Member Info for Pianista

To answer the doubters, they certainly had the clout in March to offer around 50p; and suing the ex-CEO doesn't need to and won't be allowed to get in the way of doing such a transformational deal.

Latest accounts for y/e 30/6/17 show a strong balance sheet with no debt.

And they made a healthy profit even after writing off all £5m of their R&D expenditure for the year, whereas TRAK capitalises it.

This bodes well.....

...and commiserations to Kestrel, who bailed out big time.

Once the offers, if any, are tabled, what is there to talk about? (Unless the best offer received is not a plain vanilla takeover).

It's just to keep making us all think, "This is it!"

A hostile bid would only make sense if at the end of the current process there is no bid acceptable to the BOD.

There may already have been several bids and re-bids from different parties, but not one acceptable to Flybe.

We won't be told until a bid acceptable to the BOD has been made.

All that mulling over of bids may take longer than the due diligence itself.

"reasonable, coherent post" - you've got to be joking, haven't you?

Just one example: if he glanced at the half year accounts, he'd see that the average revenue per customer is £60, not £50.

Sorry, I thought they cut it by 1.5p, because the total divi for the year was cut from 16.5p to 15p.

But maybe the dividend for this quarter would have been 4.5p, and with the actual divi being only 1.5p (not the same 1.5p as already mentioned), the cut was 3p, or £10.6m as you say.

That's good, because it makes it more likely that the divi cut is connected with a bid for Flybe.

If Stobart slashed their quarterly dividend because of their intention to bid for Flybe, it only saves them about £5m.

Not a lot, but every little helps I suppose. And they may be planning to repeat the cut.

I also think the RNS - the big one - could come sooner than we think. After all, it didn't take Stobart long - maybe a couple of weeks - to make an offer in February, and that was without the benefit of having the books opened up to them.

So they, or someone else, may already have made an offer, which Flybe are mulling over.

And for Virgin and BA, the main value is in the slots. They don't need to pore over the books of Flybe to evaluate them.

So I think it would be dangerous to be out of this one at the moment.

Correction: Flybe itself has officially confirmed that there are several interested parties. That is not speculation.

These interested parties are now being reported in the press as definitely including IAG and Stobart, whereas before it was "understood to be" or "thought to be". This reflects the fact that, in the real world, over time information is bound to leak.

Furthermore, the wording of the Virgin confirmation says no more or less that you'd expect: if they are champing at the bit, they aren't going to admit it. However, their thinly-veiled lobbying against IAG thro' the Economist indicates just how serious they - and IAG - are about bidding.

So the turnaround is happening, albeit not overnight....

I suppose we are all waiting for something concrete, like a decent set of results for the half year to 31/12/18 in Feb/Mar 2019.

I think though that the patience of the remaining PIs - who I reckon only account for about 20% of the shares these days - will be rewarded.

If there is any consolidation in the sector, it seems unlikely to happen until after the interims when DX will have more bargaining power.

If the FT's report that "Stobart is pursuing the purchase of Flybe" is just plain wrong, you'd expect a correction from them, following a complaint from Stobart or Flybe to the effect that there has ben no official announcement of this.

"is pursuing" is a lot different from "is understood to be pursuing"

Isn't it that MAEL was in trouble, so tried to demand payment from Flybe (and presumably other airlines) upfront.

Flybe resisted, and MAEL terminated the contract. So no reflection on Flybe at all.

"All there is at present is a public expression of interest from one party". Wrong! Flybe itself said on 14/11:

"The Company confirms that, at the time of this announcement, it is in discussions with a number of strategic operators about a potential sale of the Company".

In addition, there have been some very credible press reports pointing to IAG as being one of the interested parties.

There has also been some thinly-veiled lobbying by Virgin against IAG in the Economist etc - so even if you personally don't believe that IAG are interested, Virgin certainly do.

As regards Vueling, you say it had net assets of 800m euros. Actually that was its TOTAL asets. Once you take off liabilities, the equity was only about 240m euros, half (or to be precise 54%) of which is 129.6 m euros, so if BA paid 130m euros for a half share, that looks almost spot on! Also, I don't think slots would have been a factor in that deal.

Old news. And regarding "valued at around £25m", fake news, repeated.

Clearly you don't need a brain to be a journalist, just the ability to cut and paste.

But shareholders wouldn't vote through a Virgin equity stake if a more generous takeover offer from IAG was also on the table.

I didn't say which Christmas.