Member Info for Senator1

I dont own SBRY so just used calendar on LSE and it says Tuesday but yes you are right it is Friday. You would have thought LSE would be up to date but its probably one of the worst web pages in the UK. Too concerned with milking advertsing revenue

On current forward PEs GRG 13.4x, MKS 11.4x, BME 7x, TSCO 15x and SBRY 13.4x. I'm with shorts. This has has a good run since end of November but I think it goes back to those lows. Sainsbury's will set the tone on tuesday. This has been in bear territory since Oct 24 and is now running up against the 200, I dont think it will stay above it. Its not cheap enough yet and it faces too many headwinds. I think shorts will stay short and certainly increase if Sainsbury's are weak.

They have already said that after a base dividend any further capital return will be a buyback not special dvds. the specials were only done to suit the aurora family that holds the investment through a lux co. that doesnt work now with move to jersey

The new CEO has to deliver on this as a minimum. They have £191M in the bag from first half so £279M from Q3 and Q4 thats 46% higher than 1H. In FY 25 the 2H was 27% better than 1H so it wont be easy and the key will be BME UK as Heron & France make relatively small contributions. In BME Uk the adj EBITDA margin was 7.74% in 1H compared to 11.3% in the same period of previous year or in £s £70m less. So Schmidt as CEO did nothing to mitigate the increased payroll and NI costs. He did get rev up £75M but this did not flow through to cash profit. In short he and his team did a dreadful job (totally hopeless) and so the good news is they are gone. As LfL sales drop to profits more efficiently than new store sales which require a year to get to profitability this is why LfL is key (forget Heron as that is a dog of a business with op margin at 4%). If the CEO can add 2% plus back to UK operating margin in 2H he can just about make £470M if he gets LfL sales growth. The previous guys letting margin drop from 11.3% to 7.74% was a dreadful handover. Whether he makes it for FY 26 or not I think he will be close and more medium term the fix is clear, he needsto offset the £75M of extra costs going forward. Home Bargains run their business at an operating margin of 11.7% so there is no reason he cant get to low double digits in the UK with real retailers in management positions and he has made the changes to do that. Near £470M after lease payments is still a lot of cash to pay interest on bank debt (c.80M), tax (100M) and to allow for D&A on their freehold property (100M) & to pay the 97M interim DVD. Calls for demise of BME are just ridiculous, you dont throw of this kind of cash and go bust. They have a margin problem in the UK for sure and they need to get this back to circa 11%, not even the old 12-13%. I think the Christmas margin will be higher so this will show the first signs of the turnaround. For now the most positive thing is Russo, Schmidt and his team are mostly gone, their running was incompetent and I think this new guy is in a different league. This thing does over £5bn in sales with 5M customers per week, they just need to get the margin in the UK right and then get France bigger so it can get to the UK margins of low double digits.

I estimate FY Tech EBITDA will be circa £90M (75M EBITA and Depr of 15) . If they sell it for a min 6x that will provide a min £540M and at 8x £720M. The net debt at Sept was just over £500M which is less than 1x Energy stand alone EBITDA of estimated £670M. So they could easily return another £500-750M again next year or buy something large in propane in the US if the dollar keeps depreciating as rates are going to decline there. they have the firepower to double Adj EBITA in Energy by 2030 and on that basis it trades pro-forma on a p/e of less than 6x. This sp will double over the next few years, easily!

If you take analyst concensus for FY 25 of £627M Adj operating profit and then take management guidance for net finance charge and tax you get £415M after tax. There are now 85.4M shares outstanding so that gives eps at current shares o/s of 4.86 or a PE of 9.77 or an earnings yield of 10.23%. For an Energy business doing mid to high teens RoCE this is a very cheap share. If the RoCE is mid to high teens then RoE has to be high teens to low 20s. market has this one very wrong

There are now 12% less shares in issue from Monday 22nd so this should trade up past 51.7 on Monday to 55 odd. Why would anyone sell at less than 51.7 on Monday. Lets see if market is somewhat efficient. It should go to 55.7, it wont of course but 52.5 to 53 would be a logical start as the sellers at less than 51.7 are out. Lets see.

WH Smith has many issues right now. A US business that is in serious need of focus, a RoW business that has a hopeless operating margin before its share of centralised costs but the worst by far is the lack of a meaningful shareholding by any Director. As of Nov 25, the Chairwoman has the largest shareholding at just under 8,000 shares. Even the interim CEO has just over 3k shares. How can she talk about having faith in the business with this sort of back up. Talk is cheap. Will be interesting to see what the ex CEO walks away with for his abysmal stewardship of the co. The lack of oversight of the US is definitely 50:50 shared between CEO and CFO. It must be the case that he loses any deferred shares & options and if they are going after bonuses paid to US executives, surely this must also apply to the Group CEO and the previous Group CFO. In the previous two years the CEO's variable was c.£2M in both years and the CFO c.£1.5M. This is ridiculous given what has come to light in the US and the huge costs incurred in exiting the UK high street. Even the chairwoman got £318K and £255k as fees. For what? Over the last 3 years the WH Smith total return is -53.29%. This is a business school case study of a well known UK brand, payment for failure. Will be interesting to see if bonuses to Cowling & Moorhead are also clawed back!

