Member Info for Pmoran1969

Smokinjoe- we could discover a vaccine that would eradicate covid world wide by a week next Tuesday and smithy would be on here posting that Jeff bezos is stepping down from amazon to concentrate on space flights so that will be the death of airlines!

I get the impression that in a previous life he could probably be found leaping around the castle banquet room playing a lute wearing a hat with bells on it.

Town - you won’t be the first person to say that about me and I doubt you’ll be the last. But like I said regardless of what the perceived drop in efficacy is if the Vaccines meet the WHO criteria I’m cool with that and more importantly if the govt are looking for a drop in cases, hospital admissions and deaths and approval from science then it doesn’t matter what the percentage number assigned to some vaccine is it just matters that the numbers get hit and the scientific advice i
Supports an end lockdown. And current indications are that cases are falling, and hospital admissions and deaths are set to follow.

So like I said I shall be keeping my marstons shares. Just out of interest do you even have any or are you just doing your usual trick of rocking up on a board to talk ****** and try to wind people up?

Town - the times. As for the effectiveness I’m cool with whatever the WHO consider viable so as long as the vaccines being produced meet their criteria I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it.

Dan this is going to sound a bit strange given that we are a clothing company but I don’t give two hoots about fashion or clothing brands outside of our own stuff appearing on Debenhams at the moment. And if I’m honest I don’t think there’s a fashion brand that Debenhams stock currently that wouldn’t have some sympathy/empathy with what happened to us last year because let’s be honest it’s probably happened to them at some point too.

However the big move for us in the immediate term is to capitalise on the beauty products and the 1.4 million beauty club members. That proposition only works if we can stick all the big names that Debenhams currently have. It’s the Este Lauders I am concerned about because they are a precious bunch and brand means everything to them so if they said no you can list our product it would be a serious blow as far as I am concerned.

Splice - John Lyttle said at the presentation that beauty brands would be done on a wholesale basis so boohoo will buy them and look after the customer fulfilment. Neil Cato more or less said that initially the Debenhams market place would be stocked by all of our brands along with the Debenhams owned ones.

Dan - are you suggesting that boohoo owning the Debenhams brand shouldn’t be an issue for any of the brands?

I think we are starting to put the slave wages supplier issues firmly behind us and the work we have done to put in place the levitt recommendations and the appointment of levesson and kpmg should go a long way to proving that we are serious about our agenda for change.

However there are aspects of the press that cannot help but mention last years problems every time they report anything about boohoo. Only this week someone on here was talking about the fact that boohoo were effectively blamed for job losses at Debenhams whereas there was no such suggestion concerning ASOS’s purchase of topshop.

As share holders we can chose to jump ship or we can take the pragmatic view that ultimately we will overcome this and the press will start to report us in a fairer manner and portray us in a more positive light.

But for brands that are sensitive to such issues there is a possibility that they would chose not to work with boohoo until they are absolutely convinced their association with us will not impact on their brand. I’m not suggesting that we want ASOS next or amazon to start restocking us again but they dropped us in July last year and they haven’t come knocking since and neither have standard life Aberdeen. Our auditor left and supposedly cited they wanted to avoid reputational damage which whilst a bloody cheek given the skeletons that had previously been extracted from their closet it was still reported gleefully by some of the press and it still impacted both our share price and our reputation.

So I would say there is a risk that brands may not wish to list with boohoo.

Town, that you disagree with me doesn’t surprise me in the least. That the efficacy of the vaccine has now gone down from a published 60% to 50% by the time you responded to my post does!

Fact is we just don’t know what will happen so as always have to go with what we think we know. I shall be keeping my marstons shares on the basis that I think the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t another train in its way to wipe me out. By all means you sell yours if you think we are in for 12 months more of lockdown and pubs being closed.

I usually find the questions the analysts ask to be useful at these types of presentations and if I recall correctly they were asked about how margin would be effected by the marketplace and Neil said volume would be so small as to not affect us and also don’t forget most of the brands on it will be ours . There were also a few questions about the beauty brands along the lines of have they agreed to come across, will you have the worldwide rights to sell and also a question over whether Este Lauder who had recently announced that they would be closing their concessions in Debenhams would still be on Debenhams.com. I believe we also announced that it was predominantly the beauty team that we would be bringing over from Debenhams to continue with the existing brand relationships and we confirmed that our beauty offering would be managed on a wholesale basis.

Regardless of what the slides and presentation announced my general take away from it was we’ve bought Debenhams which gives us however many million shoppers visiting every year and we will have one place for all our brands (although we will still retain the pure play web offerings) and we will be adding beauty to it.

