Member Info for Pmoran1969

Amdypandy even though you haven’t asked for it I’ll throw my opinion in anyway! I purchased in July when I thought they were oversold and at the time I, like you, was planning to sell out at £4.00ish. I’ve since decided to sell part of my holding (I’m more over exposed than I normally allow) but will leave some (will probably take the profit and leave original investment in place).

My reasoning is quite simply that I believe the bod will do everything in their power to get to the magic £6.00 figure and given how quickly they’ve managed to grow in USA (which I expect to continue given their tv viewing, social media and shopping has its are similar to ours) and the launch of their Saudi operation I suspect they will achieve this. Depending on how they achieve the £6 share price and how they do it (organic growth vs acquisition of another brand) I may do the same thing and take out the profit again at £6.00ish and leave the original investment in place.

The reason why I plan to take profits rather than let the lot ride is twofold. Firstly I have my own set of rules and am currently over exposed in boohoo so need to reign that in (thought I could turn a quick profit but got a bit greedy).

Secondly I do think there’s risk with boohoo. As the kids get older will they move from plt to coast or elsewhere? Will the next group of young people coming through want to be marketed and sold to in the same way and will boohoo keep current?

The slavery thing and the fact that the company knew but managed to ignore it and pay little more than lip service to the issues until they were effectively forced to engage Levitt remains a concern. I think they will probably implement the changes they need to and may even come out of it as shining light in the industry support g. Rit isn’t jobs post brexit while cleaning up the garment factories etc. However I still have a niggle that if they could get themselves into that difficult situation in the first place will they truly be able to grow up and be the corporate business they now are or will there forever be a touch of the Arthur Daley I how they approach things?

Whilst I think there’s great reward to be had I’d rather be betting with free money so to speak so if in 12 months the guardian or the Sunday times discover an issue in a boohoo supplier factory or someone uncovers an accounting scandal or some judge in the USA sides with a designer who claims they copied their design etc I will already have had my original stake back and then some so can afford for a few of my existing eggs in the boohoo basket to get cracked.

Anyone remember keith vaz? Mp who was all over the papers for offering to procure illegal substances for rent boys hed arranged to meet?

Anyone care to take a guess in which city his constiuency was?

I wouldnt worry too much about what some mp or ex mp has to say in a letter to major share holders.

It has long been my opinion that sla ditched boohoo because they thought there would be a movement from the customer base (the young woke snowflake brigade) to stop buying their products. They were wrong.

Around the time the times story broke an institutional investor was interviewed and said something alomg the lines of we are concerned about esg matters and have even discussed such things with the board before this story and whilst we know they are working on variouss issues we would wish to await the outcome of the independemt inquiry before we made any decisions.

There was no mass exodus following the story and no mass exodus following the inquiry.

There are clearly still some concerns regarding how the margins will stack up with the company commiting to making some changes and implementing the inquirys recommendations and its issues like these that will influence major share holders and potential big investors not mps having their moment in the spotlight or guardian journos twitter rants.

I dont profess to know what will happen to the share price and when but I do believe that if boohoo continue to sell at the rate they are in the uk and us and if they are successful in their middle east venture (and i have no reason to believe they wont achieve this) then profits will go up and the share price will either follow the profits or rise in anticipation ahead of them.

Im comfortably in profit here at todays prices but Im sticking around to see what happens despite the fact that the bod are on the hook to implement levitts recommendations, fear of christmas parties not happening affecting sales, margim being squeezed and marketing costs imcreasing ect.

Only time will tell if i am right.

Ajb please don’t take this the wrong way but you really do talk s.h.1te!

Don’t get me wrong there’s enough people on here that have silly opinions and depending on your point of view any one of us could be accused of speaking rubbish.

But in amongst all the differing opinions and arguing semantics I am undecided whether to have someone who simply talks poo is refreshing or not!!

You can’t trust a bookie to be completely honest and upfront any more than you can rely on Aiden O’Brien to tell you which of his 3 runners in a race is the most likely to win it!

By all accounts Fred done is well connected in ‘the city’ so is more than capable of mounting a rival bid with the appropriate support. There’s an element of ‘he would say that wouldn’t t he ‘ about this but it’s still keeping the hills takeover in the news.

Personally I was hoping for some comment from one or more ‘sources close to’ bigger share holders over the weekend indicating that they thought as much of the Caesars offer as we do.

