Member Info for Mando_

Small volume sell off from day traders profiteering from the lower prices of the last couple of days. Now touching the 200 moving average on the minute charts so expecting/hoping for a reversal now positive and another gap up this afternoon and tomorrow as we get closer to the trading update on Tuesday and shorts try to close.
GLA

Cheers AS1 & Poker
Like I said before. Having worked for major retailers for 18 years and for an Electronics brand for over 7 years, I know just how bad many retailer and supplier etail platforms actually are, despite massive amounts of investment. I truely believe MM has seen this gap in the market and got in first and has been massively forward thinking in his vertical integration strategies with the servers, security to ensure he can't be taken down (e.g. AWS pulling a plug).

Re the correlation vs causation thing, I really started picking up on that more following the great Jordan Peterson/Cathy Newman interview on channel 4 and how he was attacked for pointing out some truths. When you listen to the language used by politicians and the media to spin things it's used so frequently to spin a line. e.g. People in hospital with Covid, rather than people in hospital because of covid (which is currently about only 66% of the reported number)

@Bransonbull
Agree. I may have said before. There is a big difference between Causation and Correlation and the two are often mixed up or mis-used. Shark attacks and Icecream sales both increase at the beach around the same time, but those things correlate. You wouldn't say shark attacks increased after ice-cream sales increased. There is correlation, but the cause of the growth is that its warmer weather.

Same with the press and THG. Repeatedly saying the share price dropped after an investor presentation doesn't mean the investor presentation was the cause. It may just be a correlating factor. I believe it was chosen as the day for the short attack purposely so it could be mis-used to imply it was the cause of the share price drop, to cause more fear and further sell offs from retail investors. I fully believe there was a conspiracy here to push the share price down.

Going down the rabbit hole, it may just be clever investors pushing the price down and making money from the short trades, preparing to also make major profits on the price recovery. But it could be bigger. Ask who is at threat from a UK international etail platform with its own web servers, server security and payment systems that can be used by manufacturers direct, cutting out the middle man between brands and the consumer. The answer is major retail businesses like Walmart and etailers like of Amazon. Personally I fully believe there are a number of businesses and investors which may not want THG to succeed.

Until last year I worked for a major international electronics manufacturer/brand and had a lot to do with selling our products on the branded website, and it was horrific difficult to set up as an e-store and was a hugely loss making business. But the business globally was pushing for the investment and continued setup and push, even at a loss, due to the threat of over-reliance on Amazon for sales and the threat of a dying high street... Ingenuity I believe could be absolutely huge in the future for many many brands.

Remember most of the un-disclosed short positions were taken out prior to some of the drops over the last 3 months, plus at the top of the recent rally over Christmas where the price went up to £2.32, where the market would expect a pull back after such a quick rise in the share price. That pull back has now happened I believe.

We know Cube has reduced their short positions three times in the last 4 weeks.
https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareShortPositions.asp?shareprice=THG&share=Thg-Plc

What amazes me is how few retail investors it seems actually do their own research and just believe the media.
How many actually looked at the great Q3 results and watched the webinars which I thought were great, available freely on the THG website.
How many read the positive stories such as Matalan now using THG Ingenuity. How Homebase and Hotel Chocolat are doing really well off the back of THG Ingenuity. How the Disney shop is using THG Ingenuity etc. How many searched LinkedIn posts themselves to see how positive staff are about the business and their personal Q4 results. How China Singles Day smashed targets in the first hour of trade. How Australia is smashing targets etc.
Then they may realise how undervalued THG is currently and how Matt Moulding is right about the stock being played to maximise profits for a few wealthy institutions.
I think we will gap up on the results next week.
GLA

Just had the exact same issue. Restarted my laptop as I thought it was just me.

I think I'd be pretty emotionally invested about the shorting if the company I built over 14 years was being targeted by modern day bank robbers.

Also if I had his body I'd be well pleased, but I don't think I could do the work for it. It takes dedication and commitment. Another thing to note about his character

@Hosai,
Agree, I think THG are probably one of the most open businesses I've come across. I see Matt and John as proud northerners and from everything I've seen of them in interviews they don't like cheats, they like to reward their staff, and they want to drive the business with a mentality of if you can't get what you want from the system, do it yourself cheaper.
They remind me of the north's version of Elon Musk. Like when Musk had supply issues of USB cables for Tesla's last month, he sent someone out to a load of shops to buy up all the cables they could. When he couldn't buy rockets at a fair price from Russia, he built them himself. THG have done this building Ingenuity, they bring manufacturing internal, they are bringing plastics manufacture internally integrated, they bought planes to manage logistics themselves cheaper. I like them

For me it's got so worrying I've now brought my wife in on discussing where were at with THG and looking at the risk/reward potential considering I'm sat on a load at £2.20.
She knows nothing but says even if it drops, stay with it and in 3 months it will be fine. Just clean up the kitchen.
Hopefully good advice...

Yes, I agree that a lot of the cost increases are baked in. MM did say they would try pass some of the pricing onto customers within legal limits of changing pricing in the Q3 web update (which I watched again the other night for comfort). This is where he also said about the autostore investment helping on their costs to offset.

Yeah, I noticed on MyProtein message boards someone mentioned the retail pricing had gone up but was still ok compared to other brands. MM commented previously there were increases in pricing generally which is hitting most markets but improvements with warehousing efficiency and reduced labour costs overall due to AutoStore would offset cost increases to an extent

Ah, just read your other post. You only have december figures, nothing over the last week. Thanks

Yeah, they could be. I'm just wondering though have the shares on loan reduced.

I'm getting the feeling there is another off-the-books volume going through today like happened on Friday when there was a 6.5m trade entered about 16:10 which had actually gone through earlier in the day.

@Pokerchips
Could you please share the latest Euroclear info please?

(Darktrace is another UK tech IPO)

Darktrace which has also been under attack by the shorts and media just gapped up 18% based on results

Matt Moulding commented about the property deals previously and they were all done pre-IPO, with investors informed pre-IPO, and with the information made public (hence why the Guardian can write a FUD piece about it so easily).
They were all to save THG on tax after advise from specialists, and MM advised he would give the profits to charity.
For me, this continues to show forward thinking of THG management. Like how they are buying a plastics recycling plant to have full control of their plastics in their packaging going forward and to improve their eco footprint, or buying planes to reduce their airfreight costs...

Has anyone got the latest Euroclear data? I can't get registered without a "company" email address

@Kando
Numis offered themselves to the FCA because they knew they were caught.
The FCA then went to THG.