Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Replying to the subject of this thread: McColl's haven't paid a dividend for a couple of years, and at the moment it's got significant debt, so I'd expect it to focus on paying down the debt before there's any realistic prospect of a return to dividend payments, but once it's got itself more sorted I'm hoping it'll surge back - but given that debt it's definitely a speculative investment.
correction: weekend is 29th and 30th
Yup, trading update was 28th, 29th or 30th of Jan all the way back to 2014. 28th and 29th are at the weekend, so 28th or 31st seem most likely this time round.
Thanks troken; meanwhile nice to see a small lift in the share price this afternoon although on pretty thin trade. Things might liven up a bit with the trading update (presumably) later this month.
Interesting snippet, thank you; could you provide your source please?
...indeed, do checkout the corresponding RNS for Robert Walters (RWA): "Matt brings a broad range of experience from different sectors and is currently Chief Financial Officer of Micro Focus International plc, ..."
I think that's a misunderstanding of the RNS: It does say he's been appointed as a non-executive director for another company (non-executive so not a 9-5 job, more a few meetings a year); it doesn't say he's leaving Micro Focus, so his position at Micro Focus is unchanged.
Why the divi pessimism? Basic/Adjusted EPS figures for FY 2019-20 were 5.5p/8.9p, for 2020-21 were 12.5p/11.2p. Whilst so far that's being spent on company purposes like getting the debt down (and a 1p dividend for 2020-21), that situation won't last forever. As the company regains its financial health I'd expect an increasing proportion of the EPS to end up as dividends.
I think it's a mistake to value companies purely on the basis of their share price and thus market cap: The other important factor is any net debt, thus I prefer to think of a company's overall cost to an acquirer as its Enterprise Value (EV) which factors in the debt. On that basis the cost to an acquirer probably hasn't changed much, since as the share price (so market cap) has revived the debt have shrunk, and important aspects of the debt have been simplified, esp. PFD pensions.
Whilst I'd prefer not to see PFD taken over (I look forward to a long term steady dividend stream), that remains a risk, and probably more so with the company's financials now being more straightforward.
Amused by the thread's subject text, the share price is now touching 180p, so that didn't take long! Capital Markets Day for Ilika on Friday, so maybe barnetpeter's "Back to 200 plus?" will also come true in time for Xmas...
More seriously, I like Ilika for getting on with its programme and now manufacturing batteries at a reasonable scale whilst progressing its greater ambitions, all the while taking care not to burn through cash too fast by making good use of JVs and grant funding; indeed with Stereax manufacturing this will also generate some revenue to offset Goliath costs.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/lifestyle/christmas/worlds-largest-mince-pie-factory-in-barnsley-south-yorkshire-run-by-mr-kipling-opens-its-doors-3481062
or in case that link gets squished, search for the title of this post to find it. Nice to see PFD products being made.
One possible explanation is that sometimes larger sellers wait for some good news to come along so that they can clear out a lot of shares; and/or the good results may have already largely been factored into people's calculations. Personally I think these results provide some good support to maintain a 800p-ish price - or higher. I will be interested to read analyst reports over the next few days to unpick the numbers.
BC100 writes: "I have seen mention on this site to a trading update in November so I am hoping that might be when we are given this additional detail."
A quick look at past RNSes shows that MCRO released trading statements on 20th Nov 2019, and 18th Nov 2020 (both Wednesdays). So my money's on MCRO issuing a trading statement on Wednesday 17th or 24th November this time round.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think Ecotricity attempted a hostile takeover of Good Energy in the past with a similar outcome. After that failed it seems like they held onto their Good Energy holding. If they follow that pattern then I'd expect Ecotricity to hold, and maybe try to rock the boat again in a couple of years' time.
PFD won't be alone with those challenges, and I think the general sense that the government doesn't have a good answer to this and other issues the country is facing does mean we'll see inflation rise, which also means that PFD will likely charge their customers more for their products - as will their competitors.
So overall I don't anticipate a significant effect on profits for PFD: Inflation is expected, so PFD charging more for their products shouldn't be a surprise to their customers.
Meanwhile it's reassuring that PFD has been so active in reducing its' debt with the prospect of rising interest rates; that should mean it's well-placed to cope with any such rises.
I suggest googling for "fake news Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long" where you'll find various results from which you can draw your own conclusions. (tl;dr: It's nonsense, just get yourself jabbed)
Fair point Camboy. In this situation I lean towards taking the proceeds slightly earlier if there's only a small cost involved, particularly if I've spotted an interesting opportunity for the proceeds and if there's a long time to wait for the takeover to play out - so I've taken the opportunity to check the timetable, and it seems that the 'Effective Date' is late October, with the payout no more than 14 days after that, which isn't such a long time. Maybe it's worth waiting after all.
I found an article about the car crash of a systems upgrade for Travis Perkins which it seems is still not over,
https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/06/travis_perkins_opts_for_oracle/
which got me thinking about what IT systems SIG might be using. The best I can find is from the 2018 FY results (8th March 2019) which suggests this is an area that SIG has been working on, but more recent results don't provide anything to flesh this out - so I wonder if anyone on here has experiences or links to share on the subject...?
I was absolutely convinced that there'd be at least one more bidder (not necessarily Amazon), also that even with the 2 bidder auction we'd go above £3, so I got that wrong, so the modest September top-up I made at £2.93 was a mistake.
Having disproved my credentials, I'll now predict that the price will move a bit closer to the £2.87 bid price over the next 2 weeks once the in-a-hurry sellers have left. I guess there's an outside chance of some as-yet unannounced 3rd bidder surfacing, but I think we'd at least have had rumours of this by now if that was a realistic possibility. I expect I'll hold for another week before cashing in my MRW chips.
The article states that "The BT Group share price has dropped by more than 18% below its all-time high" which is false (consider BT's share price a few years back), so if that's the strength of the author's research I don't hold much by his conclusions (that said, I'm very sceptical of "Technical Analysis" as a method of valuing shares so even if he'd got his basic research right I'd still not be that interested in his analysis).