If a denial from Fred is the best we can do then it doesn’t look great. I won’t sell because I am nicely in profit at 272 and would rather lose out on an extra 6/7p per share and vote no than walk away. However it should be noted that I have had my face punched and my nose bloodied on more than one (in fact more than two or three) occasion because of my refusal to accept something that I think is wrong.

All we need now is for Denise Coates to decide that she might fancy opening a portakabin in America!

Betfred denies planning to bid for William Hill

Ashley Armstrong
Monday October 05 2020, 12.01am, The Times

Sources close to Bet Fred, the bookmaker owned by the Done family, have scotched speculation that it is plotting a rival bid for William Hill.

William Hill last week agreed to a £2.9 billion takeover from Caesars Entertainment, the Las Vegas casino operator after rejecting a competing offer from Apollo, the private equity firm.

Reports this weekend claimed that Fred Done, the owner of Bet Fred, was planning to gatecrash William Hill’s tie-up with Caesars Entertainment but sources close to the betting tycoon insisted it was not correct. “Bet Fred is not making a rival bid...Fred Done is weighing his options but a full bid for William Hill is not one of them”, the company source said.

Mr Done, 77, is already William Hill’s biggest investor after spending the past two years building up a 6.1 per cent stake at depressed levels. He is now believed to be interested in adding William Hill’s estate of 1,400 UK shops to BetFred’s existing 1,500 shops after Caesars made it clear it was only interested in the company’s US operations.

William Hill’s share price closed on Friday at £2.78, higher than the £2.72-a-share bid by Caesars which typically indicates that investors believe a sweetened bid, or a rival approach, may be forthcoming. Caesars’ has said its offer is a 57.6 per cent premium to the William Hill share price of 172½p before its first approach for the British group. William Hill has previously attempted mergers with GVC Holdings, owner of Ladbrokes, and Stars Group, the operator of Pokerstars, which is now owned by Flutter Entertainment. It also tried to buy 888 Holdings before it was subjected to a takeover offer from 888 and Rank Group.

William Hill’s UK business has struggled even before the coronavirus due to the government’s clampdown on controversial fixed-odds betting terminal and in August the company said it would not reopen 119 shops after lockdown.

The move by Caesars will help propel its growth in a burgeoning US sports betting market, which is slowly been legalised across the country.

Intrepid/chancers @ 85% vs 5% those fantastic odds equate to 17-1.

I know thsts totally irrelavent to whats happening with wmh or the hedge funds but as we are owners of a bookie I couldnt resist converting to proper fractional odds! :)

You see that wierd stuff quite often between 0800 and 0815. Dont know what the cause is but its spurious data and you dont see the sp om here until 0815/0816 which is the proper 15 mimute delayed price.

If i want to know the sp i log onto my broker account and set up a dummy buy or sell to get an actual price.

-40% i bet you nearly spat your cornflakes out!!

What was interesting was the ceo of 888 suggesting that whilst they would be up for partnering with an American firm as the other U.K. bookies have done they were prepared to go it alone in America if need be. He also stated that they wouldn’t rebuff an offer if someone came knocking but would not consider a sale only a merger/joint venture.

When Unilever said they would move their current two hq structure to a single hq and a single share listing and that would be on the Dutch exchange it took a couple of days before major share holders came out with their comments. The end result was that Unilever didn’t even get to ask the shareholders to vote on the issue they just abandoned the idea based on the feedback they had from the big boys.

It will be interesting to see if Fred done, the hedge funds that have recently acquired or upped their stake or the existing institutional investors make any comment in the next day or so. That, more than anything else, will give us a clue as to whether this deal is as done and dusted as it appears to be.

Reads more like an article reporting the business news/facts than the attempted hatchet jobs of late.

Given it was the Sunday times that broke the original story today’s article would suggest the times at least are prepared to accept that the ‘scandal’ has been dealt with and life can go on.

Obviously the company are on the hook to do what they said and implement changes but there’s no reason to think they won’t do just that.

I look forward to the inevitable rns confirming appointment of the non execs and hopefully we will get something that will put the concerns raised in the q and a yesterday about will margin be affected to bed too.

I was a bit disappointed with the slight fall back yesterday. However as much as I would have been happy with a rise because results were better than what had already been priced in I was expecting a series of little jumps in share price as changes are implemented and updates are provided (and investor confidence grows) rather than the Big Bang some of us were suggesting.

Let’s hope this times piece is indicative of how the press will report on boohoo moving forward rather than the stuff we’ve been used to of late.

