Member Info for Pmoran1969

Not me I’m pretty sure it will be cool but dry with sunny spells tomorrow with Wednesday being a bit more unsettled with periods of rain! It then again I suppose that depends on where you live :)

Bruce have you got the right ceasers? I‘m Showing them as $58 pre open And though the March low was about $7.50 so fexit’s figures look about right.

Owls - the point isn’t that we are not in profit it’s that wmh and what we expected them to do in the USA was the next opportunity and if ceasers get the business for an all cash offer of 272 a share that opportunity is taken away from us, the existing share holders.

It’s not a case of being greedy, I’m a long term holder of William hill so one could argue that I have supported them while they set up their American business and stuck with them when the fobt stakes were reduced and the profits tunbled. Yes I am well in profit here but in reality that’s because I bought more William hill shares to lower my average and I’m not the only investor who has done that.

So I’ve taken additional risk to continue to hold William hill at a lower price and at 272 a share I am in profit but do not feel that 272 a share rewards me sufficiently for that additional risk.

Now if I was offered 150 -200 a share cash and y shares in ceasers for every X William hill shares I own I would be up for that discussion!

What you have described is akin to winning £500 in your local William hill betting shop and then having your pocket picked to the tune of £300 on the way home. Should you graciously accept that you are still £190 up on your £10 bet or be angry that you were robbed?

Never mind the 364 bid in 2016 I understood ceasers we’re talking to William hill in 2019 and then it was a combination cash share offer that was being discussed. That only stalled at discussions stage because of the Eldorado ceasers merger.

It was a,ways in the cards that it would be in the table again in the future but to go cash only now kind of shafts the existing William hill share holders.

The done brothers will make a tidy profit and might get the U.K. retail portfolio at a decent price as a sweetener. The institutional investors paid 128 a share in the recent cash raise and one wonders how many existing ii’s took that up and whether anyone had whispered in their ear what might be on the cards given we are now supposedly in advanced discussions and ceasers have done their due diligence and the placement was only done a matter of weeks ago? Either way they stand to make a quick profit at a difficult time in the markets.

The whole deal has a slight whiff about it for me but being a glass half full guy even if the deal goes through on the terms stated currently I suppose I’ll make money on it and profit is profit. I can always buy ceasers or gvc shares!

Banana

If the offer is accepted your shares will usually still show up on the brokers web site but with a different ticker code (eg xt0235 rather than wmh) until the monies are paid out and then you’ll get the agreed offer price credited to your account.

Often when a deal has been done and all but paid out the shares will still be available le to trade at say 0.5 or 1p below the agreed offer price. When sky were taken over I sold my sky shares prior to the offer being finalised and paid out for something very close to the agreed offer price because I wanted the cash for an ipo that was happening at the time.

So what should happen is once the board agree everything with ceasers its then out to the share holders for a vote. You’ll get a message from your broker warning you that a new corporate action requires you to act. You’ll be offered to vote yes or no and after the close date the votes will be counted and what will be will be.

Hope that helps and by the way not a bad profit in percentage terms for your first foray into shares mate, hope the next one is as good for you!

Lim - I blame the new closing hours. If you’d have been able to stay out until 11 you could have managed another couple of pints and slept like a baby!!

Morbox, William hill has been driving me crackers!

I’m a long term holder who average down when we were sub 100. It left me with more exposure in a single share than my usual rules allow and I intended to reduce my holding once I was nicely in profit.

My average holding is 130 and when we hit 160 a couple of months back I decided not to sell any and wait and see what the next trading update told us regards USA. Quite painful to then watch us drop back down to a quid!

Of course I had the opportunity to take some profits a few weeks ago when we went back up over 150. But once again I decided to wait.

Now we are here and instead of congratulating myself for being such a clever bar steward I’m whingeing that it’s a cash offer and not a newco in the us that we get shares in and I’ve also got the added worry of how high might it go and might it come down if the talks stall? Some people are just never satisfied are they!

