The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring financial educator and author Jared Dillian has been released. Listen here.
Although rather dwarfed by the contract news, the trading update shows that the company have done a good job in maintaining a tight control on costs during what has been a really difficult time for the company.
It is going to be interesting to see where the price settles over the next few weeks.
This deal has been moving forward in the background for a while and explains the steep rebound in the share price during October/November from those clearly 'in the know'.
Given how little volume is required to move the share price there could be a good increase on this news.
They would not have lost 3.5M on swaps (cancelation fee in todays rns)
'In light of the change in the interest rate environment since completion, the Company has taken the decision to break the swap at a cost of £3.56m and replace it with an interest rate cap at a rate of 3.96%,'
They can try and put a positive spin on it, but they have essentially just 'lost'£3.5M since October because they did not refinance their debt earlier this year and refinanced at the height of the 'Truss's downturn'. This is around a third of their retained reserves at the end of the last financial year . It looks like they may also need to dip into them slightly to maintain the current divi for two years but with inflation at 10% it really needed to increase.
They are not alone, it is going to tough for REITs in a high interest, high inflation, recessionary environment.
I chased this up with both H&L and Hendersons.
In short H&L has to request that the registrar makes the payments electronically, I have been told that they are now going to do this so that there should not be a delay with future payments.
Yep, mine has just come through.
I was surprised at the 2028 date in the briefing report as I thought that the time scale stemming from for the REMA consultation was submissions by October, response next Spring with a view to implementation of any move from marginal pricing in 2025 (it came up in a Q&A at one of the UKW presentations earlier in the year).
If you look at some of the published submissions, the move from marginal pricing may not be that easy (or even the best route) but it is something that they are considering in the EU as well.
It may be that having viewed the submissions they realise it could not be achieved in the original timeframe.?
There is an article on this topic in IC, Stifel look to have set a higher threshold for the price though.
'Greencoat UK Wind (UKW) has yet to give a post Autumn Statement update but Stifel analysts calculate that its revenues should not be affected unless power prices fall below £120/MWh next year.'
Hopefully Greencoat will provide a more definitive clarification.
Although it has been lost in the noise around the windfall tax, I can see the government being keen to bring forward the proposals to disconnect electricity from gas pricing (they were originally looking at 2025). Until this issue is resolved and the pricing clarified it will continue to weigh on the sector.
If you have yet to receive the latest divi - then the delay is due to CTY sending the money to the share platforms by cheques, these have been held up in the post because of postal strikes.
Seems a rather archaic way of doing things!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-20/lone-pilots-flying-passenger-planes-solo-is-prospect-for-near-future?
(But it may be firewalled unless you're a subscriber)
From an article in Bloomberg. Hard to see that such legislation would not include DMS (PMS?).
'Airlines and regulators are pushing to have just one pilot in the ****pit of passenger jets instead of two. It would lower costs and ease pressure from crew shortages, but placing such responsibility on a single person at the controls is unsettling for some.
Over 40 countries including Germany, the UK and New Zealand have asked the United Nations body that sets aviation standards to help make single-pilot flights a safe reality. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has also been working with planemakers to determine how solo flights would operate and preparing rules to oversee them. EASA said such services could start in 2027.'
Excellent, thanks for that - I had been searching for it but it was not coming up with the searches.
Where was that released?
A lot of talk about energy security and renewables but then applies a 45% levy! The devil will be in the detail.
The statement was that the levy was on 'older' renewables so (sensibly) it will not be on the CFD income. Will this tax be deductible for investment (as for oil and gas producers) though?
Hopefully the company will issue an update for their prediction of the impact of these measures.
Increased capacity at existing sites is very positive as it implies that there is strong demand.
It also counters the point made about needing new content at the moment as the operators clearly believe that the existing content can continue to attract visitors.
There is an expectation that the nav will fall (already starting to see this), it is not expected to increase at least for the next year but probably longer (this applies to nearly all reits)
API's debt refinancing was awfully timed and so was expensive. The manager did say that the dividend cover was Ok this year, but the question is what it will be like going forward?
I have seen the point made that at the moment you may be better served holding the debt of reits rather than the trusts themselves.
I am still holding some of these but was not planning on adding until there is more clarity next year.
It's a fair point but they have developed the Gorilla Trek more recently.
Let's explore HBE still seems to be selling on Amazon and ebay (although this will be irrelevant once sold). The attractions are aimed mainly at children, and each year another new batch comes along...
I am sure they will be developing new experiences, but this year was all about getting the business on a sustainable financial footing.
It looks like they have opened a Gorilla Trek at Chester Zoo which I don't think has been rns'd . It looks container sized so 6-8 seats? which will be enough to push the over the 500 seats they expected to hit this year.