Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
It is a limited withdrawal out of the eastern suburb areas of Kyiv. So hopeful early signs, but encouraging. I do hope that some calm heads prevail, as the rhetoric last week was getting a bit out of hand and didn't recognise that more people will be dying from the food, economic, and refugee crisis as well as driven into sex trade than will die in the military conflict. Terms being offered to Russia are basically the same that the Russians asked for in December. For NATO/Ukraine the various oratory has masked over that fact, as well that there was no planning by NATO/Ukraine for mass evacuation or border towns or humanitarian camps despite the Russians building-up forces for a year. With over 3m+ refugees, this is 3x worse than the 2013 EU migration crisis and the Euro will weaken this year. It is unrealistic that these 3m+ will be able to return for the next couple of years, creating huge issues for their host nation (in schools, hospitals and housing). By way of illustration the UK took in c. 20k refugees in 2021 as part of c. 700k net migrants to contextualise the proposed influx.
In the UK we are in the middle of a propaganda. If you look at the map below from MoD (from the 26th), you then realise Irpin which is where the Russians are pulling/driven out of is a 1hr drive from the Presidential Palace according to Goole Maps. Similarly Russian troops are 2hrs away from Odessa and 3 hrs away from taking their 3rd (yes 3rd!) nuclear power station from Ukraine at Mykolaiv https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1507693396823093250/photo/1
I do hope sense will prevail. The pressure is on to do so quick as the sowing season will only last a few more weeks. And if that is missed, next year will again be a pain.
There'll be ups and downs in the negotiations and so ups and downs in market sentiment. However whereas for most of March we saw a trading pattern between 20p to 22p, we should see a reset to a higher level in the next 2 weeks. There'll be the tremor effects of Covid after, but should then be an upward trajectory till Summer update and debt clearance.
There was a big drop in the Bid in the back to 5.4p roughly 30 mins ago and this led to the spread being very high at one point. Hoping for no surprises here and at least some news in next week.
Mate, at a 2% loss you are a Master Trader compared to some holders here, who have seen all their profits made in 2020 wiped out in 2021 (the year which tried to outdo 2020 in crapiness). Don't mean to knock anyone here down, as I am one of you lol...If a 2% loss is making you nervous, imagine what a 20% profit will do to you when the sp gets to 25.5p. Will find out in the next few weeks. GLA.
Grant of Options can be a positive thing for the sp. However it is helpful when the exercise price is at a much higher premium to the current sp. So if they had set it at 36p as per JL's last purchase price. Or if it was linked to some transformational milestone and had a lock in period. This just suggests that they know the sp is at a bargain, but they do not want to dip their hand in their pocket to pay for the shares just yet. So get them as Options and as finance the purchase as and when they are paid, but the shares are bought at no risk.
Friday afternoon RNS..says it all. Good news is that the Ps wil forget the sting come Monday. To be fair to Tim and Jon they have both bought circa 1.5m shares in the last year at prices up to 50p.
I suspect there is a background buyer now hence the stuck sp, and so accumulating. As mentioned last week this week was always expected to be neutral. Which given some of the somewhat different diplomatic verbose talk on who will win a 'nuclear war' was quite good. Apparently Putin has said that the Ukrainian war must be completed before the 9th of May 2022 (Red Square parade), which should coincide with the AGM on the 10th May 2022. The interesting thing is that the current settlement that is being offered to Russia, is the same that was being requested by them at December and was considered untenable.
This is a Grant of Options. This is not a Director Share Purchase. The grant of options is part of the annual bonus and renumeration strategy. It looks like the exercise price is at the current price with no exercise thresholds, e.g. achieving an exercise sp price of X. Looks like this is not going to be voted at the upcoming AGM either.
Appreciate that Jon Lewis bought 331,855 shares at £0.3668, but come-on! How low does the sp have to go for a Director to buy with their own money since the Closed Period has now finished.
Those who are holding the stock here in derivative form have increased significantly in the last month. So the margin requirements here have been now changed to 100%, even though the Ask has been reduced since the spike following the placing . With Spread betters taking a position assume that news is forthcoming, and movement is expected. Time to top up with monthly pension payments/salary seems to closing.
The Landstead deal seems Win-Win/Lose-Lose.