I’ve decided that as we are in strange times currently my maximum exposure rules can be furloughed and I’ve decided to stick it out. Granted the takeover may stall but I still believe William hill will kill it in the states and so even if they do and we go back down from 300+ 200ish I’ll ride the wave and see what happens.

The challenge will be can I stick to my new plan when the Shares are knocking on the door of £4 a week on Tuesday!

Business commentary article part2

unpaid “for seven weeks”.

Mr Kershaw forwarded the email to Mr Lyttle, who visited Leicester before Christmas. But, to Ms Levitt’s “surprise”, Mr Lyttle did not tell her of the email or the visit when she “interviewed” him. He says: “She didn’t directly ask me that question,” noting she’d already been given the full picture. But it looks remiss. And why did it take Boohoo so long to act? Verisio’s sample review of factories found that “35 out of 49” had “at least one non-compliance” over paying the minimum wage, while “42 out of 49” had safety breaches, such as locked fire doors.

True, Ms Levitt’s dressing-down isn’t reserved for Boohoo. She also criticises “inaction by the authorities”. Indeed, where were the HMRC, Health & Safety Executive or local council? And, as Boohoo notes, she did not find that it “deliberately” allowed poor conditions or “intentionally” profited from them.

But her conclusion that “in truth Boohoo has not felt any real sense of responsibility for the factory workers in Leicester” because “they are largely invisible to them” says a lot about the business presided over by executive chairman Mr Kamani, owner of a 12.5 per cent stake. And will fixing the problem cost only £10 million? Boohoo calls the report “an agenda for change in UK garment manufacturing”. It’s still got to prove its promises aren’t threadbare.

Business commentary article part 1

Boohoo has some explaining to do
Alistair Osborne
Saturday September 26 2020, 12.01am, The Times
That’s the thing with fast fashion: too quick to notice the damage left behind. For Boohoo, the report by Alison Levitt, QC, into the Leicester sweatshop affair tugs at countless uncomfortable threads. And they’re not all down to one of her more humdrum lines: that the group’s “extraordinary commercial growth has been so fast that its governance processes have failed to keep pace”.

No, read her 234-page report and it’s hard not to reach this conclusion: that the £4.7 billion online retailer, founded by Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane in 2006, turned a blind eye for years. Ms Levitt says she is “satisfied that by December 2019 at the latest”, the board “knew for a fact that there were some serious examples of unacceptable working conditions”, including “illegal low pay”. The hint is that the board knew long before that but preferred not to ask. As she puts it: “Boohoo’s monitoring of its Leicester supply chain has been inadequate for many years.”

Laudably, the board has published her damning report in full. And chief executive John Lyttle, brought in from Primark in March 2019, admits that the issues identified are “clearly unacceptable”. He’s pledged to put them right by next February’s financial year end, while beefing up governance with two new non-execs plus a “respected individual” to oversee Boohoo’s “change agenda”. It was enough to lift the shares 15 per cent to 374½p: a decent recovery from the 210p the shares fell to after a Sunday Times investigation left Boohoo looking far more Nasty Gal than Pretty Little Thing

Yes, by last autumn Boohoo had belatedly started looking into a Leicester supply chain that spans 500 factories, with 40 per cent of the togs made in Britain. Yet, even then Ms Levitt spots an “insufficient sense of urgency”. In September 2019, Boohoo put its legal chief, Tom Kershaw, into a new role as “director of sustainability”, responsible for the supply chain.

He hired Verisio, an auditor of working practices. In December, its boss Leon Reed emailed Mr Kershaw, identifying one factory as having “the worst working conditions that I have seen in the UK”. He said it “is not safe for the workers”, with other sites “significant risks to the Boohoo brand”. As Ms Levitt notes, they included “falsified wage records, no signed contracts of employment, buildings in deplorable conditions” and workers unpaid “for seven weeks”.

Article bigger than maximum allowable list so copied and pasted in 3 parts so read my posts in reverse order.

Hours
Auditors regularly found suppliers’ timekeeping books to be inadequate. The review cited a series of “anomalies”, such as employees shown not to be working on their timecard at one company in 2017, only to be present at a fire roll call.

