Member Info for notaflipper

Well @Eats I think it is self explanatory there have been many who have called this wrong for many months now, even before the conflict between Ukraine and Russia began, and have encouraged other posters to loose money hand over fist. Apologies but cannot make it any clearer. The Trustmarque disposal of £115m was the great news today. Hopefully this will bring down the net debt. Apologies as distracted with the presentation.

There will be resistance now all the way up unfortunately, hence the sharp pull back from 24p .Without the 2nd RNS of the clearance of Capita Trustmarque disposal, this would have gone down. So lucky escape for some. Genuinely unforgiveable reading therefore of rampers who encouraged posters to hold all the way down, suggesting they've called this right. Will just have to see whether the macro environment allows for the kick-start to continue. It will be interesting to see if the Directors now buy post the Closed Period.

"£197m reduction in net debt to £880m (2020: £1,077m) funded by operating cash flow and disposals"

The above statement is from the link in marketscreener (hopefully wrong) as in the 13th Dec update they said post-IFRS 16 net debt was £894m. So despite getting £85m cash in Jan 2022 they still only paid £14m in debt payments. Again hopefully wrong, and happily corrected here for my interests. Expectations of Experience decline confirmed with 9.4% decline reflecting previous contract losses, Portfolio declined by 0.3%. Capita Experience revenue declined by 8% to £1,083m only in the 13th Dec update. So situation has worsened in last 3 months.

Portfolio declined by 0.3% vs the 13th Dec update of Capita Portfolio division growing revenue by 0.4% to £507m. So essentially 07% decline.

The net debt figure will be the headline, though some will point that the disposal programme has exceeded its £700m target, ahead of schedule. Seems like all is going to working capital.

Hang on though...Some great headlines:
a) Won £3.8bn of total contract value in 2021, a 31% increase vs 2020 (£2.9bn)
b) Renewal rate of 93%
Order book increase for the first time since 2017
c) Secured £312m through extensions and incremental scopes

Market Screener is sometimes a bit gung ho...So let's wait to see the official forward statement on debt payments. But please refer to 13th Dec RNS and Half Year results before reviewing your position. Net debt figure and headline revenue will always grab attention as the report is too complicated to review in 30mins before confirming position of II.

Ah yes sorry, the decimals always do me in the calculations. 2,189,555 is the correct number as I had quoted the 13% figure. Disregard the points raised as now discredited ;-) Thanks for the correction and GLA.

With a total of 1,684,273,523 ordinary shares, a reduction in shorts from 0.88% to 0.75%, means that to close the short they had to BUY 218,955,558 shares between the 02nd March and 08th March. The sp has gone from that time from 26.23p to 20.82p. This could only have happened with II selling alongside Marshall Wace LLP reducing their short. Interestingly on the 13th Dec, at the last time of the trading update M&C's short was 0.79%. Shorters and Rampers will look at these observations how they want.
IR will find some way to fumble the delivery in the new company accounts format, having disappointed at each trading update. So expect major confusion whilst everyone works through the detail. Predictably the major headlines on net debt, free cashflow, effect on revenues/profit from inflationary pressures/Covid will dominate the 1st reaction. Though broadly neutral some headwinds should be expected in the Experience and Portfolio division, with free cash flow expectations pushed into FY23 and dividends pushed into FY24. Post-IFRS 16 net debt at 31 December 2021 will be above £800m+. That all said, the Company will demonstrate continuing progress in turn-around and the P/E is already so low, which asks the question why have IIs been selling to balance the shorts closing. So again broadly neutral.

Though the MMs will play this to their advantage, the end price of the sp this week will be the macro news.