These results are a disgrace. No oversight of the US, non underlyings of -£92M and discontinued losses of -£135M. I know the CFO has only been there since Dec 2024 but how he kept his job is beyond me. Given all the investment going in to the US youwould have thought near the top of his agenda was a review of the US accounting systems to ensure he understood them. Now we have the Chairwoman who has been there since 2022 leading the search for a new CEO. How does that make sense? How she hasnt resigned is beyond me. This is a shambles and more heads need to roll. i know my conditions for accepting CEO role is I want a new CFO and Chair and at least half the Board going within 12 months. They presented today that the US will grow Revenue between 6-8% in 2026 in sterling terms, well ahead of any other geography while they downsize Resorts and InMotion and sort out the management of the US. Then theres the RoW on a trading margin of circa 5%, what sort of business is that, before unallocated central costs and financing. The people making decesions at WH Smith are the problem. The next CEO needs to be a real hard ass as he has lots of dross to get rid of and number 1 would be the person leading the hiring so she is unlikely to pick the right person.

I couldnt care less about 500K. I know its an UHNW individual and again I couldnt care less about the identity. They were stupid to be involved in a transaction where it was obvious it would result in the Bird Board losing the confidence of the market and hence their investment will be valued at a substantial discount. They will pay a heavy price for that at the next funding of that I am 100% sure. These guys are not the right people to lead this company as a public entity, they are way out of their league and expertise. You only have to watch their presentation on IM, they are at my most kind label, amateurish. This pervades downstream where their early demo videos were cringeworthy and at the level of a high school presentation. On this placing, to one individual, they are a case study on everything that is wrong about AIM and allowing financial amateurs to run public cos. They have now sent a message to the markets that in mgmt's view Bird's fair value is £10M. Its hard to find greater stupidity. They are so clueless, they probably wont understand this. Financial incompetents, I wouldnt let them run a coffee shop!

Your an idiot. To lose the trust of the market over £500K and to treat your last investors in this way is the action of a total fool, there is no debate on that. Your arguments are totally stupid and clueless. You waffle on far too much.

It has nothing to do with all the twaddle you are spouting above. It is the mindset that gives 4.85% away at a 25% discount to the raise in July to one shareholder. This tells this board are dangerous and dont take their commitment to existing shareholders seriously. What they dont realise is that everyone knows they need more money and this sort of cheap behaviour will result in them paying a very expensive price in the future. Great start ups build momentum and trust because when you lose it, you never get it back. For both Bird and this one shareholder it was an incredibly stupid move, village idiot stupid. For £500K to lose the trust of the market, beyond words. This will now always trade at a very significant discount to the story value they peddle and they only have themselves to blame and for what? this lot are financially incompetent.

If this is an existing shareholder and they are that important to Blackbird this should trigger a TR1 in next day or so if they had any sort of material share before they got this christmas present. The bizaree thing is that for fractions of a penny this unidentified shareholder has done himself(herself) no favours as every existing shareholder will remember this stroke. Dumb all around, really dumb!

If it comes to light which it will through the TR1s that the individual was McDonagh or Roberts then it is over for Blackbird in terms of access to the market. To do this sort of stupidity for £500K is just incompetent after raising at 3p in july. They will pay a heavy price going forward for this as for 3500K they have lost the confidence of the investor market. I just hope Allenby werent in on this as if they were they will have a tough time bringing anything to investors.

What a load of twaddle.

The total DVD is £35.2M and someone other than shareholders has had value for this money over the weekend. Same day sterling payments are bog standard and have been for years. If I were you I would send a firm msg to BME IR telling them to get their act together and ask if money for value the 12th has left their account. The question then is who held it over the weekend. This sort of practise is cheap, shoddy and unprofessional and as always the blame goes to BME as it is their responsibility to ensure their owners are treated in a professional way and that paying agents or whoever they use are not holding £35M over the weekend. If its BME, shame on them as they have known for months about this payment. Its really important you let BME know of your annoyance and how badly it reflects on them. This sort of practise went out decades ago where intermediaries took advantage of the value date concept.

Puttingdifficult questions on this is a total waste of time, they just ignore them. Any question on fees (asset and investment) just ignored. They said investment manager and Board aligned with 2M shares. Thats 0.35% of the outstanding. what are these idiots talking about? The discouint is 41.8%, the market is saying loud and clear that everyone involved is totally useless and I, for one, 100% agree having listened to the same old drivel! They are only now waking up to doing a strategic review. More time for NESF group to siphon off more fees. Totally shameless. No wonder international investors wont touch the UK with this sort of carry on. Saba doing their best to shake it up and maligned by the old boys club who couldnt run a coffee shop!

Market hammered SEIT yesterday because of stupid comments by Chairman that Board unlikely to support continuation next year if leverage isnt brought down. The way the Board put the policy on leverage is by calculating relative to net assets. If you were to do it in the same way at NESF their ratio is 97% (294.1/510.9). Wonder if NESF Board was watching. It was undoubtedly stupid for the Chairman to just wake up and publicly make this statement as it is nowimpossible for SEIT to sell anything at a reasonable price. Where do they get these people? Sector is being governed by village idiots!

The Chairman's statement means these guys are forced sellers or Board at time of vote next year will not recommend continuation. The fact SABA are onboard means they will want conversion to investment fund so dealings will be at Nav. Given the gearing constraints a cash option will not be a feature. The relationship between the Board and investment manager must be terrible now and the words from Chairman show the frustration that the Board has now made public and essentially they have drawn a line in the sand that they wont let the investment manager embarrass them anymore. This wont end well as they just wont now be able to sell anything at a reasonable price. All buyers will have read the chairman's statement and that will be reflected in any offers made. Take a bow Mr Chairman, good work. I like the new tough approach but its just too last minute and you have now made the problem worse for the investment manger

You have to start somewhere and without a shadow of a doubt these Boards are by far the worst. The investment manager picks the members and there is no way they want strong, independently minded members. That would not be in their interest. I just dont understand how anyone can propose these structures are in the interests of shareholders. They arent even close, it is a scandal. One day someone in the media will shine a light on it and then the blame game will really start. The market is smart, shares trade at big discounts for a reason