Member Info for Senator1

Dont be ridiculous, its over for Natarra, full stop. Their execution was dumb and they got what they deserved. You dont talk your way to an acquisition, you do what Dohler did, put your money down and support your preference. Words/unconditional agreements are worthless. You only pick up the rubbish with that approach.

Your dreaming, talking your position. They will not ask for Board seat, they dont need it. they will wait at least 12 months so they dont have to bid at their highest price of purchase. This share will become so dull and boring and when it suits Dohler they will buy it at much cheaper levels, well south of £2. The stake does nothing for Treatt as they will just sit and watch the RNS's

Dohler, as I said previously, will go to just under 30% (now at 28%) and sit there for 12 months (maybe longer) and take advantage of their free option to make a bid at a cheaper price. Nataraa have c. 6% acceptances, its over for them. They played this all wrong. They should have set up a structure where they, with their PE support, acquired shares rather than trying to talk themselves to a cheap acquisition. They have been outsmarted and outplayed. There is no way their PE backer will fund a takeover, with substantial expenses, they will lose. Dohler will just keep buying to under 30% and then sit and wait and bore everyone else to submission with a much cheaper offer when it suits them which could be a year, 2, 3. They will probably leave the existing guy in charge and see how he does. If he messes it up great, if he does a great job, thats good too. This is going to become a really boring share.

"the data set is unreliable."................never, I place more reliance on price than any other single variable and as the data set is an acculmulation of prices it is way too easy to characterise it as "unreliable" because it does not fit your narrative. Price is the truth (so long as there is reasonable volume), everything else bull..t/irrelevant and the market is THE BEST ffundamental analyst. The market saw the deterioration in margin which accrued from the declining LfLs and behaved in a very logical way. I think the market was also sceptical on the CFO stepping up to CEO as he just wasnt a retail CEO. I dont know much about the new CEO but back to basics is right, reducing the range is right, setting a minimum gross margin is right, and setting a min adj ebitda margin is also right. Its a simple business, UK & France and if needs be he should slow down on new stores until he has the range and margins right, using the right technology. Give the store managers some discretion with the right incentives. Its not rocket science but we need to see a selling period when he set the buying in criteria, that will not be visible until next year but he is on the right track with what he said so far.

You can create a BB at whatever sigma you want; 1,2, 1.25, 1.6 whatever you, as user, want and find useful. Second time series should be on adj. close not close. Why ignore the DVD, it gives a return? I never said it was a buy signal, I said i wanted to see it to pass and hold that level. If you look at a chart over 1 year, 3, 5,10 plus/minus 2 sigma does a good job of capturing the range, recent weeks aside. In the case of BME I like it because as I have said previously this thing produces a lot of cash and so while it definitely has things to fix (the margin and range), it has the essential ingredient, lots of excess cash. I like to buy things that generate free cashflow at prices that they have visited less than 2.5% of the time but only if they have excess free cashflow and I agree with the CEO's evaluation of the issues and the business is easy to understand and what it takes to turn it around. On retail, I like things at either end, cheap and cheerful with reasonable quality or the higher end brands. In retail, the middle ground is where the problems normally emerge.

196 is the number to watch as over the past 12 months that is 2 standard deviations away from the mean. so right now at 189.3 we are still outside +-2 sigma from mean. That is the first thing I want to see and have it hold this level. the largest volume over past 12 months is 2.7 area and +2 sigma is 3.66. If they have further accounting issues to disclose in a couple of weeks then you have to say they are all just morons and deserve everything that happens to them. Why do I think there will be no further issues. Quite simply because we have seen no sales from any of GIC, Capital Group, Fidelity or the other big insiders. They will have talked to the CEO and checked on the freight cost issue and if there was more bad stuff coming you would have seen them offloading. We have seen no RNS's from this group , not from any of them and they will be better informed than anyone because they have access. I have never been in a BME store in my life and probably never will but my question is, what does the Halloween range look like. Is it moving? We know the figures to the half year wont include it and we know what they are so i think the focus will be on how the Halloween period went by the time they report. The CEO has to be able to say something positive. Did they get the Halloween range right, did they make money and at what margin. Thats part of 2H but he has to give a feel for this and more detail on the christmas range and margin. If anyone from IR follows these boards, numbers, numbers and more numbers. Remember you work for shareholders, never forget that and tell it like it is. Your credibility is low so no bul...it. Bull..t would be a HUGE mistake, HUGE!

