very good news for replacing the now defunct Sukari contract as long as they get it over the line, but there are quite a few "ifs" in todays RNS and quite a lot of jam tomorrow, hence the market puked. That being said, am looking to top up

Guys, please stop feeding the Roxi troll. Its really irritating when this thread gets sidetracked for that idiot (filter is a very useful tool on these boards :)

Anyway, solid albeit brief RNS, but as Charlie noted there is a lot more information we and the market would all like to have on the various asset performance levels and outlook. Hence moderate SP uptake but nothing earth shattering, and in any event am pretty sure the market wants to see multiple accident free quarters and the debt coming down before any meaningful rerating can occur.

Well that was very informative. First CTL webinar Ive been on and have to say hat's off to Steve for being on top of his subject. Obviously need to see how Tony is, but rather doubt Steve and team would have appointed someone they arent comfortable with and his CV sounds strong so generally more positive view after this.

As you correctly note, CTL this morning declared " In the CEOL application CleanTech Lithium provides the audited balance sheets and income statements that demonstrate these criteria have been met". The fly in the ointment is that the audited balance sheets do NOT show that this is the case hence the conflicting information and pause for thought. It is possible that the CEOL definition of equity is different to IFRS/GAAP - for example if it excludes accumulated losses then CTL get there, but to state that the audited (IFRS) financial statements show this is factually incorrect, hence a diligent investor (such as @TheLord) raises this kind of question. "Trust me" does not usually end well as an investment strategy - As a former investment banker, private equity executive and qualified CA I would respectfully suggest you apply a little more rigour in your investment analyses and DYOR

Good to see the CEOL submission going in but am struggling to see how they could show the minimum necessary $30mio of equity over the last two years, when their audited accounts show that they were less than that (£17.3mio FY22; £19.8 FY23). Curious if anyone here has tracked any previous commentary on that - otherwise worth raising this afternoon.

Yes, impressive results indeed, and particularly key to come out with the statements around the NI/NLW increase impact and still targeting a mid/high single figure profit increase in 'FY 26. Thats been the biggest bugbear for retail this season so very smart of them to address this. As for "what to spend the money on", a ~5% div yield is already way up there, so reducing debt and/or making more smart acquisitions like Garven would suit me just fine.

Guys, cant you all just ignore/ filter out Roxi. There are some decent and informed commenters on here but its a little wearing to see conversations side tracked for his benefit. As the Americans say, "you cant fix stoopid".

Anyway, back to the subject, I do find it slightly curious that the SP has shown no upward response to the commissioning and handover of Akatara. As mentioned elsewhere Im guessing that there is going to be a probationary period for the new management team proving that JSE can be run on a screw-up free basis for at least a few quarters and start reducing the debt levels. I think it was quite telling that PB's departure was fairly abrupt and that there was an immediate announcement of a COO appointment, all of which makes me sense that PB had been an obstacle for quite some time and the BOD finally had enough. I do think that there are some decent assets in here with attractive local premium pricing but the history of delays and screwups has jaded the market in an already out of favour sector so there needs to be a demonstrable execution turnaround with new management if we're going to see the SP get back into the 30's at some point.

@Mr Picky: Fair assessment. I dont blame VLX for "trying it on" and they certainly have a better execution track record in roll-ups. Im certainly unimpressed by the BoD simply stonewalling offers when they have not yet come up with any credible turn around from the "turns out we've screwed up in the US" announcement a few months back - I felt that the recent update announcement was disappointingly opaque which raises serious questions about their ability to manage the ship and it does feel to me that TT should be in play since I cant refute VLX's comments about the mismanagement (even if it was self serving)

Indeed - VLX are sitting on 10% of TTG stock (plus another 4% in derivatives, but I assume that will unwind) which was a reason I felt they would be pursuing this fairly hard, though kudos to them for refusing to overpay. I suspect they will will play a longish game on this one, and if TTG management does not succeed in turning around the US mess (plus the need for component sales to recover) will find institutional shareholders back on the phone. Need to keep an eye on TR1's going forward to see if VLX starts divesting or not, as that will be the biggest clue to their longer term views on this.

Very smart move with a wholesale acquisition - avoids the US retail graveyard for UK retailers . Positive RNS re the cost management though not what i would call over informative - still the market likes it all, as it should

I think they have a fundamentally decent business, but there's still a lot of Covid noise needs to be scrubbed out of the numbers to get a clear understanding of their trajectory. The excessive profits from the high value vehicle sales has been well flagged for quite some time and am glad they finally started carving those disposal revenues out of the underlying revenue numbers for the first time (though bizarrely, they dont carve the profit out of the underlying EBIT, and Id have resigned if I were the CFO...) The rental margin was also boosted from 13-13.6% pre Covid to over 16% and is now declining - which they did not draw attention to before and has a way to go still as vehicle supply stabilises. The claims and service business also now seems to be slowing down from its previous double digit growth, though still moving at a healthy 6% clip.

In short, a decent basic business, but its numbers and forecasts need a sanity check to bring them back down to earth. My sense of fair value here is around the £3-3.20 mark and suspect it may drift down there in the coming weeks. AS always, DYOR

Core rental EBIT margin is down by 1% YoY when it was only forecast to fall by perhaps 10 bps, and growth in both rental and claims a lot softer than consensus, so not surprising at the SP puking at this (and the CFO leaving). Have a small position and was looking to potentially accumulate on weakness, but looking at these results, am standing well back. Am particularly unimpressed that the CEO says "everything is great" and makes zero comment on the rental margin softness.

Correct. Weirdly, I was travelling on Friday (Doh!) so could only access on my phone and could have sworn I saw a VLX statement reported that they had dropped the bid. Did anyone else see it or did I perhaps misread TTG rejecting it?

Thanks Bahveen, appreciated. Agree that they need to remain cautious on price rises (including next year)as their relatively low pricing is one of their key USP's, which means they need to be clever with product mix and offering , plus partnerships to keep the top line moving. 180 as an exit price is indeed punchy and I wouldnt be shooting for that. I was in CARD at 90p and exited nicely at 127 when I thought the share price was getting ahead of itself (not at 140 but you can never time these things perfectly!) I came in again just under 100p so its painful at the moment, but like you Im wary of increasing exposure further - especially if Im not confident they can deliver the cost savings required to hit the forecasts. Good luck to us all, I guess

Ah - thanks. I missed that detail and agree it does change the colour of the announcement as that means he's likely to be around through the US reconfiguration. Agree that the lack of a significant insider buy is not a good look, but as I noted, this looks like a long haul fix in the US where they are still only in the planning stages, so suspect you arent going to see an insider buy until they really are confident they have a handle on this

Yes, this is a bit of a non update some of the detail they've put into the US site issues and rectification steps as the September update was woefully opaque on this, but given that they now only have the plan in place after two+ months, its clearly a long haul process which creates the risk of losing customer confidence and therefore sales - unclear to me whether the strengthening order book/ backlog is due to market demand or their own inability to produce. Also not a good sign that Hoad (CFO) is leaving at a time like this. Am now thinking Blackrock may be right to reduce