I think the reference to home ware or sports and the fact that it would operate like amazon or zolando was more of a pitch as to how it could work if it develops over time but it was evident from the questions about customer experience and returns that we hadn’t really thought through the marketplace element of Debenhams whereas we were very clear on the issues around putting our brands in there along with beauty and keeping the existing suppliers for the Debenhams brands as well as also using our coast and Karen millen suppliers who John made a point of distinguishing as being different for our high quality brands than the young fashion.

In short my take was that the marketplace stuff was a taster of where we could go but it was a way off in the future and bear in mind it was a much sexier message including this element than a presentation that simply said we’ve bought a web site and its lucrative traffic along with a few of Debenhams own brands for £50 million.

Let’s not get carried away too much with the significance of vaccine mutations folks, they are a perfectly normal thing that vaccines do and whilst there is always a possibility that a new variant could mutate enough to become resistant to a vaccine there is no indication that this is the case with what is being termed the South African variant.

The Kent or U.K. variant had a change to the protein spike (the method a virus uses to attach itself to our cells) and this made it easier to transmit/catch. The South African variant is similar in that it too has a different or amended protein spike but the significance of this one is that it makes the virus more able to bypass the antibodies in the host. That means that if someone previously had the virus or has received a vaccine to protect them from the virus the South African variant will be more successful in attacking the host than either the Kent or the original covid variants. That doesn’t make it more deadly and the tests that moderna did on the various vaccines suggested their vaccine was 90% effective at stopping original covid variant, 80% effective on the Kent variant and 60% effective on the South African variant all 3 results being within the WHO guidelines for acceptable protection.

So you might have had covid or the vaccine but could still catch one of other of the various variants knocking about but you will still be sufficiently protected so that you do not fall seriously ill or need to be hospitalised.

The problem is that mutations are a natural process for a virus that are essentially accidents or mistakes that happen when it replicates and the only way for a virus to mutate in this way is when it finds a new host. So if the South African variant were to mutate again into the let’s say Walsall or the Surrey variant what if that one develops in a way that renders a vaccine ineffective? There’s no evidence to suggest that it either can or will mutate in way that would render the vaccines useless given the knowledge we have about the way covid viruses work but it would be folly to assume it can’t do so because let’s face it we are still learning about this particular strain of covid. So the sensible thing to do is to try to stop the South African variant from spreading as much as possible thus preventing the opportunity for it to mutate.

So maybe not quite as doom and gloom as it would appear but essential that we test as many people as possible in those areas where we know the SA variant to exist to stem the spread.

Rag, some years ago I worked for one of the big catalogue companies. They did branded and own brand, fashion and home wares and had their own warehousing delivery company and returns s processing warehouse, I have a friend who works for very and in a lot of respects not much has changed in terms of the processes. Granted things are quicker and slicker but in terms of the actual process of ordering by season, photographing goods or clothes on a model, putting stuff online (the new catalogue) picking and lacking , delivering to customer and processing returns and so on.

In the case of bigger home items such as beds couches dining tables and the likes you can either order and but by the container load and treat items the same as your fashion offering. Or alternatively you can place an order to go direct to customer which may have a relatively lengthy lead time but has the advantage of you never having to touch the product and simply collect the margin. I would imagine that would be our favoured route should we start offering these items. However this could well be an area that is ripe for the commission type model when you consider furniture producers are running out of places where they can sell their wares and are probably not able to set up the whole online sales.

Electrical and white goods start to get a bit more complicated because whilst a manufacturer might want a relationship with a consumer for after sales care they are often not set up for direct to consumer delivery so you’d be looking at wholesale and these items take up a lot more space and cost significantly more than fashion - if it were me I wouldn’t want to bother with it or would be after a third party relationship (if I had the customer base I’d consider white label type operation with someone like AO given they do/used to do similar for boots). If it was our desire to offer these we might just have to accept that we are not going to make significant margin on them or we are not going to be as competitively priced as some suppliers but if it makes customers sticky (I go to Debenhams for everything) might be worth it.

As for pots and pans and towels and cushion covers etc you either need a white label set up with dunelm or similar and treat like white goods or you need to wholesale and personally her is where I start to want to follow the french village high street model where the tabac sells cigarettes, the Boulangerie sells bread, the Boucher sells meat and I’m not going to try to spell where you get your salami from but you get my drift, at some point boohoo debenhams will have to decide what they are prepared to be experts at and if they want to be like next or very they will have to get good a buying outside of just fashion but it may pay them to stick with and grow what they know with beauty and accessories being the extent of the add on. We still have baby and kid wear to go at, after all our fast fashionistas of today will be the mums of tomorrow!

So i have no wish to add petrol to the embers here but I think we are missing a trick.

We bought debenhams to try to attract new customers to our existing brands and because we saw the value of the beauty offering as much as anything else. I would argue that we can already do the fashion stuff so if that means reviving mantaray or principles or if we buy burtons and dorothy perkins we can make it work but the debenhams site already having customers of a certain demographic is particularly useful for growing our new brands (coast etc).

