Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
To sell on news; everyone knows it and would expect to see some more optimistic movement in the coming days. Harbour are thowing off cash left, right and centre. A little divi here, a buy back there, 10% of a foreign oil field here, 15% there. Of course they don't want to rush into spending the money, but there will likely be some win wins somewhere in the world, or with some big player that wants to change for some other reason. you don't reduce net debt at the speed Harbour is without expecting to be debt free (at the current rate) in the next month or two. There must be some other use of the cash planned for.
It's been signalled very clearly where it might be spent (i.e. not in UK)
as the hedges expire and the percentage rises of income from abroad we'll start to see Harbour behaving more inline with other O&G firms
so we've lent out 83% of our deposits compared to 75% a year earlier; presumably a good thing
our total loans have increased by £582m compared to a year earlier; presumably a good thing
second Q in a row of profitability
A nice set of results; well done Metro
Big trading day and actually closed up 4%, no change really on the week, no change really on the month
Given the usual expectation of sell on news I think we might be in for a relief rally over the next few days.
115p anyone?
Anyone up for a Jingoistic weekend? What effect doest that have on the mood music
In other news I saw house prices were more stable (perhaps more relevant !)
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/uk-house-prices-recovery-rebound-mortgage-rate
GLA & DYOR
every day recently that we've bought back £1.6m of shares has now saved the company £53k
It may not sound like a lot, but add them up and each week is 1/4 million saved twice a year
perhaps that's the main benefit of using our own cash to cancel shares
and if you didn't sell, you've just won 9.4p or thereabouts.
nice one
anyone care to bet how long it will take to close the gap back to 289p ?
I'm going for 19th April.
I have seen it done in 2 days before though (which was unexpected)
One advantage we have over BATS for example is we'll be debt free in about 12 months. They will be carrying billions of the stuff and that's not so good with higher interest rates
I agree with you on returning cash by way of a dividend though. Just call it a special dividend so that it doesn't distrupt the nice graph showing gradual increases
Looking at last year these were May 30th, but that may have been a longer lag than normal. As such expecting some results a bit before then.
Sounds like we're probably growing a bit ahead of the market rate, low 10's % was it?
with plenty of room for over-achievement in due course
GLA DYOR etc
I was just going to say the same thing :-)
biggest day so far for buybacks I think with £1.6m spent
going great guns; and if you think this used to move between £3 and £3.30 quite recently with the occassional dip to 2.88 all of these recent buy backs are at relatively bargain prices.
Of course you may not all agree with the strategy, but mathmatically, and so long as there is a good rate of return that beats the company's own internal rate of return, then it's all good.
yep, operational EBITDA ahead of forecast at 124
debt below the 130-170 range at 110.
debt predicted to go up again to 180 next year as planned from purchases
margins improving
all looking very whoppery.
just need to decide whether it's more exciting to sleep knowing these results are set, than awaking not to know for the 7am RNS. Happy to see results like this anytime. Keep up the hard work S4ers :-)
£1.4m and £1.2m yesterday and today
4.7m shares traded yesterday and 4.1m today
anyone know what outer metric/ constraint Harbour are working to; e.g. up to a certain percentage of trade
If so, let's hope for a big trading day Thursday and we can buy back several million £ worth.
You make a fair point CP. To stretch the analogy, it's a bit like 100 people will inherit a house, but the owner is using some cash from under the bed to buy out 7 of your cousin's. So selling now is getting your inheritance early.
Your cousin's may be happy, but they don't realise the house is undervalued.
Stopping the analogy there, the FD will look at the internal rate of return on 200m and decide which project to back. Perhaps they can get 12% in the North sea, 17% in Indonesia, 16% in Mexico and in their judgement 40% from buying back and cancelling some shares, they might decide the relative amounts of money to put into each pot.
The return on capital employed will work its wonders over time.
Completely agree with you, this sounds like a judgement call to me.
just in case you're wondering how much $200m is in the current buy back. At today's sp ($2.64bn from Google) it's 7.575% of the company.
I know buy backs are universally derided, but the maths does work. Imagine 100 people owned your house and 7 of them popped their cloggs and left their share to the other 93; each of the 93 would now own 1.075% of the 100.
By Christmas that's what will have happened, as these shares are going into treasury to have their cloggs taken off.
let's just hope we're not one of the 7 eh.
just linking my last two posts together and will stop whittering now.
essentially we've completed about 0.38 of 1% of the buy back
let's keep these prices nice and low to see if we can get the 8th knocked off.
nothing to see later in the week. Move along now
just looking at the short positions I'd love to know if these are held as insurance against some wider portfolio, or if Taconic Capital Advisors (1.9% of the company's shares lent to them) or Capital Fund Management SA (0.88% of the company's shares lent to them) have a bearish view of Harbour.
https://www.shorttracker.co.uk/company/GB00BMBVGQ36/
I daresay that whilst some bottoms may be squeaking a little, they have sufficient profit in their position to allow a fair dolop of hubris to creep in. Just remember you've got to buy these back boys and girls.
have fun all (the above excluded), good luck and DYOR etc
or to put it another way nearly $10m or 5% of the current buy back programme. The short term me would like the sp to go boom, but the long term me says steady as she goes let's see how many shares we can get for our next $10m, and our next $10m and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m, and our next $10m
yes that was pasted 19 times :-) sorry, childish I know
Hi Barney,
I think fair to say that the company is in growth mode and market share acquisition at the moment. As such, making a profit is not one of the top priorities right now. Of course each individual piece of work done for a client at the margin would typically be priced appropriately to make a profit.
I would say there is a spectrum from one end with a company like Mars that never borrowed a cent and grew at a steady rate over the decades into what it is today, and at the other end a debt fuelled spendathon to build it and they'll come. If the later was a 10 and the former a 1, my 2c is that companies like twitter and other .coms are a 9 or 10 (and their profitable market may never materialise). I would say that S4 have always had a good eye on profitable work at the margin and perhaps started life with a strategy of 7 on the above scale. i.e. debt fuelled but realistic.
All of the above is to make one point; perhaps last year moved S4 from a 7 to a 6.5 on this scale. i.e. slow things down a little to catch breath and improve operational EBITDA, margins and reduce debt.
I think we all agree there is a fantastic business opportunity here to build out 1st party digital advertising models since Google banned the use of 3rd party cookies.
Sorry if all the above is obvious; it's just why I'm here. I was an early investor intially then sold out foolishly and missed all the fun. Not going to make that mistake again.
Here are a couple of points from the January RNS
"S4Capital plc (SFOR.L), the tech-led, new age/new era digital advertising, marketing and technology services company, today confirms that trading in the fourth quarter of 2022 was in line with expectations and therefore the Company anticipates delivering at least £120 million of Operational EBITDA for full year 2022.
The Company significantly improved Operational EBITDA margin performance in the second half with like-for-like gross profit/net revenue growth also in line with 25% guidance. As a result of improved liquidity, net debt is expected to be well towards the lower end of the guided range of £130-170 million."
That's all looking in the rear-view mirror. Of course what we really need is a chrystal ball to see the future.
Anyone got one?
Until Wednesday peeps
GLA and DYOR etc etc