Member Info for Scribbler

Had a holding here since 3p in 'old money', and as I look total capital destruction in the face I can't help but wonder if this share has been deliberately driven down to sell at a low ball price. The management are lazy, incompetent overpaid troughers with no sense of responsibility to shareholders for sure, but with the cash in the bank the company has to be worth more than $7m. Never seen anything like it in all my years of investing. The good news is, it's the last share I'll ever buy on AIM.

Simon Fuller gone - sounds like he was pushed. New chap in from ITV.

Talks back on with NUJ and Reach have until Tuesday to avert the strike. We have to hope it’s a serious attempt at a settlement and not merely a ploy to avoid disruption over the bank hol, a busy time for a volume digital publisher like Reach, otherwise we holders won’t see an end to this soon. The first ballot was so emphatic it’s not difficult to see a second going through, and the effect of this should not be underestimated because there is no army of freelancers out there waiting to replace the journalists who walk out, so millions of page views stand to be lost. I’m all for prudent spending but Mullen and Fuller haven’t got a particularly strong hand here. They’re saying they’ve got no money to sort this but they’ve just raised the divi, which not only gives them another rise through the back door but was going to double digits all by itself, so I would rather they had spent that money settling this as an LTH. They’ve just created seven roles covering women’s football, sorry, that won’t get eyes on screens in serious numbers, it’s a gesture. They are always advertising roles they now can’t fill, because of the wage issue. They’ve expanded the board with another two crony NEDs. So all this says to staff is ‘we’ve got money to spend, but not for you’. That’s a ticket to militancy in this business, where you have a combination of old hands who like their titles but don’t like Reach, after years of pay freezes at their end, and low paid leftie grads. At this stage I have to ask myself what are the board thinking. As far as I can see the only thing Mullen has brought to the table is the plan for newsletter sign ups, which isn’t rocket science, pretty much everything else is Fox’s legacy or from the editorial side of the business. Mullen hasn’t stopped money draining to Google and FB, he’s still giving away content you could charge for hand over fist, he’s wrecked the relationship with staff in a way even Sly Bailey and Maxwell didn’t manage, the sp is flirting with the lows of the pandemic and along with the Dweedledum of a CFO he’s charged us £7 mil for it. September folk are back from hols, back in their digital routine so this needs to be sorted by the end of the month otherwise shorters will have a field day.

Up to 1,100 journalists out, two days in August, two days in September, plus two days of work to rule. Not happy with Mullen and Fuller for letting it come to this.

They've made such big rod for their own backs with that payout as its an invitation to shareholder revolts and strike action to add to all the other challenges. It's a well unionised business and NUJ members are not going to accept 3 per cent while the management have taken 600 per cent. That said, in spite of management complacency on this, this is a very resilient cash generative company which knows how to adapt and will rebound when the wider market outlook improves. The divi is looking inviting again so I will definitely picking up more. The only question is when. I would much rather see cash used to settle this wage dispute than on buybacks though. Industrial action is an underplayed risk to shareholder value as newspapers run on an enormous amount of goodwill and targets won't be met without it. Even work to rule would be disruptive.

Don't want to sell at the lows, but what is low with this share? It could go so far down that you end up clinging on to get a penny back, with all the opportunity cost and capital destruction that brings. Or the other scenario is that the investor gets shaken out at a penny, some big fish accumulates, and then the price is then driven up to the real value? I've been in since 3p and it's been a complete disaster. Sick of UK companies that exist purely to provide the directors with a lifestyle. No wonder so much in the country seems to be going down the toilet.

What to make of the new push into youth content they've announced. It feels like dad dancing to me. Is the plan to go up against YouTube and TikTok? Because young people don't pay for this type of content. Reach sites have enough fluffy stuff as it is - whose ad spend are they trying to chase, not Boohoo/Nasty Gyal surely? Just feels to me like they run the risk of alienating those readers who would pay for quality content by dumbing down further. Are they going to do yet more recruiting of cheap young graduates to produce this or are they expecting old hacks to switch from writing about court cases to talking about TikTok? From the union activity you don't get the sense staff will take well to yet another change in strategy. Plus it's going to take serious spend to make this work and Fuller is tight. Would much rather see them focussing on monetising the huge audiences they already have by charging for quality content but maybe that's just me. Interested to know what other holders think?
https://www.reachplc.com/news/2022/david-higgerson-promoted-to-executive-committee

Too busy lining his pockets along with Fuller. They have the threat of industrial action to deal with now too. And why wouldn't they? Taking 600 pc and asking staff to take 3 pc in this climate is a recipe for trouble.