So this makes the poor IR performance here again difficult to appreciate. The latest sharing agreement was above 14p, but the 2020 Sharing Agreement was for a Benchmark price of 13.3333 pence giving 24 equal monthly settlement amounts (of £54,166). Similar to the latest 2021 Lanstead deal if on the monthly settlement date the calculated Measured Price is below the Benchmark Price by 10 per cent., the settlement on the monthly settlement date will be 90 per cent. However if on a monthly settlement date the calculated Measured Price (over the last 20 days) exceeds the Benchmark Price by 10 per cent., the settlement on that monthly settlement date will be 110 per cent.
So there was every incentive for the IR here to try and pump the sp. Instead they only seem to devote to a day per Quarter to update their shareholders, as you would have imagined that there would be incentive to pump the sp.
This share price has been in the toilet for most of the last year. Unless people have been using their monthly pension or salary to fund their share builder schemes, I would have said that there have been ample opportunities to load up before now. Main disappointments here are the background Seller which sells into any rise and the poor investor performance of TM. We'll just have to see whether both give long suffering shareholders here a break in the coming weeks.
Yes, disappointing that Seller is still in background. Been a bit of a frustrating last few months. Cannot understand the motivation to sell so soon to the PK Study results.
Good luck all
Difficult to keep track without going through back post. To be fair he/she isn't the one who said that they would eat their own excrement 'raw' if the sp hit 26p. Nor one of the ones who promised that dividends would be announced this year, together with clearing of £200m debt. Nor the ones who had apparently retired from LSE to post only on discord.
Lots of posts to catch up, mostly the same, however the observations on volume are the most interesting and reinforce the past impression of a backroom transfer of shares with the sp in a holding pattern till completed. Looks unlikely that we will fall below 20p so the trading range up to circa 22p is the most likely scenario till the Chancellor's Spring Statement (23/03) to announce increases in NI rates. So a penny off the bottom hopefully which probably will be immaterial when the Summer Trading update confirms debt clearance. The Bank of England has already indicated it expects to see headline CPI rise to 7.25% by April. Expectations are for February UK retail sales to rise by 0.8% to be announced on 25/03. News this week will become more bleaker with the storming of Kyiv and Odessa expected to come. So as they approach the end game, time is running out for peace talks to conclude as the troops are not far off the Presidential palace. To put things in perspective it is a 40mins drive from Irpin to Kyiv Presidential Palace.
Indeed, they closed it in space of week from 08th. Think effect has been counter balanced with a background seller, however this seems to have bottomed now. Looks like there'll should some sort of peace settlement in Ukraine by end of the week, if not next, with pretty much all of the demands of Putin being requested before the conflict being acquiesced to with NATO membership for Ukraine being blocked, and guarantees that no stationing of Western weapon systems in Ukraine or Crimea given. Main sticking point seems whether Donetsk and Luhansk should be given referendum to become independent. Think that is behind oil going down $100 per barrel, and not Saudi Arabia or Venezuela imports rising. Do hope so, as I don't think people have thought through what the impact of so many refugees will have on health systems, schools and housing stock as this will not be just for 6-months.
US inflation data comes out at 12:30 today, which could top 10%. With food prices in the UK potentially gaining as much as 15% this year, you are seeing a decline in supermarket stocks inevitably. Here, CPI trends the indices whilst there's no news flow so would be best to await till the afternoon if you are eager to buy today. With Director purchases less than £10k since Results, you'd have to hope that they were planning to use their ISA allowance on their own Company.
Hey No Fear,
Listen mate you don't need to make things personal. You have gone and made yourself a target on various BBs by ramping CPI by diminishing the stock on other BBs. To be fair to the posters here, we have not criticised this to you though this is a great embarrassment to many of us holders. I am a holder, and hope for this stock to do well. But I am however conscious no only of the wider macro concerns but that yourself and other rampers posts have cost other holders much my diminishing the risks and concerns associated with the outlook here since the December trading update. Then it was forewarned that this stock would decline in sp towards the Results, and despite the worsening macro environment which CPI trends, yourself and others suggested that dividends would be forthcoming this year, and that debt would be cleared to a significant value. The Results are what they are, and there will be a recovery. However I would appreciate if you could ass me onto your filter list as I have now done the courtesy to add you to mine. All the best
Sorry was a bit hungover today, so slept in as not much was expected...which ramper won most posts?
