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Hello Pianista,

I completely agree that the RNS doesn't preclude the possibility of an imminent bid, but I can see no reason why Virgin would issue it if they were on the verge of making one.

To your wider point - we might assume others are interested and even speculate as to who they are are and their levels of interest. But to date only Virgin have declared. Why not the others?

Frankly, I have absolutely no idea. but if you're open to some unsubstantiated guesswork I can offer one possibility.

Their strategy is :

- if they exist, let virgin to show their hand firs and respond with what they think is a more attractive offer once they know what they are up against;

- if they don't exist, no harm in letting Virgin think they might so a rival and competitor offers more than they would if they thought they had an uncontested run.

I'm not claiming that any of this is the case, only that it strikes me as plausible. In all good faith and with a completly open mind I'm happy to discard the idea if there's a better explanation.

I'm with you.

We all too often overlook the people, but even putting that to one side for a moment I think there are good investment reasons for option 2 being preferable.

There is a growing appreciation that Flybe is not at risk and likely to return to demonstrable profitability over the coming year. As they do the rewards for shareholders are, in my opinion,likely to be greater than a sale in the short term. Some form of mutually beneficial strategic alliance would potentially accelerate that process quite markedly.

I disagree with those who think that the recent RNS signals the imminent arrival of a bid. On the contrary. In the absence of a time limit, if a bid were that close Virgin would have simply waited for another couple of days and moved straight to offer.

Welcome thought it was I believe the purpose of the RNS was to do no more than prepare people for a long wait for any meaningful news.

Not everyone will agree, but for those who do I will share a question I have in my mind. What is being planned/negotiated that requires such an unusually long period to formulate. Two possibilities to get the ball rolling :

1. virgin wish to bid but the offer will be more complex than cash only one with perhaps cash, shares and some other enticement(s) and they are having to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the BOD a simple monetary equivalence of the hybrid package.

2. they aren't actually thinking of a bid at all but closer cooperation, and exploring the difficult question of what and how each organisation could and would need to do to maximise the benefits to both.

Disagree strongly. Certainly not 25p max....... but open to persuasion if you have an logical argument with a little more substance than "Virgin have all the leverage".

Hello Mayfield, good points. it is all about timing and balance.

At the moment I don't know what if anything the BOD could and should say in an RNS, even if they wanted to release one. To confirm that discussions with with V are ongoing adds nothing. Equally, they can't name other parties they might be talking with without their consent, and the fact that others haven't publicly announced their interest suggests to me that they wouldn't offer it. Conversely, to reveal that there are no other parties would weaken the BOD's negotiating hand and invite V to bid lower than they might otherwise have planned to. Tricky.

An interesting exchange of opinions.

could indeed be an attempt to flush out more info, but I really hope the BOD resist the temptation to say anything they absolutely don't have to. Uncertainty favours us in the negotiation, clarification V. Since V's update introduces no new info. into the public domain I see no need for the BOD to reciprocate with an RNS of their own. I hope they don't

End of jan doesn't sound unreasonable for discussions to conclude and any possible bid to be tabled. BOD will need to consider, and If there's anything to take to a shareholders vote, add a month.

It's been suggested, that others might be interested. But there have't yet been any public statements.

So my suspicion is (if they exist) other potential bidder(s) are entirely happy for V. to set the pace - perhaps intending to play their hand(s) after V. have declared/during any shareholder vote. Late intervention would extend the period of uncertainty further, i.e. well into March if not next FY.

mayfield - yes, perhaps any of these or more. But my guess is more mundane.

The update adds nothing new. If talks had ceased for whatever reason (good or bad) we would have had an RNS.
We haven't and so it is clear they are ongoing, which is all this says.

Personally, I think it is doing no more telling everyone they aren't going to see anything soon. Probably thought worthwhile because of the looming Christmas and New Year breaks. just a way of helping to keep SP stable over what might otherwise have degenerated into a volatile period.

Absolutely. There is that.

But i don't think that others would be rushed into bidding before they are ready. And I don't know how you can make a decision on whether or not to accept the the first until any others are also on the table.

yes, potentially.

The RNS announcing Virgin's entry, discussed here earlier, contained an explicit exemption from any time constraint so even then they must have had in their mind the idea that it might run beyond mid-December.

....quite.

And the hand is less weak than it was a few weeks ago.

More investors are coming to the view that Flybe is not at risk of imminent collapse and it could return to profitability under its own steam with all that means for the SP (and likely future cost if they forgo the chance to strike a deal at a sensible bid in the coming weeks).

I suggest that you are quite wrong. There is risk and uncertainty on both sides which makes for a more sporting affair.

Thanks for the feedback. Reassuring words, and even now I still think it was a good buy at 1.26 as a long term hold which was my intention when I bought in.