PART2
Responding to the questions, a spokesman for Boohoo said the company had “significantly increased the audit presence in Leicester through the services of compliance experts Verisio”, confirmed that “neither Boohoo nor Mahmud Kamani have any direct or indirect interest in any supplier in Leicester” and confirmed that it was “implementing all of the Levitt Review’s recommendations”.

City analysts at Shore Capital, the stock broker, said there had been “no fallout from consumers on the work practices exposé in Leicester”.

Times business section today PART1

Boohoo brushes off supplier controversy with bumper profits
Alex Ralph
Thursday October 01 2020, 12.01am, The Times

Boohoo, the fast-fashion retailer, has shrugged off failings in its supply chain to post bumper half-year results and raise its annual forecasts.

The online retailer reported a 51 per cent increase in pre-tax profit to £68.1 million in the six months to the end of August on revenues up 45 per cent to £816.5 million.

Boohoo has benefited from the accelerated shift to online shopping during the pandemic and said the strong trading had continued in September. It raised its full-year forecasts for revenue growth of between 28 per cent and 32 per cent, up from 25 per cent previously.

The upgrades were despite Boohoo planning for economic uncertainty in the second half, “including possible reduced consumer spending”.

It was also in spite of the publicity storm over Boohoo’s failings in its supply chain which triggered an independent review by Alison Levitt, QC.
Boohoo was founded in 2006 by Carol Kane and Mahmud Kamani, former clothing wholesalers who supplied high street chains before deciding to launch a website. Brands include Pretty Little Thing, Nasty Gal, as well as Karen Millen, Coast, Oasis and Warehouse.

The group’s largest market is the UK, accounting for 53 per cent of group revenues in the first half.

Yesterday the shares were down 14½p, or 3.7 per cent, at 375½p.

The findings last week of an investigation within its Leicester supply chain found Boohoo had done “too little, too late” to confront issues.

The allegations included workers at several sites claiming that they were being paid less than the national minimum wage. Auditors concluded they had “no reason to disbelieve” such allegations, but a lack of documentation prevented verification.
John Lyttle, chief executive of Boohoo, reiterated that the retailer had “established a programme to implement the recommendations of the report to make substantive, long-lasting and meaningful change”.

The retailer plans to strengthen its corporate governance through the appointment of two new non-executive directors to re-establish a majority of non-executives on the board, one of whom will be an environmental, social and governance expert. There are understood to be no plans for an independent chairman to take over from Mr Kamani, 56, the executive chairman.

The results were issued as Shadowfall, a short-seller, issuing a series of questions about Boohoo on social media, including asking “whether members of the Kamani family have had either direct or indirect economic interests in any supplier to Boohoo”.

Davidlaw - hear where you are coming from and agree that most businesses big and small have enough difficulty listening to their own employees and customers let alone some unsolicited advice from some expert they have never heard of. Hell I’ve worked for big businesses that have paid to have some consultancy firm come in for a particular task and have even struggled to listen to their advice!

I also appreciate that when it comes to share chat on here one would be wise to remember the words of Marvin Gaye “believe half of what you see son and none of what you hear”! However someone commented on here recently that they had suggested a particular individual would be a suitable influencer to the boohoo marketing team and was mightily impressed that said person was shortly after wearing or promoting boohoo on their social media feed. The two things may or may not be related of course.

Boohoo were criticised by levity for behaving more like a family run entity than the big company they have become so who knows they might just be the exception should you make an informal approach as a shareholder (who cares about their success) as well as as an expert. Worst that can happen is you get the usual treatment but what if they did listen?

I’m rather hoping people powers comment is confirmation that they won’t be buying here anytime soon.

I couldn’t cope with daily posts on here telling me to research research research and hold bwng in an isa for 20 years and It will make me rich!

Last friday afternoon mate! :)

Well I saw nothing on that presentation web cast that would knock my confidence in the company. Carol Kane is never going to have a career as an after dinner speaker but despite her lack of presentation skills she certainly reassured you that they know their inions when it comes to their customer segments and marketing.

I liked johns response to one of the questions when he suggested in the next couple of months they will have a distribution centre outside of the uk.

What was quite telling was the analysts questions were relatively benign and came across as though they were simply seeking reassurance/affirmation of what they already know.

I only got into boohoo on the back of the Sunday times story because I thought they were going cheap and i hadn’t decided what my exact exit point would be at the point of purchase.

