Member Info for JonnyGee

@Bhaveen: I recall you're the retail guy on here so would like to get your thoughts on this. At H1, the company stated it had a bunch of cost control measures in place/ were implementing them and as a result they were confident of achieving the full year numbers (£130mio EBITDA/£79mio EBIT per consensus off £544 of forecast sales). I dug into the H1 numbers and dynamics, and though there was reasonable top line growth and their product margin seemed pretty solid they really did lose it on the wage costs, and to a lesser volume on the other direct expenses line, which were up £11mio/21% and £3mio/33% respectively for H1 (opex they seem to have kept under control).

The conundrum Im dealing is that in order for them to actually hit the numbers without pushing up their sales prices (and my read was that this is really not something they want to do) if one assumes the same % increases in H2 in wages and other costs as in H1 they are going to have to lose around £20mio of costs in H2 vis a vis that H1 cost increase, which is about 20% of those cost lines - i.e. a LOT. My question to you is, in your experience, is that even vaguely achievable or are we looking at another big earnings miss? Asking since the price has really dropped and its tempting to top up, but I have an uneasy feeling the market has figured out that there is no way they can do this, and priced it in. I realise you obviously cant know everything they are working on but Ive been involved in retail businesses myself and though Ive seen double digit cuts achieved, this just seems too optimistic and wanted to sanity check with someone else who has been in the space.

Interesting H1 update and set a somewhat better tone after the October 31 S*** show. H1 rev down 5.2%, of which 3.3% a result of discontinued business so ~2% lfl decline, with a 1% increase in adjusted EBIT due to a decent 130bp YoY increase in margin. Interesting to see their comments on H2 25 and 26, where they see Workday products continuing to steam ahead, Digital services slightly declining H2 then flat in 26 and Workday services flat for H2 and '26. Running those numbers with the updated margins tells me they are likely to achieve FY25 eps in the ballpark of FY 24, which means the analysts slashed their forecasts too aggressively - no surprise that todays SP jump puts it back where it was on October 30. They are still sounding fairly cautious around government and NHS expenditure for next year, but hopefully Workday products will continue to drive growth, and they may then benefit medium longer term when Govt/NHS digitisation contracts start flowing through.

I get the divi ramp up , but a 30p bounce for a 9p divi doesnt really compute. But what the heck do I know ...

What a bizarre SP bounce today. They formally publish the financial statements with no numbers or info that wasnt already disclosed (they already posted audited numbers last week)and the SP jumps 8% . Am I missing some info thats come out?

@SEA7: sort of yes and no re the RNS. The good news I suppose is that there are no further downward revisions (so far) on FY24 production arising from the Akatara non commissioning and I appreciate the info re peak volumes. I am however concerned at the continuing delay on full commissioning and handover as it implies ongoing issues and therefore uncertainty. I would also imagine it puts the additional Akatara contract discussions on ice for the timebeing, which would be nice to progress. Not really surprised the SP didnt really move with this RNS (even though I tend to agree the tone is slightly positive on balance)

@Nakedtraitor. Indeed, Ive been looking out for this too (I also got the sense there may be a bit more news about the cost management measures). Im guessing the US transaction is moving sideways/delayed and they dont want to announce anything until its locked in. Am getting slightly concerned on this as no news in this regard typically means bad news - though they may also be scrambling with the post Budget fallout and need to work through that as well before coming out with any announcements/ communications

Anyone got any idea why the price just crashed 9% today?

Well expressed. As Mr Picky noted earlier, this is now a purely speculative stock which could be worth zero or double over the coming months. I entered a very small speculative position in the last few days, but its pure toss-of-the-coin stuff

Guys, forget the conspiracy theories and shorters (immaterial, as already commented). YOU got hammered the last few days because of IPSOS' profit warning last week which tanked IPS shares 15% and has been reading across to YOU - same as happened when IPS gave a profit warning earlier this year. IPS is the 10,000lb gorilla in this space with 7x YOU's revenues and much deeper reach and understanding of the end market, so if they're struggling with revenue growth, the market reads that across to any comps including to YOU. It also doesnt help that YOU continues to trade at twice IPSO's multiple despite having only a couple more points of organic growth.

Thanks - very helpful and that explains the delay in news of getting the plant handover completed. Smells like sometime in mid/late November now I guess which probably means slightly lower '24 production numbers again, though at this point not sure how material that will be. The drop in Brent is probably having more of an impact.

@Mr Picky. Thanks for the colour. I saw the price drop and started looking at SMIN. Share price and adjusted eps has hardly moved over the last 5 years (apart from the occasional dip, with FY24 finally breaking the £1 barrier), so not seeing a core growth trend here (and that is doubtless after numerous acquisitions, which may even imply lfl decline) so cant really get excited.

@jono. No, I dont think he would be throwing that away either. If you do the math, £150k represents around a third of his annual after tax cash comp (assuming he pays Singaporean tax), which doesnt leave him poor, but I rather doubt he'd be risking that kind of relative amount unless he thought it was a good bet.

Mate, don't feed the trolls. Sad George is clearly not taking his meds so just filter him out.

Hi guys, I seem to remember someone commenting here that CARD had said on their 24 Sep call they would provide an update in the next 6(?) weeks or so on their cost progress and the US. I cant find that comment now, but did anyone pick up on this and confirm when they indicated this might happen so I (we) can track that?

Agreed. Huge expectations / pressure for them now to deliver on the Xmas/ full year numbers. If they miss them I think its going to be a s***show on the SP and heads really will/should roll. Am frankly a bit surprised that the new Aussie shareholder has no-one on the board as that would give me (and I suspect quite a few investors) some additional comfort and I feel the announcement of his stake was a catalyst for the SP for that reason.

@Mr Picky. Given the Blackrock TR1's, looks like you called that right. Given the slightly upward SP movement of the last day or so, Im hoping they've done trimming, but we'll see.

Thank you KS and Bistable. This sort of direct feedback is invaluable and gives us all a clearer sense of what is going on as well as how management talks about them, which is very important, so much appreciated.

@HelloDave. Really curious where those trade volume numbers come from. LSE (as in the actual LSE exchange) shows nothing like that - in fact total volume for yesterday is showing on the LSE at ~800k in total, of which I see there were 5 institutional trades in the 125-200k mark. Even Yahoo is showing yesterdays total at only 1.5mio, though why it should differ from the actual exchange info beats me.

Ah - thanks for the clarification on Hoad/ Tyson. Yes, I think France's feet are now definitely being held to the fire to perform after this and he needs to come up with some clear direction and answers or this could get very ugly for shareholders.

OK - fair point. Still wish they'd get a proper COO though!