Two suppliers subject to separate spot checks by Verisio this year were found to have “clearly falsified” their books. After one such check, in July, it was noted that “hours that have been recorded for the last three months are believed not to be accurately recorded”.

Conditions
Witnesses described conditions variously as “poor”, “unsanitary” and “horrible” but one — otherwise highly critical of their workplace — called it “clean and safe”.

Visits highlighted a litany of health and safety concerns, including toilets with a lack of paper, buildings in disrepair and locked fire doors. One site was said to be in a “deplorable condition”.

The report highlighted three suppliers checked late last year. At one, there was no “wholesome drinking water”. The managing director of Verisio said another had “the worst working conditions that I have seen in the UK”, concluding it was “not safe for the workers”.

Covid-19 and furlough
Some witnesses described increased staff and more overcrowding, no social distancing and a lack of hand sanitiser and facemasks, but others noted more adequate handling. Auditors found that “on the whole” suppliers had sanitiser and signs about distancing.

One supplier admitted to committing furlough fraud, claiming £50,000 of payments over six weeks despite their site not being operational for two. Another could not explain how it produced orders while staff were furloughed.

The review received no evidence, however, that its sourcing methods were responsible for the increased rate of Covid-19 infections in Leicester.

Alison Levitt, QC, was satisfied that Boohoo did not deliberately allow poor conditions or low pay
Alison Levitt, QC, was satisfied that Boohoo did not deliberately allow poor conditions or low pay
The £4.7 billion online retailer, whose brands include Pretty Little Thing, was founded in 2006 by Mahmud Kamani, 56, and Carol Kane, 53. It has grown rapidly by tapping into the appetite for fast fashion and listed on the junior Alternative Investment Market in London in 2014.

Shares in Boohoo rose 50p, or 15.4 per cent, to 374½p after it set out plans to tackle the review’s findings and implement its recommendations in full.

John Lyttle, chief executive, said that the board would significantly increase its scrutiny of suppliers and promised to ensure that the issues would not recur.

“This has identified significant and clearly unacceptable issues in our supply chain and the steps we had taken to address them,” he said. “But it is clear that we need to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance.”

Ms Levitt concluded that for too long the priorities of Mr Kamani, the retailer’s executive chairman, had been allowed to dictate company policy.

Checks exposed supply chain failings
Boohoo did “too little, too late” to confront issues within its Leicester supply chain, according to an investigation which the business itself concedes has highlighted “many failings”.

Spot checks led by Verisio — an ethical audit company which has been investigating Boohoo suppliers on the company’s behalf since late last year –— raised a series of red flags. At one visit last month, ten people left through a fire exit as auditors arrived.

Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane founded Boohoo in 2006
Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane founded Boohoo in 2006
JERRITT CLARK/GETTY IMAGES
Staff working on the review toured factories themselves this month. They have also spoken to current and former Boohoo employees, campaigners, MPs and journalists. Several dozen witnesses contacted the review online.

Pay
Workers at several sites claimed 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.

During one check this year, however, a supplier’s managing director admitted employees were receiving less than the minimum wage. He claimed this was because most wanted to claim benefits.

One witness said this issue was “endemic”, estimating that more than 90 per cent of garment manufacturers in one area of Leicester pay illegally low rates.

Hours
Auditors regularly found suppliers’ timekeeping books to be inadequate. The review cited a series of “anomalies”, such as employees shown not to be working on their timecard at one company in 2017, only to be present at a

Boohoo executives “knew for a fact” about illegally low pay and unacceptable working conditions within its supply chain at least seven months before professing shock over a Sunday Times investigation at a Leicester factory, according to a review.

Britain’s fastest-growing online fashion retailer acknowledged many failings yesterday and said that it would consolidate its list of approved suppliers in an attempt to reduce concern over its business model.

Alison Levitt, QC, found no evidence that the company had committed any crimes and said she was satisfied that it did not deliberately allow poor conditions or low pay, “nor did it intentionally profit from them”.