Re: SD, correct because the holding co. is currently a lux entity. same will apply when holding co. is jersey

Sorry traded bme

I do find it annoying that one of Barclay's institutional clients traded Barclays via TRS and therefore avoided stamp duty. Institutions have enough of an advantage over retail and they shouldnt be able to avoid stamp duty in such a blatant way. It should be other way round, retail no stamp duty and institutions pay it whether they buy stock or get exposure through TRS. Institutions already have the advantage that they can meet management whenever they want. Unfortunately there is nobody knowledgeable fighting for the retail investor and so they get stuffed over and over.

They guide on Adj EBITDA for a reason, everyone knows the fallacy of EBITDA for retailers with lease obligations. However post IFRS 16 there is a huge problem with the lease debt as it typically overstates the obligation because it does not account for lessee break options and assumes the retailer runs the lease to the full term. So with IFRS 16 the accountants won a battle to get the associated liability reconginsed but because of the prudence principal it typically gets overstated as does the RoU asset. For that reason you have to be very careful with the application of total leverage to EBITDA (you clearly wouldnt use adj. in this ratio). It is much better (because it is more certain) to look at non lease debt to adj ebitda which again is where, for a good reason, they guide to 1-1.5x. IMO, IFRS 16 did more damage than good. Everyone knew the leae obligation was there but the statutory P&L showed its cost in terms of lease payment and not a made up i and d, which is what we have now. It would have been much superior to require the addition of a note to the accounts detailing the summary lease terms. IFRS 16 must be one of the most useless standards ever introduced. This is what you get when you leave accountants in charge. A great example of rubbish in, rubbish out.

Strictly speaking lfl refers to rev from same sq footage. so the same store can have lfl and organic if they free up more selling space. i agree there is a real focus on lfl because of the inherent operational leverage in retail which means more of the lfl sales growth falls to the bottom line and this therefore increases margins and the opposite in reverse which is what you are seeing now. It is particularly bad in 1H 26 where the guided adj ebitda margin is 6.95% (FY 25 11.13%). If you take the FY guidance by substraction you can calculate the 2H 26 adj ebitda margin will be minimum 9.16% to give a FY 26 of 8.11% at the low end of guidance. The previous lot running things were way out of their depth, thick as two planks. The positives here are the new guy has identified the issues and i suspect he was absolutely mad as hell with the CFO for making him look like a fool. If he hadnt got rid of him I would have thought him an idiot as well. He did get rid of him though albeit in corporate speak. He must deliver at least £279M adj ebitda in 2H or Im afraid he goes back to the fool category from me. Tick tock, tick tock...time will tell but if I had to place a bet right now I would say that he has line of sight on at least £279M. He wont get a third chance.

If you do a DCF with a 2 year horizon, the valuation is essentially all Terminal Value where you are assuming a growing annuity at whatever growth rate you assumed. DCF is mostly a useless practical valuation tool (great in theory) because most of the value comes from TV which has a ridiculous inherent assumption. To divide your 3rd year projected FCF to equity by r-g and assume this is the infinitum cashflow is hopelessly useless and totally unrealistic, to say nothing of the sensitivity to the r and g assumptions and importantly the difference between them. Depending on your r and g and your base FCF to equity its easy to get £2.85 plus but its mostly rubbish in, rubbish out.