Oddly, I see Corbyn as an great asset in the context of SPI. A future Labour government will place huge emphasis on highly visible public sector service delivery without too much regard to costs. The core NHS just doesn't have anything like the capacity to deliver the volume of procedures necessary to impact waiting times as public will have been led to expect....and it will be game on. It will be ideologically difficult for some members of the party to stomach, but at the end of the day they will have no choice other than to ramp up outsourcing (albeit with lots of smoke and mirrors to try and avoid allegations of privatisation).

I confess that I was hoping for when I bought in was simple, steady and respectable growth until the next election and strong pick up thereafter. Long term my hope is the same, but short term I was about as wrong as I could be, on just about every front! Hey ho. That's the way of it sometimes.

Thanks again! Appreciated.

I came in (in a modest way) at an average of around 126p which seems a long way off now given the long term broadly downward trajectory.....

MDC have their own woes and their SP there has declined more than I can easily explain. Perhaps their BOD have more on their minds than SPI at the moment, and think SPI is a matter which they can put on the back burner and come back to later and at a time of their choosing.

Whether that is true or not is perhaps a moot point.

At the moment MDC are the only ones linked to a possible takeover of SPI. But if the SPI SP continues to drop there is always the risk for them (and hope for us?) that SPI will appear on other people's radar; not those with an interest in SPI, MDC or even heathcare more generally. The pure opportunists.

If that happens MDC could find the acquisition of the rest SPI more difficult, costly and uncertain. Could be in their best interests to just get on with it and get it done before the sharks arrive for a possible feeding frenzy.

Wishful thinking maybe, but 1.03 must, surely, be dangerously close to drawing interest from others; and 1.0 could be a critical trigger point.

I'd welcome your thoughts.

both - thank you. Pianista for keeping peoples feet rooted in reality. BruceJames - first reference I've seen on this bb to such a possibility, so well done for introducing a genuinely new idea !

Maybe - but in my estimation :

- 30p would be wholly unsatisfactory to many and not likely to succeed (but that, of course, is a personal opinion) ;

- I think "virgin and a.n. other" are too professional and disciplined to respond until they have completed their analysis and due diligence to their own satisfaction and will not be driven to a premature decision. More likely that there will be a holding statement from whoever is concerned to say that they are formulating a bid and it will be hard to do other than wait ;

- more to the point, if Stobart know 30p is too low, as implied by your thought that someone else will come charging in higher, why would they bid at such a level, create space and deprive themselves of room for a counter bid?

Buys as sells? Yes, perhaps and this seems to cause a lot of people on this and other bbs angst.

But i'm not sure quite why. At the end of the day it is a single transaction that both parties are satisfied with. Buy/Sell is an arbitrary label, assigned algorithmically on the basis of a single simple rule, which adds little to my real understanding of the underlying motivations and likely future dynamics. I don't criticise those who want to make use of it, but if you'll forgive me I'll not and will put such concerns aside.

kind of you to say - sitting in the margins, reading and reflecting on the thoughts of people with greater knowledge and insight than me.

liamnicholas - well said.

Too much hysteria and unrealistic expectation of a sudden announcement.

I'm a very simple person with very naive understanding of many things. But it strikes me that anyone seriously contemplating a bid is contemplating spending the think end of perhaps £100m (a random guess, insert your own number as you feel the need to). They aren't going to do that at the drop of a hat. Just have to sit back, wait patiently and resist getting flustered over trivia and inconsequential niff-naff and trivia, or wobbles of a fraction of a penny. If you do that you might not be richer at 4:30pm today but you're certainly less likely to have an ulcer come monday morning!

If I could make such predictions with any accuracy and consistency I'd be a very rich person by now, and I'm not so by all means draw your own conclusions........

But my guess is in the absence of any significant news there will be a short term blip and then it will relatively quickly return to something much closer to 20p than 30p- stabilised to support and facilitate talks, and otherwise inexorable upward pressure being off-set by some Friday profit taking at the end of what has been a very good week.

Pianista, my thoughts were drifting in a similar direction earlier but you have expressed them more clearly than I could.

There seems to be a consensus view that Stobbart might like to bid but doesn't have deep enough pockets to challenge its rivals in an out-and-out bidding war.

But time might be their best (and only) friend. If they can table an offer ahead of their rivals that were in the right ball park they might just get support before others have even got to the starting blocks. We all have our own ideas about what an acceptable offer looks like but for my part a an early firm offer upwards of 50p could be hard to say no to if others fail to provide concrete reason(s) to wait. Higher than they proposed before but arguably a snip at the price. Less than that and I would hold on for others to do their thing(s).

Personally, I think the challenge for potential bidder(s) is less access to information from Flybe but more the difficult questions of identifying which parts of the acquisition to retain and integrate, which to dispose of etc. and from all of this calculate an offer price. You're right that there is a merry-go-round but I tentatively suggest Stobart went through much of this in detail in March and will 'only' have to update their recent and still largely relevant analysis. Others may have a higher mountain to climb.

I say this not because I think Stobart is the answer, but to make a more general point - it may be a more level playing field that depth of pockets alone might suggest........and therefore more interesting for us all