Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Let's look on the bright side we are recovering slowly, due to the pandemic over the last 18 months Centrica have had to stop divi's and reign in the engineers, less income coming in means no divi payout which in the long term could be a good thing the first priority for Centrica is to cut debt which is nearly done the next priority is to grow the customer base this is where Centrica are still losing out to our competitors if dividends are restarted we will lose more customers because divi money now is being used to subsidize new customers, we will have to wait possibly another year for divi's to return, but look on the bright side in meantime the share price should go up.
Ken Murphy has a lot to learn coming from a none food retail business, the markets have no perception of charity in the business world of supermarkets people will always take what's considered free, ie being paid full wages while isolating or being given free food, he has to be complimented on this but Tesco is not the government they paid their business rates so charity should come from the government, not Tesco, yes they can build on the results from now on but I think perhaps he could take a leaf from the Coop CEO.
When we think of apprentices we think that training will be up to 6 years at least in my days we did , now we are looking at 18 months to 2 years I believe there is an additional 6 months for the new heating technologies hot air and hydrogen , the fact is that BG have lost so many customers that they don't need so many engineers now BG expects to expanding again in the near future these trainees will be ready.
Do not worry about the Daily Mail article they will always trash British Gas and then advertise their switching services to make commission they've been doing this for the last ten years ever since their paper circulation went down and they had to look for other ways to make revenue.
Sorry to dissolution you all, but until we know how many customers Centrica are still losing through these comparison sites, and until the strikes has come to its conclusion Centrica's share price will just bob along up one day and down the next, Centrica has to show that they have the will to beat the union and attract new customers without "buying them", all the time the engineers are holding Centrica to ransom they can't move forward, the idea of being a customer service company is a good one. (National grid has seen the future potential of selling power to the utility companies by buying Western power distribution), the future after fossil fuel will be electricity generated by green means as well as nuclear hence the reason Centrica is selling all their fossil fuel business this will take time 10 years plus to make a complete success of the changeover but until the engineers can see that striking is just hampering the business going forward Centrica's future could be in doubt. I personally no longer see this as an income share anymore but as a long term investment that will grow over time.
Chris O'Shea's piece in the FT proves that the GMB union doesn't understand how big business work, they would rather see the company fail than have a successful company flourish so that everybody will reap the benefits including the staff and shareholders, in today's world joe public are only interested in what price they pay for their energy the less the better in their eyes, this is why Centrica must reorganize BG to be able to compete with all the other energy companies out there. Did you know up two years ago anybody could have started an energy company from their back bedroom? and a lot did that's why so many went bust, in today's world where the British popalation is so diverse nobody cares whether it's a British company French or German if BG is perceived to be too expensive joe public will go elsewhere. If Centrica caves in against the GMB BG will be finished as simple as that.
What's driving the dip, what a silly question. Ever since that Buffon Miliband suggested to voters all those years ago that the where paying to much for their gas and electric to entice voters, it's been all down hill for BG, Nick suggested that customers like to have specific BG engineers, rubbish in todays world all people are interested in is how much they can save by switching hence the explosion of these comparison sites, the market knows this that's why the share price is so low. The union and engineers are doing so much damage to BG they will eventual destroy the company, if BG cannot compete with the minnows of this industry then who can the y compete with, prime example Ofgem gave the majority of the two failed energy companies customers to EDF a foreign company rather than entrust them to BG because they have no confidence in a company that's being held to ransom by the union and engineers, if the union and engineers cant see this then there is no hope for BG now and in the future.
Many of you here have no idea how a big profitable company is run and believe all the hype coming from other bloggers and the media, today and every day I get bombarded by
phone and internet to switch energy provider promising me a better deal than what BG can offer, you may say I'm silly but I'm loyal to BG as a shareholder, BG are still losing thousands of customers every month to the smaller energy companies, Centrica's last report said that the customer numbers were on par with the previous accounts report but they forgot to mention that they purchased 160000 customers from robin hood energy smoke and mirrors come to mind when I read these reports, the only way BG is going to compete with these smaller energy companies is by getting their cost base down which means redundancies and longer working hours for the engineers ok so Centrica sold Direct Energy which nearly wipes out their deficit but remember Centrica sold a profitable business which they no longer receive the profit generated until the strike has been sorted and we can compete with the smaller companies Centrica will stay in the 40 to 50p per share bracket for a long time.
Centrica needs to crush the strikers in Margret Thatcher fashion, Centrica needs to Survive and be a profitable company, they must be able to compete with the smaller energy companies by restructuring all their workers pay scales, the smaller power companies use contractors to do their gas servicing, etc which means they have a lot lower cost base, Centrica has no choice and I think we can all see this, even the engineers if they were honest with their selves they know that British Gas can not survive losing millions of customers every year to the minnows, it's my understanding that the basic pay of a British gas engineer is between £35,000 and £40,000 and with O/T and call out can earn up to £50,000 per annum depending on what part of the country they work in and the pension now is secure with the Direct Energy money, the unions should not use 2019 profits as a reason to strike in 2019 we had 1 million more customers and owned Direct Energy at the time these results where produced , I did hear some good news today that Morrisons are going to pay all their staff £10 per hour. ( think about it )
Beware of trading in Tesco shares if you want your shares included in the 51p per share special dividend, my understanding is that to be included in the spd you needed to have invested before a certain date it could before the sale was announced in September 2020 last year, I very much doubt that all this new money beimg invested in Tesco now will be allegeable for the SPD come June 2021.
Sorry to be a bearer of bad news there will be no dividends paid to shareholders until 2022, Centrica understand that to start paying a divi in 2021 will not solve the problem of dwindling domestic customer base, one way to do this is to use the income generated by Centrica to reduce customer power bills to grow the customer base, although no dividends will be paid until 2022 this will enhance the share price over next 2 years.
Don't give up yet on this share, people keep knocking BG to make money on their switching sites, prime example the Sunday mail today have an article regarding BG boiler cover ( the cost ) so that they can advertise their switching service to make money to cover the running of their site on the back of slagging BG, the reason why so many small energy companies are going bust is because the small companies have no other streams of income with the mild winter we've had so far they cannot generate enough income to pay for their green taxes and the cost of buying energy which has increased, at the end of the day only the well managed and larger companies will survive who ever in power.
Don't give up yet on this share, people keep knocking BG to make money on their switching sites, prime example the Sunday mail today have an article regarding BG boiler cover ( the cost ) so that they can advertise their switching service to make money to cover the running of their site on the back of slagging BG, the reason why so many small energy companies are going bust is because the small companies have no other streams of income with the mild winter we've had so far they cannot generate enough income to pay for their green taxes and the cost of buying energy which has increased, at the end of the day only the well managed and larger companies will survive who ever in power.