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She concluded, however, that allegations surrounding many Leicester factories “are not merely well-founded but substantially true” and that Boohoo had not felt responsible “on anything other than a superficial level”.

Ms Levitt was appointed by Boohoo in July to lead an independent review after The Sunday Times reported that staff within its supply chain were working in unsafe conditions at a site in Leicester that allegedly flouted social distancing rules while the city was in a local lockdown.

In a critical 234-page report, compiled over 11 weeks and published yesterday, Ms Levitt wrote that some Boohoo board members knew there were “serious examples of unacceptable working conditions and poor treatment of workers (including illegally low pay)” by last December at the latest.

Over the summer, when claims came to light about working practices within its supply chain, the company’s board said that it had been “shocked and appalled by the recent allegations”.

The review noted that Boohoo had previously sought to “examine and remedy” issues at factories, but said it had failed to move fast enough “particularly from late December 2019”.

The retailer “capitalised on the commercial opportunities offered by lockdown and believed that it was supporting Leicester factories by not cancelling orders but took no responsibility for the consequences for those who made the clothes they sold”, Ms Levitt found.

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Boohoo’s failure at any point to assess how Leicester’s workforce would cope with increased orders to meet higher demand during the pandemic was inexcusable, she said.

The review received no evidence, however, that its sourcing methods were responsible for the increased rate of Covid-19 infections in Leicester.

Alison Levitt, QC, was satisfied that Boohoo did not deliberately allow poor conditions or low pay
Alison Levitt, QC, was satisfied that Boohoo did no

Guinness with a share save scheme the rules are you don’t own the shares until you buy them and you can’t buy them until you reach the scheme end date (usually 3 or 5 years). So you don’t get dividends or can’t vote on issues and obviously can’t sell any until you get the shares at the end. Although all schemes operate along similar lines (I think there’s hmrc or fca rules that govern how they operate) there is some flexibility for individual company rules. For example most schemes state you must still be in employment to continue with the scheme but some allow leavers to continue to save and receive the saving bonus at the end but not have the option to buy shares. However some schemes allow a leaver to continue to save or to excercise the option to buy shares at the discounted offer price in certain circumstances such as Leaving due to retirement, redundancy or death in service. Theres also a minimum and maximum amount that can be saved monthly which I think is £5 and £500.

If the company were to cease to be a publicly traded plc the scheme would have to end and there should be published rules about how the individual scheme would deal with that situation. Of course you wouldn’t normally expect a companies shares to cease trading during the duration of a Share save scheme but if the company went bust, was taken from public into private ownership or it was taken over by another company that would result in that situation. Somewhere in William hills share save documentation there should be details of how such a situation would be dealt with.

It could be that the scheme ends early and employees have to stop saving into it but can take up the option to buy shares at the agreed discounted price with the amount they currently have saved a bit like the non fault leaver approach (retirement redundancy death in service).

Alternatively it could be that savings element of the scheme continues and employees are allowed to carry on saving for the agreed duration and receive the appropriate savings bonus at the end but would not be eligible to buy the shares because when the end is reached the shares would no longer exist.

I was under the impression that whilst individual employees cannot get their shares until the end of the scheme those shares do exist and are effectively held by the company as employee shares. If that’s the case then those shares are counted in the total shares in issue and those shares would have to be purchased by the new owner at the agreed price per share when they takeover. If that’s so then it would be perfectly possible for William hill to end the scheme early and allow employees to buy the number of shares their savings can buy at the early end date.

I hope all that makes sense I I do hope that any early closure of the scheme due to a takeover will be the more favourable (For you and Your partner) of the options above.

I would say scrutinise the companies share save documentation.

Good luck.

Glad I’m not the only one! Although I have to say boohoo had to settle for second place today. I checked William hill first! I notice that certain corners of the press are calling for our chairman and ceo to step down but interestingly the times piece this morning was relatively balanced.