At only Day 14: With the 12-hour ceasefire agreed by Russia and Ukraine coming to an end, Zelenskyy reiterated his call on Sky for the West to impose a no-fly zone, saying eventually the West will inevitably have to join. This is now being repeated multiple times daily. Though the humanitarian situation is terrible, it seems that with each day there is some greater escalation with no self-reflection on the missed opportunities that have gotten both sides to this point. Having repeated all the same provocations that led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and doing exactly everything that Russia said would result in a further military conflict; it seems that no planning was done by the Ukrainians or the West on dealing with any military escalation or humanitarian fall-out. Invest in a national air force and train pilots (nah), get guarantees from the West of joint protection even before formally joining the EU or NATO Alliance (nah); restrain some of the oratory before this has been assured (nah);invest in trauma units (nah); have contingency plans for buses and trains (nah), order the mass evacuation of eastern border towns to humanitarian camps in the west of the country (nah). Instead you see old women and children working it out for themselves. There'll be some film inevitably comparing this struggle to 'Dunkirk', though it seems more like 'Dad's Army'.

Fitch Ratings downgraded its view of the Russia's government debt, warning a default is "imminent" following oil sanctions. The ratings cut - to B from C - is the second time this month Fitch has downgraded its view of Russia's ability to pay its debts.
With ceasefire today, there has been a recovery in the market reflected in bell weather stocks such as IAG, CPI which trend the FTSE as PIs buy the dip. I suspect though that IIs are still on the side lines expecting things to get worse with a potential Russian default, and the now the inevitable (brutal) storming of Kyiv as Russians will be racing to bring this to an end to negotiate themselves out from this from a position of strength.

Milord I am a holder and confess to being a blatant biased ramper. Here the frustrating thing which happens is the spread, especially in mid Jan when there seemed some positivity and momentum. The 30%+ decrease in the sp though seems more due to an earlier background seller, bored PIs and a nervousness by some just to get out of the market. Oh if we had just bought wheat, nickel or oil in January instead. I am still "hopeful" that March should result in further news, in addition to the results of the PK Study. Although the FTSE was positive today, I suspect the Ukrainian uncertainty to last till end of the year so expecting still some turbulence despite some on other BBs thinking that we have seen the bottom.

A near 2% gain in the Nasdaq 100 evaporated in afternoon trading following rumblings that Russia would end exports of certain raw materials until December 31, suggesting that the conflict between Russia and Western countries could drag on for longer than expected. So there will be some sobering sentiment potentially that stagflation will be here to stay tomorrow.

Though equities have suffered nickel, wheat and oil have soared. Tsingshan Holding Group is looking at an $8 billion trading loss after nickel prices soar 110% in one week. Many "locked-in" to existing portfolios will be disappointed to have missed out. However as per the Covid recovery there should be plenty of opportunities in the coming months to partake and also from then you'll know a few rainbow chasers have lost out.

Zelensky's speech to MPs echoed Churchill's fight them on the beaches oratory. However the situation is more bleak than the oratory would suggest where both sides are now playing a zero sum game to bring an end game soon. Kyiv should be expected to fall in the next week or so. With Ukrainian doctors having to learn trauma treatments via Zoom from Doctors in the West, one hopes that when the flattery is over the Ukrainians will ask whether it was so wise to state that NATO membership and the reintegration with the Crimea were strategic goals, when no NATO or EU support was forthcoming. Seems a bit oxymoronic to be grated EU/NATO membership after the country looks like Aleppo in Europe. Incredibly with the TV show "Servants of the People" now able to be streamed on Channel 4, you can watch Zelensky as an actor playing the Ukrainian PM on one channel, and then him as the real PM after they voted him in thinking what is the worst that can happen.

Here the current macro headwinds will add to past disappointments in Capita's Experience and Portfolio business. As the Half Year results only committed to generate "sustainable free cash flow from 2022 onwards" and the December trading update said "FY 2021 net debt expected to be broadly flat vs half year", then the capacity for debt reduction seems more limited than some of the sp predictions here.

Holding up well despite Ukraine pressures. Strengthening at these levels, so expect that whatever the macro pressures this is now consolidating to get back up to 7.5p by end of March when the next news on Lupozor study should be in.

