Member Info for LLucan

They are in the bidding to buy part of citibank, asian division. The CEO is quite useless and cannot get any sort of return on the exisitng biusiness so an aquisition is fillling iinvestors with fear. Bill Winters needs to go. Wrong man for the job.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-did-petrofac-share-price-115151682.html

The results are out sometime in April. As far as I know no exact date has been specified. Everyone knows thay will be bad, it is the confirmed orders and the potential we are all betting on.

The directors of petrofac do not give a Flying XXXX about the shorts. It would only be an issue if they needed to do a rights issue. Shareholders should be happy about shorts since they drive the price down so that others can buy cheaply. If it was not for the shorters no one could have bought petrofac at £1.05. IMHO it time the SFO will die a death, the contracts will start flowing and divis will be paid. Where will the shorters be then. This share will fly just maybe not this year.

Like you I am positive about the long term furture but there are going to be more ups and downs.
An awful lot of funds are shorting this stock. You have to question why? Obviously they expect the price to fall.

I suspect the shorts are holding on and are banking on bad Y/E results to be announced in April.
Without fail a company changing the CEO reports flat or deflated results. There is a big clear out which can be explained away. I do not expect Petrofac to be any different. The important figure will be the "confirmed orders".

Do not agree with this.
M&G are up 5% today on the back of an increased dividend and good results.
SLA are down because the results are bad and the dividend has been cut.
For the last 5 years this has beena badly run company.
There is no gurantee and so far no evidence that things will improve.

The trouble is that the Revenue and profits have been contracting for 5 years. It is possible the dividend will be cut again next year. Or as they say "Re-based lower". Until revenue starts to increase which is off the back of assets under manasgement, you have a company which is getting smaller. Contrast SLA with M&G and a blind beggar can see that M&G is the better company. SLA needs to be taken over. It got too big too many employees on high salaries and no one with any balls to crack the whip. Even now the report today comes up with excuses and promises and the same old hashed line of "lets invest in the far east".

HSBC will start to pay a dividend next year which will help. In the 3 to 10 year time frame I would say it is a good buy. It will increase its divi and profits which obviously underpin the value.
In the short term it is subject to the UK USA China realtionship and threats. Ultimately I suspect HSBC will be forced to reloctae to Singapore, which would be no bad thing. Closely followed by Standard Chartered.
Personally I would rather be invested in the far East than the USA, UK, Europe.
If you can hold for 5 years I believe it will reward you. Shares always fall faster than they rise.
Fundamentals are still very good.

GameStop: Reddit users claim victory as $13bn hedge fund closes position, accepting huge losses.
A $13bn hedge fund has been left with huge losses after an army of amateur investors coordinating via social media pumped up the price of video game retailer GameStop tenfold in just a few weeks.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-reddit-users-claim-victory-154801984.html

Absolutely right Pokerchips. The only valuable data is violume.

Personally I do not think it will have much affect either way.
The investigation has been going on for so long, the SFO has hundreds of ongoing investigations.
It is not like the SFO closing the investigation is going to result in billions of pounds of orders. I do not see investors sitting on the sidelines waiting for the SFO to close the investigation before investing. Where will the demand for the shares come from to drive the price higher?

UK Supreme Court to decide on SFO’s extraterritorial powers

https://hsfnotes.com/fsrandcorpcrime/2020/10/14/uk-supreme-court-to-decide-on-sfos-extraterritorial-powers/

https://www.sfo.gov.uk/cases/unaoil/

2 found guilty 1 not.
https://yournews.com/2020/07/13/1728643/former-unaoil-managers-convicted-in-britain-of-iraq-bribery/

Couple of defendants are ill so are staying away.
Other than that it seems the jury is currently considering the evidence:
https://www.law360.co.uk/articles/1273069

The case resumed last month at the Old Bailey Court Number 1, bit ominous.
https://old-bailey.com/2020/06/25/whats-on-at-the-old-bailey-june-26-2/
I suspect that it will wrap up within the next 2 weeks.
The outcome will likely have an affect on the PFC share price.

What I think was dumb on SLA part was the capital distribution about 18 months ago.
It was expensive to do and I would have far rather they had reduced the share capital by £1.5 billion

I am not sure you are entirely correct on this.
If a share is deemed to be undervalued then it makes perfect sense for a company to buy back its shares.
It takes the pressure off having to generate so much profit to pay such a large dividend in the future.
It is a better use of money to buy back shares when valuations are deemed to be low.
SLA:
It needs to generate 500 million appox to pay the 21p divi.
If it can reduce the share capital at bargain prices it has the potential to lead to an increase in the divi.

Exactly Pokerchips. Take the 30p a year divi which does not seem to be at risk. Sit it out until sentiment to oil and oil companies improves.