With volunteer dosing commenced on 15 February 2022, the Lupuzor pharmacokinetic PK study has been reported to be on to deliver results around the end Q1 2022. So being now in mid-March there should be some expectation to get an update between 2 to 4 weeks. So despite wider market uncertainty, I would be expecting some speculation now building to increase the sp to circa 7p before next update.
Expecting FTSE to be negative tomorrow and potentially this week, however if M&W still reduce their short, below the declarable threshold CPI may still end up positive in the week. Ultimately key time-frame to hold is for 6-months till the next trading update, when the debt repayments should ease market concerns. However I suspect that IR here will disappoint set expectations on debt clearance and free cash flow in 2022.
Indeed it seems it was the driver for the sp rise to 24p yesterday and 22.75p today. However in both there was a pull-back. With a close of 20.3p yesterday you are not far off the 52-Week low of 19.885p.So not surprised that shorts closing. Will add next week here and elsewhere, just waited this week, as it seems that the macro news may get a whole lot worse and there could be a shake. Would have to be massive though to compensate for the opportunity cost. It could be though looking as stocks like IAG that have recovered from c.115p this week, that the PIs might have out-foxed the IIs, who are still sitting on the side lines. GLA
Seems like a good idea actually, and an opportunity missed in last 3 days. With M&W closing 0.3% of their short in less than a week (0.88% to 0.58%), and PIs eager to buy the dip especially after the Results when all the bad news all out there, it has been strange there has been no consistent uptrend and that the SP is basically where it was last Friday 04th March (22.34p) despite innumerate posts. So basically flat.
Suspect there is still an II selling but as before the main drivers will macro news for next week. On this point the news this evening is pointing towards a greater escalation, and we'll just have to see whether the FTSE pushes through next week regardless. If no one from the BoD buys any shares next week that would be a bit disappointing as their monthly share purchases are quite small. No excuse now that we are outside the Closed period. Also going by some posts here we should still be expecting debt to be still cleared this year. However this I think would be a stretch given that the cash received is also being used for working capital.
@volcano, agreed that it has more to do with the wider market than any background II buying/selling or shorts closing. The FTSE is nearly 2% up, despite news of new Covid variant in France. Bit difficult to restrain the temptation to add today, however despite 10% rise and the regular accompanying hyperbole, the sp is basically back to where it was on Wednesday this week. Despite the debt worries there are still positives at the current sp. However the two macro worries of a Russian default and the invasion of Kyiv is still a worry, and I think there'll be a shake once the latter happens in the coming days. With nearly 400 Russian politicians being added onto the sanction list, and the Bank for International Settlements, BIS, announcing yesterday that it is to cut off the Russian central bank this just needs to be brought to a resolution, hopefully peacefully. I saw a metric on the BBC that there are now more sanctions on Russia than that on Syria, North Korea and Iran combined. This is quite amazing if you think about it given that we are just over 2 weeks into the conflict and there are parallels here with Yemen/Palestine. As time is running out for the Russians there could be some escalation with Kyiv over the weekend so I will wait to see what happens over the weekend, even though the price may be higher. GLA
MMs played this well this morning. Pullback reflects the FTSE turning negative with the conflicting reports on oil outputs from UAE. Macro environment issues continue to weigh in on any inherent momentum unfortunately. And so, predictions on being neutral and ending at circa 22p-23p by some seem to be proving right.
The Group did well to increase revenue by 0.4% to £3bn mainly driven by the Public Service division growing by 10.8%. Negative predictions of Experience and Portfolio were proved right, as both declined by 9.4% and 0.3% respectively. Net debt reduced to £879.8m (2020: £1,077.1m) so again broadly unchanged from December Trading update. Though disappointing this had already been factored in by the fall from December. They have done really well in reaching their disposal target £700m, but the market is still awaiting this to materialise in debt reduction. Till then it seems that the disposals are funding debt maturities (e.g. £440m of debt maturities in 2021 and 2022) and pension deficit contributions of £155.5m. With liquidity of £392.4m at 31 December 2021, capital restructure or bankruptcy is unlikely though as Shorters may suggest. Again though great news of Trustmarque and that two further disposals of Portfolio division, representing around £188m of revenue and £20m of profit, have been targeted. So solid floor for growth from here, depending on the macro environment, however cannot see how debt will clear in 2022. Only commitment given that "As we continue to make disposals we expect net debt to decrease materially." Apologies if I have missed anything in RNS.