Am I the only one who isn’t dancing naked round the kitchen celebrating? I have posted before about my biggest fear with William hill is that someone would come along with a cash offer effectively robbing us of the expected growth that the us gambling market will provide. I’ve held for a long time and added to my holding when the share price was depressed so I’m sat with an average share price around 130 in my isa and 80 in my sipp. I was concerned about a cash offer arriving at 50% premium to the sp when were we hovering around 100 but even at 400 or higher it will still be disappointing. Granted I will have more than doubled my money so I won’t be crying into my beer but I still maintain the us gambling market will be huge and I was rather hoping that at some point in the future I would be holding shares in both William hill plc and William hill USA rather than a cheque.

Remember folks it wasn’t the Sunday times, Archie whathisface or pooki fella who caused the share price to tank in July, it was an institutional investor dropping shares.

As has been pointed out on here many times the relatively small number of shares that retail investors buy and sell and the views and comments expressed on here and elsewhere have little bearing on the sp.

Granted the July sell off gained some momentum when private investors followed the sp down but it was still the big sla sell off that was the primary cause of the drop.

My view is that sla thought that boohoo customers and would abandon the brand and the resulting reduction in sales and profit and growth would drastically affect the share price so they wanted to be out first.

We have since learned (we think) that whilst a couple of woke influencers and some wholesale customers dropped boohoo their customers didn’t stop buying, quite the opposite.

The press can say and do what they want about the inquiry but as long as the customers don’t stop buying and as long as institutions continue to hold, add or get back in then the share price will go up.

If kitty is correct it would appear that some big buys today might be funds buying in or back in. Also it’s possible that there will be funds out there who would not object to boohoo on the strength of the inquiry results published today but would want to see actual evidence that customer demand hasn’t been affected by the initial allegations so if next weeks results prove that then maybe there will be more institutional investors after stock.

Add to that the American money that is supposedly looking for a home away from tech and what some consider to be an overpriced USA market. Consider also the conservative fund managers who wouldn’t object to boohoo based on the inquiry results but would want to see evidence that they are implementing changes recommended in the timescales recommended and I think there will be a number of chunky buys into boohoo over the coming months.

We might not see it jump from 350 to 450 over the course of a session but a steady climb over the next 12 months as non exec directors are announced, suppliers are dropped, new factory is communicated Middle East sales are announced etc is entirely possible and in my view probable.

Halifax Offering 374.4! Not a bad start to the day

In amongst all this excitement I’d like to take a minute to acknowledge steveknowsnothin’s choice of you tube video. Chose the original Norman greenbaum version as opposed to the doctor and the medics cheap copy from the 80’s. Cheap clothing is one thing but when it comes to music the original is often the best option. Although guns n roses version of dylans knockin heavens door Is a notable exception and would be my submission for appropriate music In the little something to get you Ready for 8am category!

I’m sure someone made an offer for William hill a few years back and I’m sure the board made reference to anything under £5 a share being too low to even consider. Someone posted a link to an article on here recently suggesting that ceasers and William hill might go for a new company in the us with both owning 40% and the remaining 20% being offered by way of an ipo. Under the current set up I believe ceasers own 20% of the William hill us business but this would suit neither party in the long run. If William hill us do exceptionally well because of access to ceasers customer base and the sports books they run in the ceasers locations the 20% that ceasers own would appear a bit light from ceasers point of view. Conversely if William hill do exceptionally well running online sports books or setting up betting shops in football stadiums and baseball parks etc In their own right and 20% of everything goes to ceasers that 20% starts to look a bit expensive from William hills point of view. The best and probably most lucrative option for both parties is to spin off a separate company that they both own equally and the suggested 40-40-20 split could just net them a nice cash influx in order to grow the fledgling company into a us betting giant. The concern for us (and the existing ceasers shareholders) is how would we be treated in such a deal?

Steveknows, re work today, I’m sure you must have a ready made excuse concerning bugs or requirement to test some new code before you can drop it or some issue with a complicated algorithm that mere mortals just wouldn’t comprehend that you can present that will enable you to keep your focus on boohoo and Tesla rather than work? Most programmers I’ve dealt with (my son included) have been adequate at hitting deadlines but they’ve been deadly when it comes to providing reasons for the ones they missed!! Lol. Hope Tesla works out for you.