I am sitting on a nice paper profit and whilst I can’t say I wouldn’t be tempted to take some profits along the way I am of the opinion that it will be worth my while holding on to a fair chunk of what I’ve got.

And for those of us who are not selling.......

https://youtu.be/gHjronXyeqI

No point speaking to steveknows Yet mate he will be too busy finding us an appropriate soundtrack to accompany the opening bell!!

Well that tells us everything we need to know about the board!

The only positive I can see is that 75% of share holders need to vote yes for the deal to be accepted so we can only hope that sufficient institutional investors are prepared to vote against it.

A lot of shares dropped like a stone early March when Covid and lockdowns hit. Boohoo was amongst them. Some shares have struggled to get back to pre Covid levels whereas others have comfortably got back there and some have even been as bold as to surpass their pre March levels.

Let’s assume for a minute that the rush to buy in and benefit from online sales was a tad overdone and that the highs of 430+ were a bit overpriced (we will never know if the share price would have traced back slightly because courtesy of them story’ the sp plummeted).

380/385 would be a fair rise beyond the pre Covid price and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that to some degree the expected results are priced in even at this price.

If results are considerably better than expected or an exciting announcement accompanies the results then a 5-10% rise could be a reasonable expectation. 410-420 share price on back of results.

Personally even if the 433 was a true indication of where this share should be based on great online sales and even if that had a degree of results priced in and perhaps would have took us to 470-480 on results day I don’t see that happening now.

The results of the inquiry were ok and the negative spin put on it by the press seemed to have little effect. However the company have a number of things they must do to satisfy he recommendations made by levitt and institutional investors will want to see these recommendations acted upon. There is sufficient risk to hold the share price back a little and rather than see a big jump up to and beyond our high of 433 on or around results day I suspect we will see a series of smaller jumps over the next 3-6-12 months as boohoo implement non exec directors, trim their supplier network, release plans of factory etc and in addition launch new collaborations or grow their Middle East/US sales.

I’m not saying we won’t get up to 470-480 and beyond but I just don’t think it will happen this week. I think we should have high expectations of this share and I see no reason why the magic 600 figure won’t be reached and before the deadline the board have been given but I reckon 410-420 on the strength of results would be a result. Beyond that i can see us surpassing 433 before year end and then it’s all about whether restrictions on going out etc impact sales and will The next results update push us up to or beyond 500.

That’s my tempered expectations outlook.

You can steal more with a briefcase than you can with a gun spurs!

So look at it this way, Caesars and William hill are already working very nicely together, William hill isn’t earning what it wants to in the U.K. and recognise that regulatory pressure is likely to affect the domestic betting market for some time. They also know that to expand at pace in the USA will cost money.

Caesars have seen their revenue decline slightly over the last couple of years (not including Covid) and recognise that online and off track betting is a massive growth market. They also recognise that to tap into that market takes money and expertise. They know they have the required locations to get the necessary licences to be able to exploit the opportunities but they also know that William hill name and expertise is a definite plus point in this area.

There are many ways that William hill and Caesars could work together to benefit both companies and both companies shareholders.

However one option would be to take over William hill plc and simply own William hill America outright.

Rather than hold a gun to the William hill board of directors heads perhaps Caesars is offering the existing board jobs in Caesars with appropriate signing on bonuses and share options.

It doesn’t matter if they ultimately get rid of the U.K. and European operation by selling it off on the cheap and it doesn’t matter if they put the old wmh board out of a job because the board still get the profit from the sale of their William hill shares and are Still left holding Caesars shares.

Caesars might still go down the route of spinning off the online and sports book business once they own everything and split their shares into the two companies leaving the ex wmh board with shares in both and profiting from the USA gambling industry without having to go through the hard yards of running the company.

And all the board have to do for such riches? Be minded to recommend an offer of 272 per share.

Hell the new finance guy from national express only started in April and stands to make half a million quid profit from his share in wmh at 272 a share and Ulrik has only been in the job for 12 months himself!

Owl might call me a whinge or a whiner, other might imagine that I am some mad conspiracy theorist.

Then again I might be of the opinion that if you think the board genuinely had the rich history and the future of the wmh brand and the existing share holders at the forefront of their minds when these advanced discussions have been taking place you are being a little naive.

Personally I think the last time a job like this was pulled off in Vegas Danny ocean had recruited somewhere between 11 and 13 people to help him pull it off!