@Aim, Russians are at Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast. This is less than 2 hrs drive from the Mariinsky Palace. Think that although the Russian convoy stopped it was not because they had mechanical issues as reported in media but that there was an ultimatum given. Have to expect that Kyiv will be engaged at some point over the weekend so Monday will again be interesting. Cannot see US wanting to get involved as it will distract them from China and Taiwan, so expect Ukraine to be left on their own for now.
Supermarkets are clearing shelves of Russian vodka, so no easing of pain I am afraid. RIP Shane Warne.

At time of writing the Bid is sitting below 23p, and I do hope those who had bought via derivatives had heeded the warning a few days ago to have the ability to cover margin calls to 22p in the Bid. To be clear, there will be many who have lost out listening to some frankly increasingly narcissistic sounding posts that cannot countenance any scenario of themselves being wrong. Today there'll be many SLs triggered, however as mentioned the assault on Kyiv has yet to start and PIs then need to consider what will be the impact of the FTSE that CPI trends when that happens, and either it is bombarded or put under siege. Markets are becoming clearer that the sanctions will simply not work, as Putim will countenance any damage for a strategic interest. With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approving Ukraine's new National Security Strategy in September 2020, and then in March 2021m, Zelenskyy signalling the reintegration of Crimea to Ukraine, he has pretty much invited this invasion. So unless Zelenskyy goes, Putin has basically said he will destroy Ukraine rather than let NATO have it.
Here, the Cash received from divestments are only circa £85m. And so, it would need to be considered what would be the impact of the sp if debt was cleared only to 50%, 75% or 100% scenario of this with the rest going towards working capital. Although there may be some speculation next week on Results, this will coincide with the assault on Kyiv. And so, the macro news may distract once again. Although the transformation has improved EBITDA through cost reduction, the headline sales were suggested to may suffer due to Covid. So this will be important to see in the Experience and Portfolio division.
The main problem next week will be understanding the freaking Results as this will be presented in the new capital structure. So just doing a 1-to-1 comparison will be hard. Usually the Results are so super dense it takes 2 hours just to understand them, by which time the market makes there own mind as per the trading update in December. So expect some fumbling, and own-goals, from IR again.

Marshall Wace LLP have reduced their Short by -0.02% to 0.88% on 2 Mar 2022. This was increased to 0.90% on 16 Feb 2022, from 0.80%. Whether you are Long or Short, you will take it how you want to support your views.

Interesting map...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60506682
Puts into perspective how despite what you her in the news, social media and the various supportive measures in the UN...that regardless of all, Russia is within touching distance of the capital in a pincer movement and taking over mos of the strategic cities.
If you look at the map and then cross-reference that to the largest cities in Ukraine, the Russians do not see too far off from reaching Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro. With Mariupol and Donetsk already taken. The sanctions although hurting oligarchs and Russian economy and financial markets, seems to have accelerated the Russians to take over as much territory as quickly as possible and then negotiate from there. Perhaps Putin after 20 years has decided to go out with a bang and will even considering retiring to mend bridges after achieving his strategic aims. Although there will be films comparing Boris to Wiston Churchill and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Charles de Gualle, with both the hubris of putting in power the joker politician is plain to see. Though many will applaud Zelenskyy, ultimately he was viewed as a light-weight by Putin.
So we will probably see most of the major Ukrainian cities to the east of the Dnieper River overtaken. At present the EU/Nato are expecting this to resistance to last months, with the Russians succumbing eventually to sanctions. However Kyiv will probably be engaged by the weekend and (inevitably) may fall thereafter. So there'll be more pressures by next week whether to intervene. Kyiv falling will cause a market shudder hence why the shorts still holding. It should be cautioned that the Bid may then fall below the current resistance in that scenario, despite everything still be "on-track".
The world press seems only able to concentrate on one topic at a time. And so, other crisis like Afghanistan, Palestine and Yemen, with essentially the same conflict will be ignored.