Absolutely no way, the 30% discount would disappear in a nano second when anyone announced it was in wind down. There isnt a hedge fund in the world that would try that, its suicide. The simple solution is ditch the IT status and vastly improve investor communication (its ridiculously bad at the moment, non existent really). All these renewable cos are run by project financiers and they do not understand how to present an equity return story. They should also all present the underlying P&L and cashflow of the consolidated operating subs as a note to accounts. These figures dont need auditing just Board sign off that they give a true and accurate view of underlying P&L and cashflow or if they can can ditch the investment co. accounting which they might be able to do as a non IT. All that other stuff mentioned by the Chair of BSIF is just b---it. He has become the voice of the investment manager as he has bought the b---it. Do THE BASICS PROPERLY, in a professional and thought out way. When they run their cashflow models on the development pipeline I am pretty sure their Ke is somewhere in the 12-15% range. That is a fantastic long term compound return and better than the S&P 500 which over the last 20 years has a CAGR total return of 11.12%. The fact they cant communicate this message is 1000% their fault. They bamboozle readers with their cashflow valuation fo arrive at the gross investment value and forget to break this down in terms of what this means for debt and equity holders. This is pretty basic stuff. They are just lost in the trees and have come up with a sledgehammer to crack a nut rather than look at their own failings. Anyone who votes for their proposal is equally lost, imo. Im truly shocked that they cant work this out for themselves.

The share price has fallen more than 50% since early 2024. Why? Simply put the adj ebitda margin in the UK business has gone from 12.2% to 8.12% at the low end of guidance, so the market has over reacted a bit but that is normal and probably right. In his latest presentation on the Trading update for the half year the CEO said his target for the UK is essentially 10% in the medium term, so thats a c1.5% margin improvement after lease costs or an 18% improvement in the margin. He cant do that my putting prices up or getting cheaper leases so his buyers have to buy better, less range but better discounts by buying more of the stuff his customers want. To do this he needs to know what they want but he also said on the call the MIS his totally inadequate but that he is changing that. The previous lot were "seat of the pants" retailers was his implied criticism but he wants data and modern tools to help with a more focused offering. When I listened again to the audio it is clear the CEO didnt respect the CFO as he cut across him a few times and by getting rid of him has sent a strong message that its his way or you are gone. Because of the capital light model this business does produce a lot of excess cash and the turnaround is relatively easy, buy less range and more of what they can sell and have his buyers get bigger volume discounts on a narrower range. If I were him i would put my guy in charge of this group and turn the screws on them really hard and get rid of the weak ones. The head of IT would also be right in my line of fire as he needs the data to rationalise the buy. fixing this is not rocket science, it just needs modern retailers with the right timely information. They dont give Adj ebitda per geography but you can estimate it based on ebitda and allocating the lease cost. Half the middle is deciding what to do, the harder bit is getting everybody on board. The CFO leaving will make the old guard think twice about dragging their heels but just to really make sure message is received i would replace head of IT and bring in a new person who all buyers report to with those latter 2 direct reports. On a 10% margin it cant go back to £5 but £3.5/£3.75 is a reasonable short term target, assuming there are no further mess ups on the numbers which i doubt there will be.

One of Dohler's core values is "to think & act long term". They are not in this situation to make a fast few bucks, they are in this situation to one way or the other make at least a £150M. If I were them I would wait out the fast money as they know that will frustrate the hell out of them and in a years time evaluate the situation and see how the share price has performed and how the new guy has got on. I suspect for this company, the cost of their 25% investment is not a concern, even if it drops by a third in the short term. They are a private company and dont have to react to paper losses in the short term. A successful private entity with resources is a formidable competitor and they have played it brilliantly. Exponent/natarra tried to get this on the cheap by getting irrevocable undertakings. Dohler came in and put cash up by buying shares, showing true conviction. Exponent/Natarra didnt have the stomach to buy a significant shareholding while they amassed undertakings and so Dohler spotted the lack of conviction and backed their judgement with cash. Schlau.

