Member Info for Senator1

So you got 23p in dividends and lost 55p in capital, a net 32 loss on 110 or 29%, almost 10% p.a. Compare that with what NESF got from their 3 main fee sources. In 2024 NESF Capital earned £20M in fees (see Cos House) from various entities they manage and had 52 employees, thats an average £385k each up from £15M the previous year. Its a win win for NESF Capital so long as they find mugs to buy the shares.

What sort of maths is that! 6.25 years to be precise and at that you dont get a return. If they cant re-invest this goes downhill very rapidly. The investment manager is laying a trap for investors with a ridiculously high dividend so they can keep the gravy train running for them with the investment fee and much much larger (and hidden in the notes) asset management fee which they take down at subsidiary level and so is netted out before upstream dividends. All of these entities are sub-scale and so the return to shareholders is ridiculous. Just sit down and look at the net profit to shareholders and compare that against the fees paid to Next Energy which are investment management fees (in P&L), asset management fees (note 26), ESG fees (note 26). This whole structure benefits one party only, NESF Group. No wonder none of the executives of NESF are major shareholders as they know that is 100% not the right side of the trade. Until this changes these things are classic value traps. For the investment manager to get a single cent of fee on nav is beyond ridiculous as it is the structure (that they created & benefit from) that is causing the massive discounts. These shares, because of the structure, are all total rubbish and shouldnt be allowed anywhere near any index. It does the index a huge disservice. These shares are all buying participation with silly dividend yields, so the management group keeps getting paid. No serious institutional investor would ever touch them.

Investment management fee in the period 1.98M and asset management fee 4.4M, total 6.34M to NESF group. Shareholders got an 11.9M loss and if I strip out the 22.6M valuation loss that gives a 10.7M net profit. Shareholders for putting up the risk capital get -11.9 to 10.7M depending on your view on the unrealised valuation losses and NESF Group get 6.34M for being employed by shareholders. That is totally ridiculous even in the best case scenario where you dont include valuation losses. These entities are not being run for shareholders, they exist to make the owners of NESF group rich and the shareholders suffer by providing their capital for this purpose. Thats why they trade at 40% discounts, dreadful, dreadful governance. anyone who takes a seat on the Board of these entities is ..........[not sure what term to use] to align their reputation with this abuse. Today's call at NESF, the Chairman just read out the presentation prepared, I am 100% sure, by the investment manager staff. Totally ridiculous. How is NESF well placed for the future when the only way it can raise capital is by selling assets and it cant do the most attractive deal (far more attractive than anything in their pipeline), buying back shares, because of the Pref restrictions. This is idiotic and incompetent.

14% 3 year CAGR versus circa -11% for both FGEN and FSFL, it doesnt get much more black and white. The private wealth managers have scaled up and they need scale and liquidity for their investments. You can make up all the excuses you want but two ITs managed by the same group with outrageous expenses relative to income needs addressing. This is an obvious transaction as no other entity will give up the investment and asset management and hence NESF rebuffing FSFL. They need to get on with it, the current situation is ridiculous and does the Board members no favours. They are just there on a jolly boys outing and have to do what they are told by the investment manager. The best example was the way the BSIF board bought the rubbish from the investment manager about converting to an IPP, a story spun to suit only the investment manager. The Governance in this whole area is garbage and the ones that suffer and will continue to do so are shareholders. NESF today announced selling an asset at a c.14% premium to nav and still the discount is c.40%. Long overdue for the Boards to wake up and do what is in shareholder interest not the people that effectively put you on the Board. Just look at the profile of any of these Boards, it is woefully bad!

At 11.5% of interest and dividends earned is just way too high. This cant be a rational investment will that fixed cost base and so needs to scale up. The easy merger is with FSFL but that results in difficult internal discussions for Foresight Group as they will lose meaningful revenue. This is the problem with this whole sector, the divergence between what is good for shareholders and the investment management group. The investment managers make sure the Boards are weak and so the obvious never materialises and the only ones getting a meaningful return are the investment manager and asset manager (normally same group). The lack of alignment between the listed Foresight Group and their listed ITs, like FGEN, is plain to see and when they come in conflict they do what is in the interest of Foresight Group. There is no logical reason why FSFL and FGEN should not be merged and a knife taken to the operating expenses getting them down to way less than 5% of interest & dividends received. This wont happen of course because this will affect the Foresight Group share price from which most of the senior Foresight people are compensated. How this conflict was ever allowed is totally ridiculous and until its sorted nothing will change as no smart money will ever touch the ITs. The smart money trade is to own the Foresight Group and stay on the side of the vested interest. Compare the share price performance of FSG, FSFL and FGEN over the last one year, 3 and 5 years if you are in any doubt of this vested interest playing out. Anyone investing on the wrong side of this conflict is just plain stupid and you get what you deserve, making FSG shareholders richer at your expense.

It is very simple. Barclays increase their position when the end client wants to increase their long position and vice versa when they reduce. My guess is this is the same client trading around the margin, buying cheap and selling higher. The total return swap is used to avoid stamp duty as trading books dont pay it. So I ask my bank to buy the stock and then enter a TRS with the bank where the bank pays me whatever return they get on the stock and I pay a funding spread. For Barclays it is just a way to earn a funding spread. For the counterparty it is a risk position without the cost of SD. This counterparty has been trading around the margin for weeks and so its hard to read much in to it but as its always Barclays I suspect its the same end user. As Barclays Lux are involved I suspect its the founder family entity playing about, but that's a guess as nobody really knows. What I do know is, the risk position isn't held by Barclays, thats not their role here.

