Member Info for Monkshood

I am not trying to 'deramp' - but you asked why it may not be responding as some other travel shares.
Nex has a much larger exposure to the US and although they are less likely to lock down than European countries they also have a much lower vaccination rate coupled with a relatively low previous infection rate. They have many vaccinated with a single dose of JJ which is clearly going to be fairly inadequate when dealing with Omicron.

Do you not read the Company Reports?
From Year end-'As the second wave of Covid-19 cases hit in July, we saw significant delays to the school start back, with only 26% of schools returning fully. Whilst we have secured significant revenue from customers where services have not operated, this has resulted in a decline in revenue of 29% for the year.'
From the September update 'In total, we currently have agreements in place across school bus contracts that secures nearly 70% of our pre-Covid 19 revenue. We expect this figure to increase as we reach more agreements with customers in the coming weeks' They indicated that this had risen to 80% in the November update.
From the Half Year Report 'Significantly reduced summer school and charter work.' Clearly the former is not an issue but they do provided charters to schools for inter school sports etc.
Also -· 'In Shuttle, our very strong relations with customers gives us confidence that similar levels of revenue will be secured until the end of Q3. After this, revenue is more dependent on office return, with some employers looking to move to on-demand services.'

Yes- 9 of them purchased shares.
Not sure why they did not do it when they were <520, but that is a pretty bullish batch of purchases

Not that this share price every seems to follow such logic- but school closures due to covid US are picking up in the US.
Nex will also be permanently closing their commuter services to London from Medway (Kings Ferries) after Christmas so numbers on some coach services are still clearly under pressure.
Financially it was reasonably resilient to such things last winter but closures in the US did have an impact.

Make that a week for the 'dust to settle',
The II's have now had time to cast their eye over the deal and look to have pressed the buy button. Quite a strong rise for a day when the market had a big drop.

For those that state the modelling does not take into account the potential for differences in virulence this is not correct.
From the minutes of the SPI-M-O meeting on the 8th -
'One group estimates that, to prevent waves of hospitalisations of a similar scale to those seen in Spring 2020 and January 2021 without the need to slow growth, the severity of omicron would need to be between 10% and 30% of delta. There currently remains no strong evidence that omicron infections are either more or less severe than delta infections. It will take several weeks (four to six, subject to any disruption to data streams over the festive period) for this evidence to accrue'

This is the latest data from Gauteng - much better than for the first waves but it is still putting people into hospital .
24th Nov
Admitted 626, ICU 53, ventilated 20, oxygenated 83 admissions previous day 39.
7th Dec
Admitted 1539, ICU 120, ventilated 29, oxygenated 233 admissions previous day 56.
10th Dec
Admitted 2306, ICU 210, ventilated 68, oxygenated 293 admissions previous day 207.
11th
Admitted 2562, ICU 210, ventilated 72, oxygenated 359 admissions previous day 64.
12th
Admitted 2593, ICU 222, ventilated 75, oxygenated 366 admissions previous day 37
13th
Admitted 2685, ICU 230, ventilated 83, oxygenated 396 admissions previous day 128
14th
Admitted 2975, ICU 244, ventilated 87, oxygenated 425 admissions previous day 161
15th
Admitted 3086, ICU 255, ventilated 87, oxygenated 424 admissions previous day 199
16th
Admitted 3168, ICU 258, ventilated 90, oxygenated 564 admissions previous day 90

From- Sentinel-Hospital-Surveillance-report (S.Africa NICD)

Source for S. Africa was Bloomberg. Excess deaths for the UK are published towards the end of the week surveillance reports. (pg 74)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1041447/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w50.pdf

It is also too early to call severity in the UK . First study out by Imperial today.
The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection. However, hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/modelling-suggests-rapid-spread-omicron-england/

You are not capturing the true numbers in your '758 deaths this month'
Weekly excess deaths in South Africa, a measure of mortality compared with a historical average, rose both nationally and in the province of Gauteng as the omicron coronavirus variant continued to spread.
Nationally there were 1,887 excess deaths in the week ended Dec. 5 compared with 1,726 the week earlier, according to a report issued by the South African Medical Research Council on Wednesday.