But beauty gives us a nice new dimension to our range even if we have to go down the wholesale route to be able to offer key brands. Maybeline or loreal alone isnt going to cut it we couls just bang a bit of that onto our existing we sites as we already do. But bobbi brown, clarins elemis and the like would be of particular importance in attracting amd maintaining a certain tyoe of customer. So if este lauder are prepared to continue to sell via boohoo debenhams that will reassure me that we are getting over our esg issues, we can do quality product and frnkly i dont care if we do them wholesale or on a comission basis. But if they wont stock with us then the beauty club members and existing beauty shoppers will simply go elsewhere for tgeir product (lot of brand as opposed to retailer loyalty in beauty).

Just like debenhams or john lewis were often the key retailer in a shopping centre i see the biv beauty brands as key to making debenhams. Com work.

As for fashion i fail to see why addidas would come to debenhams and do the direct to consumer fulfilment themselves (even though they can) and pay a comissio.for debenhams when they do wholesale with jd sports. Doc martens on the other hand who now need to grow sales to meet share holder expectations and also have ability to do direct to consumer they might see access to nasry gal or plt customers as worthwhile on a comission basis.

Will debenhams attract brands? Perhaps the question given how protective of their rephtation brands are is will brands allow bohoo debe hams to stock them?

I hold and am excited about what debenhams could become but i am not blind to the challenges that we face botg in terms of shedding the poor esg reputation, being able to manage fashion outside the test and repeat model or being able to scale up the test and repeat model for all our bramds and the job of distinguishing each brands identity and customer proposition especially if we do buy burtons etc. I beleive the board can deliver but it wont be as simple as jl saying platform a couple of times on a conference call and levesson issuing his first report.

Platinum could hoover up shares until they get to the point where the legally have to make an offer.

They could put in a formal offer at £1.05 or more and force the board to inform share holders.

Or they could do one.

I suspect they are interested but in typical vc style they dont want to pay anywhere near the full asking price. Two earlier low ball enquities thrown back at them and now this £1.05 descrbed as grossly undervaluing the companies worth should either send them packing or make them be more realistic.

The board didnt release a statement that said weve just entered into a new and exciting jv with carlsberg, have added to our suite of top quality pubs with the bains deal and are supremely confident that pent up demand, the long range weather forecast suggesting a hot sunny spring summer and a shed load of planned promotions on food and drink will have us cooking with gas this year. I read their response as we might be for sale but not at £1.05 mate!

I suspect the share price will remain faiy static and in the next week or so platinum will anmoumce they are not interested or will make that formal offer.

Tricky - a most admirable stance regards ethical investing but personally I look for growth and dividend from my investments and leave it to someone else to regulate what’s legal or acceptable. I decided many years ago that at least you knew upfront that a bookies sole objective was to take your money off you so what makes Barclays or Lloyd’s more ethical than William hill or Ladbrokes? I am happy to invest in pubs or alcohol producers even though if their product is abused it can cause ill health and even death but I am also happy to invest in tobacco producers whose product if used as directed is pretty much guaranteed to cause I’ll health and even death. I’m not sure if my investments in big pharma is enough to offset my investments in alcohol land tobacco any more than I think my investment in green energy offsets my holding oil and airlines. Even Unilever has had its issues and my investment in associated British food effectively includes the fast fashion retailer primark along with British sugar who to my knowledge are the biggest producer of cannabis in Europe! Trying to find shares that will stand a chance of giving me growth and dividend is hard enough, trying to find one that does it ethically would be a nightmare.

That said I do give to charities, try to be generally a nice person, have no issues with vegans or environmentalists (as long as they aren’t lying in the road stopping me getting where I am going) and like I said admire anyone who can make ethical investing work for them.

If this platinum lot make a formal offer over £1.05 and it’s put to the vote I’m pretty sure I’d be a no. If I’m honest I think the board can get us to £1.00+ fairly rapidly once we are out of lockdown but it’s only once we are out of lockdown that we will feel to true extent of business failures and the associated unemployment and we already know we will need to pay for the govt support/borrowings so it’s possible that there may be additional taxes on alcohol or other taxes that affect the disposable income of our customers. So if they came in at say £1.30 I might be tempted to take my jam today.

Peaks - I don’t disagree with your point that a lowish offer that Is above current sp but is rejected by the board might still leave the sp where it is currently or it could even raise it as people speculate about how high platinum would be prepared to go.

But taking into account fairdealers very valid points about this all merely being speculation at the Moment and platinums shrewdness if the board tell them where to go and they were to show an interest in m&b instead then I would expect the sp to drop back to where it was pre offer.

I guess the point I was making when I said perhaps the first indication might be a significant move in the sp was more to do with the fact that invariably things have a tendency to leak out and be reflected in the share price, as they appear to have done on Friday, prior to comms being released.