Bid briefly dipped under 26p and has rebounded from that resistance. Although contrarian to all past sp predictions, the narrative from this BB and IR is that "we are on track". We will just have to see what happens however for those holding derivatives they would need to start to consider cover margin calls in this territory. The FTSE is in positive territory today, and that should be the concern here. There's some noise with the demotion and disposal of FTSE 250 trackers, same again with the residual sale of River and Mercantile shares. On the latter, a good point was made previously on this BB as to why they did not just await a week if the Results are expected to be good and commitments delivered. It is doubtful that they wouldn't have a Bloomberg terminal to see other IIs buying below declarable thresholds. Having dropped from 55p in Autumn, the current sp suggests more a fear of a capital restructure than a set of poor Results however we will have to see.

Today's news that the CMA is now investigating the Secure Solutions & Services businesses, Capita (SSS) Ltd and Capita Software (US) LLC, to NEC Software Solutions UK Ltd is a bit confusing as this deal has already been completed and netted £62 million in January towards debt repayment. So the deal cannot be reversed now, so seems a bit late. However it may have raised concerns on whether other recently approved sales such as Trustmarque, AMT Sybex,;Capita Commercial Insurance Services Limited (CCIS); and Capita Managing Agency Limited (CMA) will now be slowed.

Conflict in Ukraine is looking to become more distressing as more cities become occupied in the next week. As was shown in the press conference last night, Boris is already coming under increasing pressure to provide military support in imposing a no-fly zone and this pressure will only increase as Ukraine becomes completely bombed out. What's the point of Nato or EU membership afterwards? The strategy from Russia seems to be to achieve a quick overthrow in weeks to then negotiate terms for a withdrawal of troops afterwards (e.g. annexation of territories). Although equities have had a terrible time, it is incredible to see the huge spike in commodities like Wheat as Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of the world's supply.

The current low sp would suggests that the IMM HQ and Labs are in Ukraine, which it is not. The all time low closing of the sp was at 5p. However the intra-day fell below this. This was when there was a fear that the placing would be below the sp, hence massively diluting the sp. For a bio stock on the verge of 2 P3 trials this year the sp has no premium assigned to this, and is below the nominal placing price of 11p. One would have to think we are at, or near bottom. This stock has often quite a large spread, so the bid may slip to 5p or just below as before. However there would be no logic for this as funding secure and PK study is following Autumn update. So seems more driven by general market fears and a backroom seller driving out the impatient. Has to be said the CEO does not seem overtly concerned about sp despite the last funding benchmark price agreed and it would be good to see a more proactive engagement (e.g. investor call, broker research notes) to explain to market the potentially pivotal phase that they are approaching. At present, one interview per QTR seems to be that'll do.

Last holdings RNS was of them selling from memory 0.49% of the total holdings here. With 1,684,273,523 ordinary shares, I think that works out to 8,320,311 shares. Could they have picked up River and Mercantile's shares at a discount to lower their average? Could be, however this would have to be below the 20% mandatory disclosure threshold, and goes against the trend of IIs holdings that we have seen or shorts disclosures. To put this in perspective Schroders held 18.367390% in December.

To save everyone's weekend, in short Aim is right.

You have to declare when passing the 5% threshold and so it is a sale. The RNS was just wrongly filled in, with the line below missing. I genuinely hope it was not a "deliberate" mistake on the part of IR. However underlines the need for changes.

I suspect a few PIs have been sucked in, as awaiting for a reversal. So with the confusion also some shorts would have closed. It seems surreal when you see the conflict on the streets of Kyiv to see the markets rally, however the Dow Jones on Friday climbed by more than 834 points, or 2.51 percent, reflecting increased financial market confidence as the US prepared to slap penalties on Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was the highest one-day rise since late 2020. The FTSE 100 was within 50 points of recapturing all of its losses from the week’s panic sell-off. Didn't take much for the regular rampers to come out in force.

