Member Info for OliGarch

If you have a 25 hour contract then you should expect your leave entitlement to be 25 hours per week, therefore 4 weeks leave would be 100 hours. The annual leave average pay agreement means that if you regularly work 25 hours overtime then you would be paid for your 25 hour contract plus 25 hours in leiu of your regular overtime, therefore you would receive the equivalent of 8 weeks leave. This is absurd and certainly wouldn't be the norm in the 'outside world'!
To be clear, normal hours are paid at one rate, overtime is usually paid at a higher rate (depending upon your rank) and annual leave should be paid at your flat rate because you are not working extra hours.

CrystalBallBroke...I totally agree. I'm not sure when this 'annual leave average pay' allowance came into effect but whoever negotiated it must have excellent powers of persuasion (or photos of some extremely important Royal Mail employees in compromising positions)! The strange thing is that this (alongside the ability to purchase additional annual leave) is not available to all CWU grades and not all employees have the same contract of employment. I have a Post Office contract which is much stricter and incorporates the official secrets act.

Rico has been been buying shares on the way down since 20/11/18 when they were £3.18. So far he has made seven large purchases (min 50,000, max 200,000) and is now holding 912,000 at a total purchase price of £2,243,744.24 so averaging at £2.46 per share and giving him a September dividend payment of £155,040.If he sold them all on Monday morning, he would be £490,867.40 out of pocket.
Admittedly, this is small change for a man that owns a mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva but it is good news for the small private investor as it highlights the fact that he is confident that his £1.8bn, 5 year plan will succeed.
The June 2019 Royal Mail Courier magazine states that although the adjusted UK operating profit was down 32% to £332m and letter revenue was down by 6%, parcel revenue was up 7% and GLS revenue was up 8% meaning that Group Revenue was up 2% with an adjusted group profit of £509m.
This is not a business in financial difficulty and I see no reason why the share price is in flux at the moment. Personally, I suspect some sort of skulduggery from the big players to suppress the share price but I have no idea how they are doing this. It would be fascinating to know!
Once Brexit is sorted and the Tories have a new leader, confidence will be restored and I fully expect and predict the share price to be back at the flotation price of £3.30 before Bonfire Night. Hopefully this will not come back and bite me on the nether regions on the 6th of November!

Hi Redceo,
Apologies for showing my lack of knowledge but where do you get the daily shares bought/sold figures from please?

I have visited the website and watched the video clips of Terry Pullinger. The shorter working week was agreed last year and will reduce the working week of all CWU grades down to 35 hours over a 4 year period (1 hour per week per year) on the proviso that Delivery Offices make the necessary cost savings. I understand your point regarding Mail Centres and the shorter working week but that is down to local management planning ahead, managing the changes and making the necessary adjustments. If the Delivery Offices do not make the necessary cost savings then the shorter working week agreement will stall so this element has been costed in already. I have noted that the CMA/UNITE union (which deals with the Royal Mail managers) have not agreed a similar deal? Why not, don't they deserve parity???
There are 3 videos on that screen, one of which relates to "holiday pay". It is worth watching because if this is upheld in the courts and they agree that claims can be back dated for 3 years then this will cost Royal Mail a substantial amount. I think the video quotes the sum as "up to a million pounds a week"?
The last ballot that the CWU held for industrial action saw an understandable share price drop as there was an 80% ballot turn out with over 90% in favour. The big issue for the average postal worker was the proposal to change the current defined benefit scheme to a defined contribution scheme which would have seen a huge decrease for the average worker. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.
As for the other outstanding issues, it is down to Rico to negotiate with the CWU but it is in neither party's interest to walk away without a resolution so hopefully common sense will prevail.

So, we have just had the local elections and are now having to go ahead with the European election which should be good business for Royal Mail. Hopefully this good news should be included in Rico's report later on this month and produce a bit of cheer?

I would have thought that any retailer offering 'free postage' and 'free returns' had already factored the cost of this into the purchase price and so the customer had already paid for these services?

My guess is that the SP will be doing this for the next couple of weeks. Possibly some of the wide boys trying to make a little profit? The trick is to be sitting on the computer and logged in at the right time but the majority of us will have other things to do and miss the opportunities.

Hi DerekR,
Thank you for the correction, 'progressive' rather than 'agressive'. Ha ha ha, that kind of error will get me into trouble one day!

Hi Redceo,
''One question I read previously your statement that you expect the next divi to be approx 10p which I took to be a typed error. Please clarify.''
Looks like I am going to have to revise that statement?
There is no hard evidence in my statement but I seem to remember when Rico took over from Moya he said that he was going to 'pursue an aggressive dividend'. The summer dividend payments have been 13.3p, 14.3p, 15.1p, 15.6p and 16.3p since 2013 so there is evidence of an upward trend here. If we follow the trend then we should be looking at around 16.8p this summer? Unfortunately, when I wrote the original statement of 10p, I was (incorrectly) looking at the winter/interim dividends which have been 6.7p, 7.0p, 7.4p, 7.7p, and 8.0p so I will have to revise my original statement and stick my neck on the line by saying a summer dividend of 16.8p followed by a winter dividend of 8.2p.
Do you think that would be unreasonable/unachievable or is that going to be wishful thinking?

Nuri, after reading your comment regarding unions I can only assume that you are self employed or in some sort of managerial position? We (the common worker....doffs hat) have a lot to thank our unions for. They fought for a minimum wage for years...and now we have it, which in turn has increased our standard of living, which is why citizens from other nations strive to get to the UK. The average Brit is far better off now than they have ever been!
In the case of the CWU, they have been working hard with RMG management to secure a new pension deal that will actually SAVE RMG money and this I believe is close to being approved (if not already rubber stamped) by the Pensions Regulator. It was the CWU that went to RMG a few years ago and said 'we need to be more savvy as a company and work together to improve things' and signed a legally binding deal with Moya Greene.
Rico has invested circa £1.4 million in shares at an average price of £2.88. He is not a fool and as ex-CEO of GLS knows how turn a profit. He also knows that he will need the backing of the CWU.
The fact that the share price of this company is low has nothing to do with the CWU. If you are in this for the dividend payments then sit back and enjoy, if you were hoping for a 'quick hit and run' and have lost out then that's the risk you take!

Fruitster,
I think that you are on the right track here. Whilst letter box collection volumes are in decline, down stream access volumes have remained stable but the big area for improvement lies with ongoing parcel growth. Everyone wants/expects their online purchases to be delivered to their home. Rico is the founder and ex CEO of GLS (now owned by Royal Mail) and is not a foolish man, so he clearly knows his market place and knows how to turn a profit. I believe that his 5 year plan announcement is due later this month but his biggest challenge is to get the CWU fully on board and once they are this share will provide a decent return.
Since the 20th of November 2018, Rico has personally purchased 462,000 shares at an average cost of £2.88/share so he is currently making a loss in the region of £189,000 on those shares. This is a man who owns a luxury mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva so this sort of money is pocket change for him but these guys hate losing face more than anything else so I have no doubt that he has a plan to increase the RM share price to at least £3 over the coming year. If you have loaded up recently, sit back and enjoy the summer dividend (which I anticipate to be around 10p) and watch the price fluctuate before a slow ascent.