Dohler acquired 25% to block the bid, its that simple. I expect them to go a bit further to just under 30% and then stop They will then wait 12 months and see how the new guy gets on and take the free option on the share price drifting lower. There is a reason they didnt want anyone else to get the business and i suspect they will now play the long game and watch how the new guy gets on. If he succeedss and doubles/triples the share price over the next 5 years great, if he fails and the share price drifts lower out of boredom then that I am sure will suit them too. I dont know what Natarra's current shareholding is but as a private equity firm they cannot just sit around for 5 years and so their holding will likely be disposed of in the event of failure and that will in itself drive the price lower. A German private co. knows they can wait out a private equity firm where time is money. They have played this really smart. They have a relatively cheap option whichever way it goes as there is definitely something they think has more value than the current price.

There is only one reason the investment Manager is proposing this and the Board is going along. Share options. As an operating entity this will be a feature of renumeration in addition to salaries and bonuses, rather than the 0.85% management fee. With the market cap falling Im sure the founders are finding it hard to pay reasonable bonuses to everyone else after they take their 50% slice. It always comes down to personal wealth, despite how they might dress it up! I would respect them more if they just came clean instead of dressing it up in bull--t

If Im right on Jersey tax the IT status doesnt do anything beneficial other than force them to pay-out 85% of net income and only retain 15%. For periods when you have a development pipeline it makes sense to have some flexibility on this. So, imo, drop the IT status but why is it necessary to internalise 135 employees. This entity has no proper, prof IR function and like the rest of the sector, they dont understand how to break WACC to its components and emphasise the relevant parts of this depending on audience. If you try to get through to the London number it rings out (2 days in a row), jersey is a waste of time (just a kid taking messages). They dont deserve to trade anyewhere near par. The Board has been told a story but the problem is communication not whether they internalise 135 employees. An entity achieving 12-15 RoE before management fees will trade at Nav. The fact they dont is that they have project managers running things and they couldnt tell an equity story if it hit them on the back of the head and for the most part the Boards are lame. Blind leading the blind.

A UK investment Trust is exempt from CGT however as BSIF is a Jersey resident co. it doesnt pay CGT or Corp tax anyway so this categorisation is not really beneficial to BSIF. However, if they internalise all 130 employess of Bluefield Group what happens to the other assets outside of BSIF that they are managing. It seems ridiculous that BSIF would take all the employee costs while they are working on other projects unless all the fees they charge on these other funds are in excess of the employee costs and won't continue to go to the LLP of the founders (surely, the Board wouldnt let them try that). If they lose the investment trust status than they can retain more than the 15% limit that applies to ITs, that is of course what they are trying to achieve. So the loss of the exemption from CGT is moot as they dont pay it anyway and if the fees from other funds plus the management fee saved are greater than the employee costs this is a net benefit to BSIF shareholders. The question then is can the current shareholder base live with not all the return coming from dividends but some from dividends and share price appreciation as the development pipeline adds value and the discount disappears because they are not capital constrained. Subject to much more detail on the fees earned on other funds, the management fee saving and the expenses of the 135 or so employees this could be a net gain for BSIF as I dont think there are any tax consequences. I would like to see this confirmed by BSIF but thats my initial thoughts.

However, I also think that all these renewable entities do a terrible job of presenting the return dynamics between debt and equity. They use a weighted cost of capital to value the cashflows (which is correct), around 8-8.5% for UK assets. They in general are leveraged circa 50% so with debt at roughly 4.5% they have a return on equity of c.11.5-12%. 12% return over long periods of time is excellent and is better than the c.10% total return of the S&P in the long term. Its almost like they dont understand how to tell a story to equity investors. NESF, FSFL are exactly the same. If they communicated a business where they are targeting 12-15% return on equity and communicated this much more effectively, the discounts would narrow. They all have a lot of work to do here as most retail investors dont understand this stuff and unfortunately when dividend is high it attracts retail in numbers and they are generally dumb money.

NEVER any numbers presented, just lots of waffle. look at mine, I back it up with numbers. Thats how we are different which if you had a brain cell you should be able to work out yourself.