Excess deaths are seen as a more accurate way of measuring the impact of Covid-19. In South Africa, since the start of the pandemic, there have been more than 277,000 excess deaths, compared with just over 90,000 official deaths

Thought that there may be interest in how they are doing this. Further details are in the report.
Ref-
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1042046/Technical_Briefing_32.pdf

Laboratory evaluation has currently been performed on 5 tests which are:
• Acon Flow Flex ‘self-test’
• Innova Biotime ‘self-test and professional use test’
• Orient Gene ‘self-test’
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Technical briefing 32
15
• SureScreen ‘professional use test’
• SureScreen ‘self-test’
The evaluation is performed using dilutions of cultured virus stock in Hanks Balanced Salt
Solution (HBSS) plus mucin with 5 samples at each dilution. The dilutions provide 3
concentrations of virus in the following ranges, >1,000,000, >100,000, >10,000 viral copies per
millilitre (ml). The Omicron variant was isolated from a primary clinical sample sourced in the UK
and confirmed as being Omicron by sequencing.
In summary, the LFDs evaluated, all of which target the nucleocapsid protein, have detected the
new Omicron variant that contains 4 amino acid changes from the original viral sequence. This
does not affect their performance in the laboratory setting and we will monitor further variant
changes as they arise as part of our ongoing evaluation programme

They said that they had 28K to sell in Q4, 3k sold in H1 so it fits (ish) with their 28k aggregate for full year.
Good to see the UVSAN starting to make a useful contribution to revenues.
They just need to tick over without too many lockdowns until the main season starts. At least they are in a much better position than this time last year.

JP Morgan has also reiterated its 700p target (which seems very bullish to me).
Clearly there will be some US holders in Terminix who will not/can not hold a UK listed company, also there will be some who hold both, this may be why there appears to have been more selling pressure in the afternoons (or is it that they are more aware of the past problems of Terminix?).
It will take a few weeks for the dust to settle then I am hoping for a rise into the final results at the start of March.

It certainly makes the bargain shares that were on offer on Tuesday see even better value ;o)

Whatever the markets think about the merger - the need for pest control is only going to increase as populations become more urban.
from BBC-
Everyone in New York has a similar story to tell, she explains. "We have a complete and utter rat explosion."
"You see them when you come out at night," agrees Deborah Gonzalez, who, like Diem, lives in Manhattan's Lower East Side. "When you walk on this block you see them running back and forth."
It is difficult to gauge precise numbers, but calls to New York City's complaints hotline mentioning rodents have jumped this year, 15% up on pre-pandemic levels.

Their M&A Director purchased 15K's worth at 559-
I wonder if this was by choice or if the other Directors made him do it as punishment......

There is a lot of talk about Omicron just being a 'cold.'
This is the latest data from Gauteng where it was first identified - five fold increase in ICU in three weeks. Could we cope with this?
24th Nov
Admitted 626, ICU 53, ventilated 20, oxygenated 83 admissions previous day 39.
7th Dec
Admitted 1539, ICU 120, ventilated 29, oxygenated 233 admissions previous day 56.
10th Dec
Admitted 2306, ICU 210, ventilated 68, oxygenated 293 admissions previous day 207.
11th
Admitted 2562, ICU 210, ventilated 72, oxygenated 359 admissions previous day 64.
12th
Admitted 2593, ICU 222, ventilated 75, oxygenated 366 admissions previous day 37
13th
Admitted 2685, ICU 230, ventilated 83, oxygenated 396 admissions previous day 128
14th Dec
Admitted 2975, ICU 244, ventilated 87, oxygenated 425 admissions previous day 161

From- Sentinel-Hospital-Surveillance-report (S.Africa NICD)

apologies, it should have read-
company would have been a lot more expensive to buyout.

I don't disagree . Fortunately I had reduced my holding here before the announcement but have started to rebuild again now.
The are issues with Terminix which is why it was cheap (compare it to RTO and Rollins). They have lost their CEO and there are issues over termite insurance claims and staffing costs. This was all raised at the Q&A's yesterday and RTO are clearly quite aware of them.
In the next year it will also cost RTO 150M for the merger but it will not gain a comparable amount in annualised savings for three years.
RTO do have a lot of experience in acquisitions but I can understand why the price has dropped. In the short term they would be better off not doing this merger but they clearly feel that the longer term benefits will out weigh this.
I think that the largest concern is over the insurance issue which adds uncertainty- but then without this the company would not have been a lot more expensive to buyout.

Excellent news.
It is all well and good 'guessing' it will work with Omicron because it has with other variants but it needed to be proven.
Hopefully this will now mean it can get approval.