Member Info for Pianista

CEO has just sold 165k shares at 282p to cover tax and NI on 340k share options. Happens a lot these days with nil cost share option schemes, so nothing to worry about.

Strangely enough, the RNS has not appeared on this website.

Ports - it's my turn to make a bad choice of words...when I said “going after everything”, I was merely trying to say they are going after business in both divisions, not just Freight - but not without paying attention to margins, of course.

Yes, the problem is not the disease, but governments' overreaction to it.

I imagine it's, at least in part, because the Foreign Office are still advising against cruise ship travel.

Ports - DX’s objectives for 20/21 were to increase the Freight EBITDA margin to between 8-10%, and to maintain Express EBITDA margin at >10% (source: 2020 Annual Report – a good read for anyone with any doubts or questions about the business).

So if anything Express has the bigger margins, despite the challenges of B2C in remote areas. They also claimed to have “retained B2C volume at commercially sensible rates”, so they are obviously aware of the need to avoid low-margin business as far as possible.

They’re clearly going after everything, Freight and Express, and they must be getting it right, because they are achieving spectacular results all round. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

If it were an RNS, I'd agree that it's not "news". But this is marketing, and good to see.

Ports - you expressed concern that “substantial capital is required to fund the growth plans which are very ambitious”.

However, they generally lease their premises and equipment, so there should be no major capital outlay. Any that there is I’d expect to be financed comfortably from the company’s own resources.

This is borne out by cash increasing in the year from £12.3m to £16.8m, an increase of £4.5m, despite opening more depots.

Furthermore, this strong cash generation has not been flattered by essentially VAT deferrals this year - the opposite in fact, because they must have paid back by the year end around £3m of deferred VAT (broadly, they are repaying £11m VAT deferred from H2 of 21/22 over 11 months from 4/21 to 2/22 inclusive).

...HFD is looking remarkably cheap, bearing in mind that, as previous lockdowns have shown, it wouldn't suffer like other retailers in the event of yet another one.

Did a dummy buy at around 8.10am. They wanted 35p for 50k, which I think indicates the way this share was going before the rot set in in the wider market. Since then, DX has held up relatively well, and is now moving back up - currently it's 33p to buy 50k.

Since PIs can buy shares in the company when trading begins, it would be strange if PIs weren't able to access the prospectus.

I assume it will be accessible on Microlise's website (nothing there when I checked earlier).

They were probably deliberately conservative with their £10m estimate in May: their expectation (or hope) at that time may have been nearer £12m, in which case the additional revenue in, say, the last 8 weeks - they may not have had figures for the week immediately preceding the May update - may have been in reality £4m, or £0.5m per week.

So if they were expecting £7m revenue per week for the company as a whole, they would have ended up achieving £7.5m, an increase of 7% in those final weeks of the year - not implausible given the unpredictable economic backdrop.

So today's the day. I wonder what the prospectus says about their plans...

To be honest, this should be smashing through 40p: with EPS knocking on the door of 2p, an undemanding P/E in the low 20’s is all it would take.

Today’s stock market bloodbath is obviously not helping, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the market’s sluggish reaction to the update prompts significant director and institutional buying over the next few days. We'll see...

See my last post.

ports - "In fact in the May update they outlined an increase in freight of 10m which turns out today at 6m with is quite a miscalculation. Fat finger syndrome."

That's not my reading of the RNS. They say "£6m higher than previously anticipated". The £10m increase to which they referred in May has now become, logically, part of what was "previously anticipated".

So the £6m is ON TOP OF the £10m increase reported in May.

Anyway, we'll soon find out...

Meanwhile in the UK, the Foreign Office has not changed its advice in relation to cruise travel, despite today being "Freedom Day", i.e. they are still advising against cruise ship travel.

"DX will significantly exceed existing market forecasts for adjusted profit before tax for the financial year ended 3 July 2021".

What more could be asked of a trading update?

Always difficult to predict short-term SP movements, but surely upper 30's beckons this week. I won't mention 40p, in case I scare it off.

Exactly, dc_2.

Looks to me like a bed and ISA.

Whoever it was must be expecting the SP to recover, so it's good news.

Even better if it turns out to be a director.

From Proactive Investors: "Microlise to join AIM. Microlise is a leading provider of transport management technology solutions, delivering a globally enabled SaaS platform that digitises the business processes of enterprise organisations running highly complex logistics operations. As at 31 December 2020, the Group had over 400 enterprise customers and over 500,000 vehicle subscriptions. Due Mid July. Offer TBA."