Member Info for SurreyCarrie

Short positions increasing the more the share price falls: never a good sign. If there’s a net debt/market cap banking covenant, (is there ?) these situations can become self-fulfilling doom loops. The macro economic climate for housebuilders is currently appalling. Government targets are meaningless and irrelevant (and delusional) if houses cannot be built and sold at a profit because nobody’s going to build anything.

Totally agree, ideally both. BoD not buying on a 33% FCF yield suggests they have no faith in their guidance.

Directors of publicly listed companies are under a statutory duty under the listing rules to ensure that market trading in the company's shares is not false. A false market is one where there is material misinformation or materially incomplete information which impedes the accurate pricing of a company's shares. In practice, this means, inter alia, that the directors MUST inform the market on a timely basis if previous guidance they have given to the market by way of forecasts for the current year or longer term outlook knowingly materially subsequently changes , material normally taken to mean more than 10%. The company's advisers normally police this rigorously. Clearly, directors who are eternal optimists, in denial or with their heads in the sand - and there's lots of them - pose a problem as they honestly (however unreasonably) believe they're right and the world is wrong and say nothing, which gives them legal wriggle room. That is a risk with any company. Separately there is a second rule that if a share price moves by more than 10% in one day's trading, with no apparent reason, the directors are obliged to say something. Yet, the loophole is that if a share price falls (say) 9% for each of five consecutive days, therefore down 38% in a week, there is no obligation to say anything. Worth noting that RELX, with their results last Thursday, made a convincing case that AI fears - which had caused their share price to halve in the previous 6 months - are poorly founded. My hunch is AI is a big risk to Future, but later rather than sooner, meaning one or two years of prodigious cash flow have been pessimistically omitted from the valuation.

Absence of director buying is the killer here. One of the red flags that encourages shorters is a big fall in a share price followed by no director buying.

Bidders for the entirety of ITV have previously been deterred by the prospect of having to on-sell the non-studio businesses they wouldn't want. A pure stand-alone studio business would be a highly attractive target and the Board should be able to tension the price between multiple potential bidders. However the non-studio businesses have to be sold first - big if.

No increase in the dividend sends a dismal signal. The Board know these are underwhelming results.

With the Dixons selling down and now Driehaus, difficult to find buyers on a prospective P/E >30. Technology remains highly prized but difficult to see how this is monetised in the short term.

Net debt, including leases, is £191m. H1 operating cash flow in H1 was only £42m and H2 is unlikely to be any better, possibly much worse, given concrete demand in the UK is at a 62 year low. Another profits downgrade and we'd be in worries about breach of covenants/rights issue territory.

The CEO’s narrative is like the world owes this company a living, or should. Alcohol is less fashionable amongst the affluent young than it used to be. Intrigued to know average age of the company’s customer base, because I bet it’s rising. Lack of conviction buys by the directors suggests caution.

FTC was previously too small and too illiquid for many institutions but as its market cap and liquidity has risen, the stock appears on their radar screen. So as price goes up, so does demand - fact stranger than fiction: ignore at 10p, buy at 150p.

Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) and this will be no exception. That said, FTC’s dependency on Musk is of greater concern than a few days ago.

The company should look at buying back shares at this ludicrously bombed out price but don’t expect the McMurtry family to be selling shares at this price. This is one of the UK’s most IP rich companies with global leadership in its high tech niche, achieved by its high R&D spend.

Until the directors buy voluntarily and meaningfully - I see no sign - selling remains a very good idea. Impax sadly confirms the “Invest woke, go broke” cynics are correct.

This is one of the UK’s engineering’s “Crown Jewels” - a world leader in its niche with nigh impossible barriers to entry, hence its margins. It also has a rock solid balance sheet. There used to be a strong correlation between UK engineers’ P/Es and their EBIT margins, so imho a high teens P/E would be justified. There will be large engineering corporations elsewhere in the world running their slide rules over this as I write and there certainly isn’t any bid premium in the share price.

Companies with large numbers of UK employees - Whitbread has 30,000+ - face a huge headwind and compliance costs under Labour’s Employment Rights Bill and I foresee lots of profits warnings from such companies. Plus the UK economy ain’t growing. Under £25 shares would start to become interesting given property asset backing but no hurry to buy right now.

I read that LEO satellites could muscle their way into the 6G roll-out just like Starlink has already muscled its way into the broadband market. Has anybody who understands the physics done any research into this to quantify the opportunity for SpaceX and others and, in turn, FTC ?

Labour sees UK employers in general (employers’ NI) and retailers in particular (business rates), neither with votes, as dripping roasts to fund public spending. There is a new £20 billion hole opening up in the public finances - “Black Hole 2.0” - which will need funding and they will be forced to raise taxes again. UK consumers know their disposable income is no longer rising and may start to fall. These are powerful headwinds for Greggs. Too late to sell, too soon to buy.

Dividend increase of only 2.5% says it all: despite the cash generation they boast about, not enough money to increase the dividend by more. Money not where mouth is.

One of Britain’s crown jewel engineering businesses, highly innovative and IP-rich and a genuine world leader in its specialist high-tech niche. I never understood why this business needed to be listed in the first place. In the world of disappearing listed mid-caps, I suspect it will not be for much longer.

More often than not, acquisitions destroy shareholder value in the acquiror, largely because the vendor knows more about the business being sold than the buyer and why now is a good time to sell. They also consume huge amounts of scarce management time in finding them, their negotiation and integration. And/Or the buyer simply overpays. Companies that make lots of acquisitions, however small, should therefore sit on a discount to others in the peer group that do not. Hence the low P/E. Please stop acquiring for a while.