Member Info for Monkshood

Re FI, he is not predicting where it is going - he is just trying to talk the price down. There is a difference.
Whilst it is always nice to get in a t the lowest point I am more interested in where this will be next year and the year after.

Wella99uk, curious as to why you think it delusional to think that nex could get to 250-300 in a years time. It fits with the recovery that nex themselves have set out and it is inline with about 4-5 broker targets.

Finally others seem to have woken up to the fact that all of the students need to live somewhere...
Totals from UCAS today, 11k more UK UG students than this time last year ,Overseas up 1.5K from last year and 3.5K from 2018. The only category which is down are EU students with a fall of 2.3k from last year. Last year UK and RoW overseas accounted for 87% of the students housed by DIGS so the drop in EU students should not have a significant impact.
UG's make up 66% so it will also depend on how post grad recruitment is going, from what I have been told, both for UK and RoW this has been strong. With a tight jobs market and not many options to travel, it seems that people are choosing to spend the next year gaining some post grad qualifications.

PIN is one of my core holdings which I top up or top slice according to the discount. I did hold HVPE for a while after the drop in March but I know PIN better so I stick with this long term.
I did listen to the interview, thanks; I am OK with the discount where it is but I do think that over time it could narrow to closer to its historical level - I am quite happy if it does this over a year or two as I expect to still be holding.

I was expecting a currency hit but hoped it would be smaller. I had wondered if the investment gain would also have mitigated more of the currency affect but I supposed at least it is positive. Their approach, earlier in the year, to apply a value to the potential fall in nav, seems to have been reasonable and we are not seeing constant downgrades each month (although the US market has clearly bounced back since then).
Hopefully the greater certainty about the nav will allow for a reduction in the discount.

Thanks Valuseek and Hawfinch
Useful insight to the shorts(which are now reducing) and good to get an insight on the US school bus situation.
I do not live in the region nex operate their local bus service but customer numbers are definitely picking up on my local routes although not back to the levels there were at. Schools in my area are back in a week so it will be interesting to see what happens then. The UK government has been quite supportive of buses so they have received quite a bit of funding to help them out.
I have been into London by train on occasions, both throughout the lockdown and also more recently. I am shocked at how few are using them. A discussion with the person in the ticket office indicates they he is selling about 20% of what he used to (and this does not include season tickets). Looking at the numbers on our local buses does confirm that this seems to be less impacted than the trains, so I think only having the German rail service (a part of which is cost protected) will be an advantage to nex compared to some transport companies.
We could do with recruiting someone from Spain/Morocco to this BB to see how things are going there, this is more important now than the UK.

@valuseek
1- Yes, some long term damage more people working from home, more business meetings held by zoom.
2- Many have no option but to use buses because of the cost of car ownership or other reasons(kids, students, elderly) also many cities have congestion issues which require public transport solutions. FCF in two years could be back to 2019 levels as they should have the extra income from Alsa Morocco that they did not have then.
3-Who knows??
4-I just felt that it was (and still is) hard to be too upbeat until there is more clarity to the way thing will go this winter. They have laid out their scenarios and so far seem to be on track for the better of the two.
5-I would prefer not, the mix has helped in the current situation.
6-There will be a move to electric/hydrogen imposed on them over time, it seems the way to go for public transport especially in cities.
7-9 should you invest? Personally, I think that it is a good 2 year bet.
Re-First Group, They are looking to withdraw from the US. This will undermine their case in any current bids as you would not know who will be running the contract (I have seen comments to this effect on a current tender dispute), nex should be a beneficiary.
It would be great to have some feedback on how things are going with the return to school in the US. Here, the media always look to the worst, for one hundred schools you will hear about a couple of schools that have shut but not about the ninety eight that are open so it can be hard to gauge how things are going.

Overseas (nonEU) UG student numbers seem to be holding up well and are at their highest ever level. EU students are down about 3k but this is more than compensated by a 5k increase in UK students, the later will increase further as the mess with grades works through. Accommodation is filling but is bound to be left until nearer the start dates this year.
Re-Overseas, I assume that we are a beneficiary of both their problems of controlling covid in the US plus Trumps visa policy.
From Bloomberg-
'Following efforts by the Trump administration to revoke foreign student visas if those students planned to take all online classes, dozens of schools sued; the executive order was rescinded, but new guidelines from the U.S. immigration department say this rule will still apply to new incoming international students. A July report from the Institute for International Education found that half of U.S. colleges received fewer applications from international students'

I think that it is hard to really know what the US school bus situation will deliver. Some schools will be on line but many others not. Those schools that do return will have social distancing on the buses and there is talk that they may need more buses because of this (or the same buses running the routes more than once a day).
It is looking equally confused in the UK where there is talk of making some public buses 'school buses' to pack more in...
So far , little seems to have been put in place for this so in a week or two there will be lots of stories of kids left at bus stops because the buses are 'full'.
Does not seem to be an issue in Spain where the buses can have 100% occupancy. The complaints on social media about overcrowding and long queues both there and Morocco at least implies the buses that are running are busy!

Yes, Judith is leaving and the role will then come under Gary Waits the current head of nex schools.
Assumedly cost saving measures ?

They could have been sitting on 0.49% shorts from a much higher level and then just pushed over the 0.5% declaration limit when they had an advanced warning of the ceo going early. The news, plus the visibility of the shorts then helps drive the price down.
Funny how they both increased on the same day , just before the official rns.....

They are doing plenty of recruitment in the US so cannot be going so badly there.

https://careers.nellc.com/jobs/?location=United+States
(note this is nex's US site)

I thought that hey said at least 6 months last night....

BBC
Universities facing 'crazy demand' from students
Of direct relevance to DIGS-
The issue of students withdrawing hasn't affected the University of Brighton either, says Carl Griffiths, head of recruitment at the university, who says there has been less movement than previous years.
Accommodation bookings on Scape going well.
But the sp drops 5%???

Ultimately, the kids will go back to school in the US and people will still need to go to work in Spain and Morocco. (buses are also very important for school transport in these countries). German rail is contract so that does not change. In the UK the government are putting a lot of money in to keep buses running.
Jefferies issued that note after the interims last week.
Much depends on you time scale for holding these. I just took todays fall/dip as an opportunity to get a few more.

Sorry, no 6 on the end - copy and paste issue..
He retained circa 340k after tax from those he vested - not sure how many of the rest accrue to him once he leaves though

He still has 1,150,6946 including those he vested days ago... (see rns 14th Aug)

Notable that we see shorts just before the announcement DF was leaving early - clearly known in advance by some.

Queen Mary's has opened up another 500 places in clearing - will help to fill Mile End accommodation.

Thanks for that Tiger.