Good point brightly. One can’t help thinking that we would be at risk of a speculative takeover if we were majority owned by institutions and retail investors.

I do think we need to see some rapid movement towards our ‘new world’ in order for the share price to shift. If topshop are integrated into ASOS and Boohoo relaunch Debenhams online in the next couple of months and we are not seen to be making progress then I fear it could have a detrimental impact on the SP.

Unsolicited offer made to the board who are reviewing it. It seems that the market got wind (don’t they always) so on Friday as speculative share purchases pushed up the share price the board issued an rns confirming that an approach had been made.

No mention of price from the board. No speculation as to the price in U.K. or US press over the weekend and no further rns from the board this morning prior to market open. So what the offer is and what the likely reaction will be is pure guesswork at the moment.

I’m not sure what to make of that. Could it be the offer made was on the lowish side so the board are formulating an outright no response? Maybe the offer is sufficient to prick the ears of shareholders but, in the opinion of the board, doesn’t take enough account of our future value? Or perhaps the offer is generous enough for the board to recommend it to shareholders but they need a day or two to pop over to Copenhagen and work out how such an offer would work with our new partners?

So now we wait and see and perhaps the first indication we will get that anything is about to happen will be a jump or slide in the sp.

Rishi has his work cut out to rebalance the tax books because whether we like it or not closure of businesses reduce the tax revenue. There’s too much complexity and hidden taxation in our system and the recent mass closures on the high street will expose some of those issues. Take Arcadia group as an example. Philip green pays massive dividends to the owner (his wife) who lives in Monaco so pays no tax, the stores pay significant business rates so we lose that tax revenue as stores close and then there’s the whole paye tax and nI that will no longer be collected from the employees. Of course one has to then consider the number of employees who were in receipt of low wages so actually paid very little in the way of paye taxation and in some cases will have been in receipt of tax credits or other benefits because of their low pay. There’s also the cost of keeping employees on the books through furlough during the pandemic for a company that we all knew (thought) would fail to survive for very long anyway regardless of the pandemic.

Raising income tax would be difficult to do given the election promises the Conservative party made so even if Rishi could get away with the ‘need to support the Nhs ’ argument any rise in traditional paye taxes in the near term would be minimal. It might seem sensible claw back the lost business rates etc by introducing an online sales tax but If one assumes that the number of items sold online in total will be no higher than those sold on the high street and the shift to online is merely a change in shopping habits how high would that have to be? . Of course from the other angle one has to consider the desire to either save what’s left of the high street or to reinvigorate the high street which puts pressure on reducing current business rates etc.

I really would not fancy Rishi’s job at the moment because even increasing the traditional sin taxes on alcohol cigarettes and oil will cause significant backlash given the forced closure of pubs restaurants and travel and increases in taxes could exacerbate their issues.

I can see a reintroduction of betting tax perhaps alongside an nominal online tax as these would be easy enough to justify but I doubt they will plug the gap. If anything perhaps it’s time for a proper overhaul of the tax system but that’s a lot easier to say than to do.

Parsley2. Something might well be brewing but the NFU position is not a new position taken out as a result of the possible take over they are merely reporting what shares they already have.

As I understand it anyone with more than 1% of the shares in a business need to declare their holdings when a company is subject to a possible takeover stating what their position is at the time of the initial offer so we should expect to see a number of these declarations over the next few days.

William hill was different in that they had a solid reputation and a decent foothold in a market that was set to grow exponentially over the next few years as individual states legalised off track gambling. William hill share holders felt robbed of the growth opportunity its that was available to them and rightfully so in my opinion .

The opportunity facing Marston’s in the next five years isn’t perhaps as compelling as that which was facing William hill and whilst I have confidence that they can get the share price up to the £1.50-£2.00 level and Be paying a decent dividend in the next 12-18 months it won’t be without its challenges.

I held with an average of just shy of 50p until today when I added bringing my average up to 68p. I figure we could get an offer around £1.20ish and could potentially push higher than that if more than one bidder gets involved. If there’s an offer at that price I would probably be comfortable. If it’s less than £1.00 I’d be equally comfortable holding and waiting for the sp to get where I expect it to.

I think the problem will be that there are undoubtedly a lot of share holders who have got in at lower prices or long term holders who have averaged down so anything over £1 could well be acceptable to a sufficient majority.

Longtime - so by that calculation our true worth per share net of debt is circa £1.60? Taking into account I’d want a discount if I was the buyer an offer of Say £1.30 per share would still seem a reasonable price to pay on that basis.

I appreciate there’s a whole bunch of what if and ambiguity at this stage but I’m surprised the sp Hasn’t settled closer to the 97 pence it hit earlier than the 87 pence it is currently.