Yes I agree with both of you but the banks aren't daft and although we aren’t privy to all the terms and conditions of this loan my guess would be that the £5m penalty if the conditions aren’t met are covered in some way from preventing them refinancing elsewhere?
Apart from which I just don’t see the need.
As announced in Sept they have already paid a big chunk off (£8Million) and possibly more since?
The big announcement I’m expecting (hoping for) in April is that the agreed £70m has been paid off ‘earlier than expected’ and an anticipated date for the resumption of dividends.
That announcement alone will bump the share price up big style.
Agreed but it must be remembered that back in April the BOD renegotiated a new financial package with the bank with strict conditions.
One of these was to pay back £70m (pro-rata) off the £75m Term Loan facility and the £50m CLBILS facilities before July 31st 2022.
Although the first payment was not due until the end of this month (Nov 30th) the facilities were structured to incentivise an early reduction and they have already paid off £8m!
Another condition was that no dividends will be paid until BOTH the Term Loan and CLBILS facilities have been paid off in full ie £125m.
So if the Bod manage to pay off the £70m by the due date of July 31st 2022 they will still have to find a further £55m before they are allowed to pay any dividends.
Personally I think they will pay off this debt early without the need of a cash raise and announce the resumption of dividends for 2023.
Providing of course there are no more stupid lockdowns.
Hope this helps.
Anything and everything was multi-bagging wasn’t it? ha ha I only remember the lion part of the name above because I remember my mate asking me why I was buying it i said it made me ROARRRR HA HA! True story.
Newly married with 2 kids in tow I lost everything and ended up with a loan. I could barely pay the mortgage so I got into real trouble and vowed I would never touch shares again and never did for 20 years and then along came Covid….
Crazy indeed! I didn’t realise you were an oap also Carlost!
I worked for BT and me and my mate used to cover for each other whilst the other nipped into the empty conference room to ‘deal’ on the phone.
I remember once trying to get through to the dealer on 2 lines so a phone on each side of my face whilst also keeping an eye on the door for a gaffa lol!
Got through on one of the lines and bought I think ‘lionheart’? (something like that) and just as I made the deal my mate burst through the door shouting it had crashed! ffs but luckily I was still in the queue on the other phone and the same guy took the call as I was shouting sell sell sell! Ha ha so funny now looking back. Lost a f huck ing fortune. Awful at the time but a great learning experience and great memories.
That’s also funny Carlost! This is a difficult game to make £ because the odds are stacked against us PI’s.
There is a finite amount of £ to go around and we are at the bottom of a very long queue. There has to be a lot of losers to pay for the odd winner. Most of my decisions have been absolutely terrible and I mean terrible. Has anyone here tried day trading? If you haven’t then my advice is don't ever and I mean EVER try it it’s an absolute nightmare. I’m old (like jedclampit!) so have loads of funny stories about my past antics. The dot com boom bust was fun before I lost everything!
So much of this is luck jedclampit and the bigger the risk the bigger the gain but that goes hand in hand with the bigger the potential loss.
I think (hope) we are in the right place at the right time here with Card.
Couldn’t believe how busy the Washington store was yesterday. Seriously busy. I counted 4 (yes 4) cashiers working away servicing a big queue of customers and all the aisles full of people but another Card shop I passed on the way home was completely dead so who knows?
Every day without a lockdown though is good news for sure.
Firstly a big sorrry to Yorkshireman for confusing him yesterday with my “Onwards and downwards” footnote on a post the other day. Anyone who reads this board knows that I’m in big and in lonnnng on Card and it was just meant in jest.
Anyhow moving on… it’s good to laugh at yourself isn’t it? and the other day I had a good belly laugh at myself snd here’s why.
I think it’s really really important in fact essential that you do your own research before buying a share.
Like no doubt everyone here I’m always looking for the next potential multi-bagger and about 6 -9 months ago retail caught my eye so I started ‘secret shopping’ at The Works ear wigging into staff conversations and watching purchases at the till. On the way to my best vantage point I used to pass The Card Factory and noticed this was actually busier. Opposite was a Shoe Zone shop so that also got my attention.
Months I staked these shops out before I invested.
Now here’s the funny bit.
Everyday I would join THE LONG QUEUE AT GREGGS dohhh to get my meal deal to go and secret shop at these other potential multi- baggers! ha ha
How THICK is that? Lol so obvious and staring me in the face.
Ha ha No probs!
Hey Yorkshireman I’m a Smoggy does that make me a Yorkshireman? I hope so. Gods Country!
My Uncle was from Easingwold and had a farm. I used to visit my cousin when I was a young man and he gave me the best bit of advice one day which I have never forgot… you must do this in broad Yorkshire accent.
He said “Rox one day you will get married and when you do make certain they can cook because they can all do tother” ha ha
What does ‘conflicting conclusions’ mean?
I know what it means but have I done that?
No don’t be sorry Yorkshireman it was a good question but I don’t see anyone here trying to fool anyone that’s all I’m saying.
I’ve just realised the 2000 posts in one year was relating to me! Lol.
Yes 99% of my posts are on Card because Card is 100% of my ‘portfolio’!
This is what happens to you when you retire early - Spend far too much time on boards like this trying to make more £ that I don’t even need.
