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https://news.sky.com/story/firstgroup-ends-long-journey-to-sale-of-us-bus-operations-with-3-3bn-eqt-deal-12284357
Wow. £3.3bn deal sky reporting that’s £800m more than they said it was rumoured to be going for. Huge huge value here off the back of that
Think you may have cursed it! Shocking finish.
This really needs to rise getting on 20% now just to keep pace with the average industry move of late.
I see value similar to yours PYUECK however I do wonder if omitting the value of Greyhound is materially underestimating it. £100m already from Dec sales then who knows how much the remainder is worth if the facilities are also in good locations think it really could be surprising.
Unusual that there have been no whispers since the sky article in December although suppose with such an uncertain backdrop it’s not that surprising, eagerly anticipating some more news dropping any day now.
In addition, two of your points are just entirely false.
‘Consider the equity raise, majority of which went to pay down a government loan with a little left over for system improvements.’ That’s simply not true, they raised approximately £94m net of fees, the CBILS amount they paid was £2m. £2m/£94m certainly doesn’t look like a ‘majority’ to me.
Information from the half year report - 4. The £50m CLBILS Term Loan Facility committed until May 2023 (currently £2 million drawn) will be repaid and handed back without penalty.
Secondly - ‘ The other part is your AIM optimism is trumped by rational institutional investors analysis methods as they own majority of this company. Therefore your fighting big sells from the big guys who have made their profits and now selling out.’
Fighting big sells from institutions.. well that’s funny they’re either breaking stock market regulations by not declaring the sells, or once again your point is entirely false, we shall see on Monday. The last holding rns was actually a buy just last week.
Are you sure you’re even looking at the right company?
Aim Titan, you talk as if the placing doesn’t benefit the company in the slightest as if they have given our shares for free.
When the company was valued above 100p on what basis would you say it was valued? It certainly wasn’t growth as it was on a lowly pe even then.
Now this year you mention there is more shares, yes that’s true but as a result of cash generation and the raise there will now be £200m less net debt, but I note you don’t mention that part.
I managed to get double my allocation in the offer, couldn’t believe my luck, some of the easiest money will ever make that.
Unfortunately double was all I had applied for, wish I would have applied for more!
Micky, I somewhat disagree with your initial post where you say they are ultra cautious when it comes to marketing. Actually if you look at results of years gone by you will see that N brown spent a much higher proportion of revenue on marketing than literally everyone else. They’ve been there and done that, they have essentially admitted that this was to offset a decline in catalogue sales. At first they didn’t really know what they were doing when it came to online marketing, threw an awful lot, over £150m a year at it, and it did lead to some nice revenue growth.
However, when they reviewed said marketing they found out that there were vast amounts of unprofitable marketing, spending too much on customers that only order infrequently. They could and have recently improved profitability by reducing this marketing spend, of course that has an impact on top line revenue but is beneficial for the bottom line. You alluded to it yourself, n brown will likely never be a boohoo and there’s a reason boohoo is on a pe of 53 and n browns is so low.
When you’re comparing marketing you need to factor in the target market, yes they could do more social media but don’t forget for the majority of the brands the target market is much older and large amounts of those customers still don’t use social media at all, although that does mean greater opportunity in the future. They’ve invested heavily in SEO with a whole new team just a couple of years ago, but these things take time and don’t make an impact overnight.
In my opinion, people need to stop viewing this as a growth share and comparing it to the likes of boohoo which has a completely different trajectory. Instead it should be seen as a stable company with potential to grow perhaps comparatively slowly in underserved markets, but in normal times is a strong dividend payer and a very profitable business.
The success of n brown through covid has been very much overlooked in my eyes just because of the drop in revenue, but almost every company would have similar drops if they reduced their marketing by circa 40%. What’s important for a non growth share is the profit, and it’s likely that this financial year we could be in line for record breaking profit, even with covid and a huge financial services provision and so I think their performance should be applauded.
Indeed. I’m buying in for the first time on Monday despite it being so high.
Web traffic increase in November Is unrivalled and its continued at an incredibly high level in December too, far far higher than October. I think they will have smashed it out the park with their online sales in the last quarter.
I wouldn’t worry about them taking the business private, they’ve had countless opportunities to do so over the years. With such a large holding they’ve always been on the cusp of 50% anyway, easily achievable.
I’m still of the impression they reviewed the market and other opportunities and couldn’t come up with any better than investing more at 57p which we all realise is a steal.
Then combined with the move to AIM for tax planning it’s a very shrewd move overall. All shareholders effectively benefit as they’re pouring a significant amount in to the business so as long as you took up your allocation you’re better off.
Just a few months ago people were fretting what would happen if the alliance brothers sold out with such a large holding, now they’re worried what would happen if they took private - can’t win it seems!
It’s easy to see the recovery and think it’s time to sell, but when you look at the fundamentals you realise it’s still massively undervalued.
Beggars belief how much this was oversold from the initial Covid drop when it’s such a solid company.
I see people’s concerns about brexit but actually a weak pound has a nice impact on the statements when converted. Still a strong buy in my eyes.
Covid cases increasing in america are a concern but not with vaccine in sight only short term, in fact the way this share got battered through lockdowns in England even though revenue Is relatively small here it seems people think the majority of the revenue is UK based so hopefully works in our favour.
Like those results - never expected demand to be largely recovered but nice to see an adjusted profit here.
Agree absolute steal of a termination payment. Hopefully see market reaction similar to stagecoach yesterday.
Great to see others doing well here just goes to show a bit of patience pays!
I’ve been in since 108 so currently 132% up but I’m not even thinking about selling yet, the rises seem incredibly strong even on days where the market or similar sector shares are down Menzies holds firm and squeezes out a gain.
I’ll first consider selling at about 300 although if that takes a while such that a vaccinated population isn’t so far away then be more than happy to hold longer to return to pre covid levels. Other covid recovery plays have scrambled for any debt they could get their hands on and yet Menzies is acquiring companies this week.. it should really come out of covid in a better position than it went in.
I feel like cash generation is key here and therefore the results are actually really positive, If it was the other way round and it was the case that sales weren’t down much but burning cash that would have been far more concerning in my eyes.
Given the cash generation this just seems like a solid covid recovery play, once the vaccine is here this should recover further and who knows may have picked up some additional e-commerce customers and the investment in that area is certainly a good move.
It has risen quickly but then again what hasn’t through this vaccine news, luckily I sold some when it was up this morning but not all. If it drops much further I’ll be topping up more to hold longer term.
Sadly I think you are right in part realism.
Definitely agree with the point that when the governance has been a shambles a company is no longer granted the luxury of only issuing a couple of statements a year. I agree the absence of an update is likely the cause of the fall the past few days.
The market demands more than that given the recent history and they really should be communicating at every opportunity (not through twitter!).
However it does look like they are taking the right steps regarding governance so they clearly do care about the shareholders but another few updates throughout the year would be well received.
If I was asking will there be a trading update stating we are ahead of expectations of course they wouldn’t reply to that.
However they can say an update is coming to no harm, and that’s all it would take. Leaves it up to your own judgement to infer whether it will be good, bad or in line with expectations.
Aim4, yes I do think they would answer that. I’ve emailed at least 50 companies in similar scenarios around upcoming sometimes unannounced trading updates and I’d say at least 40 have come back to me with an answer one way or another.
That said I don’t normally deal with Aim rubbish so may not be the same here.