I think however the conflict will widen. Putin does not care about sanctions as views this as a strategic threat. So either you will have a Russian puppet government, or an annexation of part of Ukraine (as per Crimea) to appease him. Or it will just become untenable for the West to stand on the side, whilst Ukraine takes on Russia single-handedly. The West would have no credibility offering a bombed out Ukraine NATO membership afterwards. So if sanctions don't work soon, you have to think the West will run out of time to be seen to act. Biden and Boris, both domestically weak could have played this better but I think this conflict has helped to distract.

"Buy on the sound of cannons and sell on the sound of trumpets”

Going above or below 5% needs to be declared. Simples
So either they completely sold out and then have started accumulating again following drop. And so, RNS is right.
Otherwise they only just passed the 5% now, and it is a sale. And so, RNS is wrong and box below not filled in.

Whatever, sale/buy could still be positive for sp as some could selling is finished.
However the two probable scenarios above just underlines that the IR here needs to be replaced. Either too incompetent to review a RNS. Otherwise have to think it is a effing desperate thing to optimistically overlook.

5% is a threshold that if you go below you need to provide notification. So you have to notify if you go above.below this as it allows you to requisition a general meeting of the company.

So if there is no RNS to confirm they went below 5% then the current RNS is wrong and basically they forgot to fill in the below box which means it is a sale. Best though just check with IR, as 5% is a threshold that has to be declared, so there would have to be another missing RNS

Think many were caught out in December 13th update when it was expected that debt would have been reduced from the sale of insurance businesses. However we were corrected by IR after then that although the sales were announced the funds could not be allocated till the sale completed. Some of the posts here have suggested that up to £200m will be cleared, however if you cautiously apply the same IR logic that no debts will be cleared till funds cleared, and no debt allocation made (i.e. saying we will target X debt clearance by Y) then best to model on what disposals will complete/clear by Results:

a) Capita Commercial Insurance Services and Capita Managing Agency to Marco Capital Holdings: Regulatory approval not yet given so sale not completed
b) AMT Sybex was sold for circa £40m, however Jonas will only pay £23m on completion with the potential additional consideration of up to £17m is payable to Capita over 24 months.
c) Secure Solutions and Services (SSS) business to NEC Software Solutions UK sold for £62m.
d) Sale of Trustmarque to One Equity Partners for £111m on a cash free, debt free basis, means Capita expects to receive net proceeds of c.£115m at completion. An additional c.£3m is receivable by Capita contingent on certain future events. Sale completion target only by June 2022.

So from the above the available funds to reduce the debt of £894m is £85m (b+c above).

No one knows, except IR, so can ask which of the sales are completed. If they haven't then IR could still say debt clearance will target X by Y, through further disposals and then by Z the dividends will be re-instated. They have not followed this approach though till now. If they did, then the current sp is madness. However having paid ZERO in debt clearance in December's update, it seems bold to suggest that they will then commit upwards to £200m in March plus announce dividends. So having been disappointed by IR in 3 of the 4 last trading updates, for me (probably wrongly) take the £85m as the ceiling and then say some of that will go in working capital, as they have done that in past trading updates. Not bad, and does demonstrate that the transformation is "on-track" but may disappoint some who expect otherwise. The Summer trading update will be good here as Trustmarque sale would have completed, and so you should see debt in the low to mid 700s. So with further disposals announced by then the market may start to anticipate dividends in FY24.

Main short term driver of indices will be Russia and inflationary concerns. Here, you would have to make an assessment on how long Russia invasion of Ukraine will last. The annexation of Crimea started on 22 February 2014 with the formal recognition of Crimea state on 18th March 2014. So can expect the same end game here with the partial annexation of Ukraine

As before there are many scenarios, none with any substantial hold of what will happen. The above is one, though I will not commit to eat anything raw (excep