When I’m not on here I’m secret shopping in Card shops! Lol
Hi Yorkshireman some of the discussion boards I’ve been on that has been a problem but I haven’t felt that with this one?
I can only speak for myself of course and I’m honest but I would say that! I always try to put a link or a reference to where I get my information from.
Most of my ‘research’ is from Cards previous RNS’s.
If you click on a persons name you can read their previous posts which helps.
Also remember to always to do your own research and take whatever anybody says here with a pinch of salt and never buy or sell on anyone’s recommendation.
Pandafund is correct. If you go to the top of this page and click on “Card Short Positions” then a new 0.5% short has appeared.
Doesn’t make sense to me?
Onwards and Downwards then ha ha
Could be wrong (usually am) but at the current share price there is considerably more upside to CARD than downside.
We all know that this business is seasonal and most of the profits are made at this time of the year so a Lockdown in Nov/Dec was always the main risk here so every day there isn’t one or even the likelihood of one we get stronger.
The other risk of course was the possibility of a cash raise but again the likelihood of this diminishes every day whilst these shops are open.
Onwards and Upwards.
Well spotted horiety I hadn’t picked up on that.
Ehtefaznaser (one of the posters on here who owns his own shop) mentioned that he had managed to negotiate a 50% rent reduction for his shop and suspected that Card would be doing the same and it looks like he was right.
All good stuff.
Onwards and upwards.
Not making excuses here because I actually agree with both of you but the likes of Moonpig and Funky Pigeon were designed from the bottom up to be on line.
CARD wasn’t and to keep risks to a minimum it needs to rollout and perfect the Group's new ERP platform before they take on any additional business.
I remember a little while back reading their website reviews and loads of people were complaining about Cards they had ordered online that were cancelled and even though they got their money back they were not happy.
They just haven’t got the infrastructure in place to handle a massive demand (that say a main stream tv advert would generate).
All of this costs £ which currently they just haven’t got but ….it’s all coming!!
and another thing…
If they have reduced the debt by £26.5m then ask yourself a question - which ‘debt’ would you service first?
Got to be the £70m - hasn’t it?
I’m guessing they only owe £43.5m on that now.
You heard it here first. Ha ha!
Yes Toplink my previous posts explain this in more detail but once the agreed £70m is paid back there will be a further £55m outstanding before dividends will be resumed but this will be announced early next year IMO.
Hi jedclampit yeah got to admit I’ve never been worried (yet!) about the direction of this share. It’s not over yet of course but I’m super confident of this being many multiples of were we are now. I don’t just think it’s going to recover to pre-Covid values I think it’s going to smash them figures out of the park and here’s yet another reasons why:-
Back in Jan just before Covid hit there was a trading statement announcing new retail partnerships:-
“In November, (2019) Card Factory completed the roll out of its agreement with Aldi to supply a range of everyday cards to 440 of its UK stores. We continue to see no cannibalisation of sales in existing stores.
The previously announced trial with Matalan continues, now covering 15 stores.
Further afield, the Group will this month begin the roll out of its card offering to The Reject Shop's 360 stores in Australia.”
Covid hit and world turned to s h 1 t.
We haven’t had any real benefit from these partnerships yet - but it’s coming and I believe that there are going to be new partnerships announced soon and lots more of them in the future.
Note Over 800 new outlets were announced above and this is just the beginning.
Again all in my opinion of course.
If you haven’t already done this then Google my subject header.
Copied from it.
“The business has previously been highly cash generative, with free cash primarily returned to shareholders through an appealing dividend.
Free cash flow averaged £84m per annum over each of the financial years ending January 2020, with £88m generated in the last of these, equating to a free cash flow yield of a whopping 33% at the current lowly valuation (£249m at 73p share price), or 24% based on an enterprise value of £359m.
Even in the 6 months to 31 July 2020 free cash flow was still a positive £13m, which was quite an achievement given the severe disruption for most of the period.“
Sales are 3% down to what they were in Jan 2020 which Equates to a share price now of 70p.
Very happy with this RNS.
Net debt has been reduced by £26.5m!
31st Oct 2020 £155.7m
31st Oct 2021 £129.2m
So comparing the last 3 months (Aug,Sept,Oct) to the same period pre-Covid :-
Average basket +22.5%
Transaction Numbers -20.9%
Resulting in -3.0% Sales.
So number of people out and about is less which is to be expected but basket size has compensated for this.
Onwards and Upwards.
Sharedealing isn’t it?
A little while ago I sold all my Saga shares and split my holding into 3 which I thought had better potential to multi-bag sooner.
Card, Wrks and Shoe.
After much deliberation I decided to pick one of them to go ‘all in’ and it was Card.
If i I had picked either of the other two I would now be considerably better off (and in the case of Shoe be +£150k up instead of -£70k down).
But and here’s the but… that’s short term thinking and it’s very easy to fall into that trap.
We all do it.
See other shares going up that we either sold early or ‘nearly bought’ and kick ourselves or wish we bought more.
Bizarrely I haven’t done this (yet!) with Card and still happy with my choice.
Fast forward to next year and I still think this is going to be head and shoulders above the other two and one of my best decisions.
Just have to be patient.