Member Info for Magog

Premier's product portfolio is still predominantly winter / cold weather centric (though gradually changing). RHM before them and now Premier always hire early-ish in the year to train staff up to produce their Xmas related products from July onwards (mince pies form the bulk but there are plenty of other Xmas-themed products in the range too). 'Twas ever thus.

Good question Consultgreg - personally, I don't know enough to answer your question knowledgably. I am of the older generation but quite a small PI so I don't depend on Dividends - I'm in here as an ex-RHM'er and just keeping an eye on how my old chums are doing.

I'm right with you Kallumama - steer clear of dividends for the foreseeable future and plough everything we can into debt and liability reduction, growth / NPD (and, dare I say it, the RIGHT acquisitions). GLA.

Kallumama - whilst I agree with you that debt reduction (and pension rationalisation) are permanent improvements and will be of huge financial benefit going forward, I have to wonder about your comment “... proven business model for the Post Covid: new normal”. You seem to imply that Premier does have one of those models. Do they? Agreed, they'll be on a far better financial footing than they have been for years. However, without far more seasonal-independent NPD in the pipeline (or, God forbid, good-fitting acquisitions) – and, fingers crossed, a seriously cold winter (that historically have always been good for RHM / Premier), I honestly can't see what's in 'the model' that is going to guarantee a different long-term future for this company – beyond the one-off beneficial hit that Covid is going to have provided by the time it's done with us. I genuinely hope I'm wrong but “bumping along the bottom” sums up my gloomy outlook for Premier. (My foreboding about acquisitions is rooted in being a surviving member of RHM when Schofield made multi-millionaires out of the RHM Board by paying such a ridiculous price for RHM and nearly driving Premier into the ground in his obsessive drive to make Premier 'the biggest'.)

Try telling that to Jerry Falwell Jr. ....

£17 for a curry? Without rice?? You really do need to see a hike in the SP if you have to pay those prices. You could buy the whole restaurant for not much more than that in Bradford.

You're absolutely right, Dogger, it's not just Covid - but I've been around RHM and Premier long enough to have seen good news send the share price through the floor, so wouldn't necessarily have been surprised to see the same thing happen again this time around. That said, there does seem to be a distinctly different and generally more positive air about things now - let's hope the overall impact of all the different elements has given us a sustainable improvement this time.

Yes, it's sadly the case that during the years when 'things' generally have been ok, Premier's share price has struggled - and sometimes plummeted for no apparent reason. The moment something like Covid has a dramatic impact on society, we soar like the proverbial eagle. (Let's hope that's not the kiss of death.)

As of the middle of this year there were reckoned to be about 68million people in the UK ; as of today there have been 45,759 deaths in the UK from Covid 19 - that means approximately 1/15th of 1% of the UK population have died from Covid (or related illnesses - depends on who you take your stats from).

If you regard the workforce of Premier to be a fairly typical cross-section of the UK community, then that really is a tiny percentage of Premier pensioners that will fall off their perches as a result of Covid. Is that actually going to materially decrease the pension liabilities of the various funds?

If you believe the article in The Times, at least "... the load of rubbish." generated double-digit growth. How many other marketing initiatives over the years have failed to deliver any growth at all?

In the not too distant past, the Board began a push (including marketing, especially of Hovis where they made great play of the '100% British wheat' claim) to consolidate as much of the supply chain as possible in the UK. However, when you think about products like Sharwood (requiring spices and other 'exotic' ingredients) and the fact that we in the UK can't always guarantee a successful wheat harvest (requiring substantial imports of things like Canadian wheat), the ideal scenario simply can't be guaranteed, so the initiative slowly died a death - certainly in terms of its impact on daily life across the company. That said, I don't know where the percentage currently stands but if it is around 90% (a now outdated figure I would imagine), it's not too bad.

Hi Kallumama - whether you want it or not ;-) here's the view from Pret today ........ was as busy as it could be with social distancing measures in place. Visited twice, an hour apart - about 20 places at tables available and most were in use, with some standing waiting for take-outs and a long queue at the tills. I've held PFD shares for far longer than I care to think about and in that time have seen the SP plummet on good news and rise for no apparent reason at all. So I've now given up trying to predict where the thing will go next. Just in it for the long haul and don't know anything like enough about the markets to make predictions based on a whole variety of changing factors such as sales, product mix, potential for NPD, international potential, state of market, state of society in a pandemic and whether / if things will ever get back to normal (whatever that may be). But I do enjoy reading what you more knowledgeable members post, so keep it coming. Don't know if I'll ever buy / sell based on what you guys say - but there's never a dull moment.

As per request for more feedback on Pret - will be in Manchester tomorrow and will visit Pret on Cross Street (their main outlet in Manc. I believe), then feed back.

As an ex-RHM employee who survived the buyout by Premier, and then retired from Premier, I'm a long-term holder who's desperate to get SOME bl**dy money back out of the company. Whether that's by waiting for some kind of dividend or waiting until the SP bounces back to somewhere near my average (or until the desert sands freeze over and the camels come skating home) then selling . Good luck to all long-termers and those with a genuine interest in these shares.

One (and only one - there are many others) reason why we're stuck in the doldrums is because there's a great, gaping hole in our product portfolio where summer sales should lie. Angel Delight and Ambrosia barely scratch the surface of the opportunities available to the kind of year-round product range that we desperately need to have - but which we're unable to either develop or 'buy in' because we're woefully short of the cash needed to do so. I'll refrain from apportioning the blame for that scenario as there are plenty of others on this forum ready, willing and able to do that better than me.

My overwhelming impression of this share is of option 2 - bottom bumping. We seem to have a false dawn every few weeks where a flurry of activity perceived as potentially good / bad / indifferent gets PFD watchers excited and then as reality bites, everything goes back to the status quo of sheer unadulterated blandness. I wish to God SOMETHING / anything would happen to put us all out of misery one way or another. However, I fear it's only a question of time before the next weather-related profit warning gets the usual suspects frothing at the mouth (egged on by their respective antagonists), with the usual promise of jam tomorrow when the winter provides a brief sales target respite - then back to the doldrums again.

It's only funny if it's not true ………..

I'm thinking of opening a book :

* Gradual sell-off of crown jewels, starting with Batchelors then Cake,
resulting in eventual casting adrift of remaining 'businesses' : Evens

* Premier continues to bump along the bottom until Hell freezes over
(providing us all with interminable opportunities to moan about the
BOD and prove how bad we are at predicting share movements) : 2 / 1

* CEO and FD prosecuted by FCA : 3 / 1

* Multi-national business buys Premier lock, stock and pension deficit : 100 / 1

* CEO and FD turn Premier around and we all skip off into the sunset
living happily ever after on our Dividend payments : not enough zeroes on my computer

Whilst the SP hike is a welcome respite, we all need to hope for a really, REALLY bad winter. I've lost count of the number of disappointing trading updates in Feb / Mar / Apr that blamed unusually mild winter weather for poor trading figures - Christmas notwithstanding. The company is making some inroads into winter-related foods but it needs to do much more to iron out the massive trading spikes it experiences at Christmas and Easter if it's to have a portfolio that sells consistently all year round.