This explanation is total rubbish. Banks do not run proprietary positions in equities as they are a 1-1 deduction against capital and they most certainly cannot switch in the way you described. after the GFC banks became essentially sales traders meaning in this case they are providing a total return swap to an end client and so they are the monkey not the organ grinder. Barclays will be fully hedged, their longs covered by a short on the TRS. Barclays are 100% NOT running a 5% ot indeed any overnight % risk position in BME. They are facilitating an end client who is unknown and the fact their % goes up or down is dictated by their counterparty who has the real risk position, Barclays will be delta zero on this trade. Equity risk positions are a 100% deduction from capital for banks which means they cannot viably hold meaningful net risk positions. i wish people wouldnt make b...t up when they have no idea what they are talking about!

It has to be the worst Board I have ever seen. These guys would be afraid to act without NextEnergy pulling the strings. They really have sold their soul for a buck!

Being punished for not agreeing to proposal from First Solar. market is going to force it to accept. If the Board had any honour they would take over these discussions which will result in next Energy losing the asset and financial management contract. The Board however are not strong enough and they are controlled by Next Energy and therefore the share price will keep going down until they act.

What are you talking about? The UT is the uncrossing trade in the auction that establishes the closing price. That's all waffle about blocks and the other nonsense.

L&G and Aberdeen Group have been buying but Weiss asset mgmt, JM Finn & LGT Wealth Mgmt selling. LGT are one of the biggest holders so they are not helping themselves. pretty dumb given they have to file a revised 8.3. they bought in big time to the asset managers story and since the 11th have sold c.500k shares. L&G on the other hand increasing. Who will be right? Its sort of a comp between dumb and dumber but will be interesting to see who got it right.

Everybody has had a buy on this share for years but they keep under delivering, time and time again. They had a capital markets event last week. It should have had a live stream like everybody else does but no they have theirs recorded. It is now days after the event and they have still not posted the recording. this is a simple task but they cant deliver this in a timely way. They need a hard boot to the b...side. No urgency, lethargic and one excuse after another. Their IR is totally hopeless and its not as if the FD is run over with work, recording the results of such tiny numbers.

The only reaction has been negative. I really worry that these guys running CREO are just not suited to running a public company. They need to ditch the AIM all share and upgrade to main market where they would go in FTSE all Share. This would be a tangible sign of their development but it would require some major changes in the leadership. To have such an interesting product but hopeless communicators is a real issue.

Their IR is totally useless, non existant.

His 640,800 shares have an average cost of £2.43 so to be fair he has spent £1.6M of his own money, that is the positive. BUT he also has just over !M zero cost options which brings his weighted cost down to 95p. I dont know if there are performance conditions on those options, I bloody well hope so but the Board have proved themselves to be totally useless it wouldnt surprise me if all he had to do was turn up. That would be my number 1 question if I ever got to ask him a question. No point asking IR as they are useless too. If he put his money in and his options were tied to a doubling of net profit, that would be very positive. If he just has to be breathing then the purchases mean nothing as he has so much downside protection! That and hopefully the ex CFO is not getting a payoff are my main questions. That and fact he loses any options that were unvested. BME would have gone under if he remained as CEO as he was in the Russo mold who also would have destroyed BME.

How come the CEO has to take the rap? Surely the first to go should be the CFO, the review mentions a lack of centralised control of finance and that is the direct responsibility of the CFO. This doesnt make sense, there is some other issue here.

They added 3.5M shares, everyone else just tinkering about. Not that 3.5M add is a real conviction trade but its the only one of note so far.

What a dumb price range on the tender, the cancellation adds 12% to eps but premium at top end is under 6%. So much for management signalling the shares are undervalued, soooo stupid.

Is the best way to analyse the results as there is less made up numbers. Adj Operating margin pre ifrs 16 fell to 5.2% from 9.48% at the FY 25. If the margin stayed at this level for the FY 26 then £1.65 is the right price for BME. However, they re-affirmed the £470-520M adj Ebitda for the FY26 and if they make that the implied pre ifrs 16 op margin increases up to 6.27% and that gives a fair value for the share of £2.6.

I'm so surprised the market isnt recognising this as apart from the numbers the new guy is in a different league to the departing lot, they were total rubbish and if they stayed BME would have been in trouble. The new guy has it right, get the UK LfL up, slim the range, bring in a new guy to oversee buying and consolidate leadership of stores and distribution under one guy. Thats a lot of progress in a few months. He needs to encourage a few to leave the Board (as the current Board is rubbish as well) over the next few weeks and then it is all about getting the margin back up which LfL sales will do and then in next buying cycle adding 1% back to gross margin to bring that back to 37.5% and to just under 40% in medium term. If this translates to an operating margin back to 9.5% then this share is worth over £5 a share. I think he is definitely on the right track. I suspect market might wait to get confirmation in january and then it will start front running the buyback which will come in Spring next year.

Will it be fixed price or Dutch auction. I think they will go at fixed price. It closed at £48.94 yesterday after results, so 15% on that price is £56.28. Think the quantity will be 10-12M shares out of the 97M odd, or 10-12% of outstandings. That price will also be the highest closing price of last 12 months and so will ensure they will get the required tenders. it will be executed after the ex DVD date so you will also get the 6.95p DVD paid on Dec 12th. Obviously market isnt expecting a 15% premium but if they go less there is a chance they get a smaller take up. For 10 years this share has been in a 30-60 range and they need to signal its cheap. interesting to see what they do or kick for touch with a dutch auction.