Let's hope so C. It's the opportunity cost that's the problem. Quality names on sale on both sides of the pond, US gas and oilers paying decent divis, and I've got thousands tied up in the likes of this and COPL. Vowed they will be my last small UK oilers, as too many are just not shareholder friendly enough. The good news is SENX remains a very compelling value proposition. Just one that hasn't been reflected in the price for TOO long.

The company is in much better shape than it was when this was 3p, and so is the oil and gas environment, so WTF is going on? This feels like the sp is being heavily manipulated with no end in sight. Struggling to justify to myself why I should wait for this dog to turn around when I could stick the money elsewhere and collect 10pc dividends from the resources boom. This is the sort of scenario that doesn't just put you off AIM, but makes you wary of UK-listed companies as a whole.

Threatening to switch off gas to Europe unless its paid for in rubles via Gazprombank. Interested to see what consequences it has for the peace process and us, short and longer term. Not least since Gazprom and Gazprombank are JRS holdings.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10672659/Putin-threatens-turn-Europes-gas-supplies-TOMORROW-countries-refuse-pay-roubles.html

What was your buy in dodger?

Hahaha it is gold in China! At least sometimes

I've also been buying Genus, the world's leading pig semen company (!). It's a quality company I'm an LTH in, down 50 per cent from it's sp high. Last set of results were decent but they hit headwinds with low pig prices and hence lower demand in China.

Ferrexpo. LTH in that one - very cash generative, little to no debt, big divi. Been battered as it's Ukraine based, but has carried on operating and its iron ore will be needed to rebuild the country. No brainer for me at this point.

Loves these talks. Ferrexpo up 20 pc, JRS 42pc, POLY 32 POG 46pc. POG is the only one I'm avoiding as the other three represent beaten down quality - no disrespect to POG holders, mind.

At £1.50. Know it's a spike but it's still way undervalued and can average down later. I want the exposure to Norilsk.

Like POLY you have to move quick too. I dithered here at 1.13p this morning and I'm still waiting for a pullback! Don't think I'll get it.

The headline risks are 1) sanctions 2) nationalisation 3) delisting 4) debt. Put simply, sanctions are a threat to the company's functioning, nationalisation would be a threat to your capital, delisting might prevent you accessing your capital, and debt makes the company less profitable. Out of all these 4) is the most pressing risk for me, as interest rates in Russia are at 20 pc. I think if risks 1. and 3. were happening we'd know by now. As for 2, I think Putin is ruthless, but he is not a complete loon who wants to make his country permanently uninvestable. In my opinion he has made a calculated move in a geostrategic chess game which has been unfolding for years and most of what we are being told on the news is rightly emotive on a human level, but totally superficial as to the geostrategic realpolitik, economic and commodity issues that underlie the war. Back to the point, are there big risks here? Yes. Are the risks priced in for now? Yes. Are there certain things that derisk this company? Yes - the Jersey listing, the value of the assets outside Russia, the institutional ownership among them. Is the company big enough, well financed enough, important enough and well connected enough to weather the storm? In my opinion, yes. Could I be completely wrong? Of course. But if I and other investors are not wrong, we are buying big yields in a company which trades in a commodity which is only going to grow in value, along with the prospect of significant capital gain. I have made buys between 1.26 and 2.17 and I am still a buyer - but resisting the urge to jump in with both feet and instead drip feeding in each day.

People said Brexit was the end of the world, and Covid too. Folk who bought low and drip fed in did well. Not so long ago people were saying oil was worthless. Look at it now. They said the same thing about crypto, while fortunes were made in between. This is about locking in big divis for the long term for me to hedge me against an uncertain world, as well as capital appreciation. Those of us who make money in the stock market do so because we can psychologically handle the prospect of losing money. We all know the risks and we've balanced them against the prospective reward. Fundamentally, there's a lot of virtue signalling going on but at the end of the day no-one can afford for Russia to be a permanent pariah.