Member Info for Tambo210

So they announced some results of the AGM.

They have approval for a year to sell stock (aka Dilution)...LOL! What makes them think they're going to be in a position to do that over the next 12m?

Anyway, its just an approval. The can also buyback up to 14.99% of the float.

BTW, MRNA have had to pull some of this pipeline due to failures (excluding COVID). So its not a slamdunk.

@walp

you can't base a recommendation on what insiders of a company state (senior leadership team) due to the fact they obliged to plug the company. its their job to put a positive spin on everything. look at novovax and innovia.

smt.l need to have a team who can wade through the scientific and financial data and ask, "is success likely"?

my concern regarding bg's smt team is whether the same team looking at mrna look at tsla or nvda. totally different kettle of fish. they might send out a glossy brochure with bio's of analysts...but that doesn't mean they can comment on mrna's technology, patent litigation defence or cash runway to blowout revenues (excluding covid).

has past success of the fund (seems a long way way) gotten to their heads and they've realised " oh ****! we actually need to know what we're doing here?"

i'm long in the inv trust, but the wide discount to nav shows nothing but lack of confidence in the management team. it should be trading at a minor premium to nav, even in rising interest rate environments.

funny thing is, there's individual stocks (not even niche) which have done remarkably well in the sectors they're choosing, but some of their big hitters have performed very badly and bg's senior team should really be vocal about it to the smt team and let us stockholders know they're applying pressure on the smt team.

anyone know how yesterday's agm went?

obesity and liver targeted drugs are becoming even more noisier. was in the infancy before this year. smt don't seem to figure them in their holdings.

i wouldn't complain at them holding the likes of bmy, mrk or lly (too late now).

wolf is a pure sic play and yet they're not in the picture. its tumbled a lot due to interest rate rises. but correct horizon.

anyone know how yesterday's agm went? any difficult q's?

I genuinely believe they have MRNA wrong.

Buying at $200 was insane. It is, and will do so for sometime, be marked on COVID revs. There's nothing else for a while. The fast-tracking helped them bag revs quickly, but having invested in their pipeline (correct), their stock was too elevated. Needs to drop below $80 before it makes sense to buy within the next 18months. And it will, since there's no catalysts in terms of revenue bump.

The vaccines they are working on are promising, but not over the line. As well, it takes a while for adoption. You're looking at 2027 before you see rising revenues for the company as a whole.

Peoples attitude to spending is different now than when it was back pre-2000.

We now live in a world of IVA etc.

The population is addicted to credit. PCP loans on cars are a fine example. Once a upon a time, you either bought a second hand car or you bought a car with a car loan. Now you put down a deposit, pay monthly installments (avec interest) and then you give the car back....huh? Yes you can pay the balloon payment or put down another deposit, take a new car and go round the merry go round again.

We happy to purchase things on loans and credit cards, because when we rack up debts on credit cards, someone will bail us out.

This is why interest rates don't control inflation. People need to be shocked and embarrassed when they go to the shop...stick their 100inch TV on the counter, and their debit card is declined due to insufficient funds.

Then the penny will drop whether they buy the nice TV or pay for food on the table.

FED and BoE don't have the tools to control inflation. They'll only manage it when they crash the economy.

@Littleaston

Bailey can only use interest rates to pressure inflation.

But not all inflation is the same.

I think some part of the Government or say IFS or Resolution need to study in depth, the entire chain in which the consumer feels inflation or even the so-called basket which is used to measure inflation. And convince themselves of where in the chain is inflation feeding in and why?

I look around restaurants in my area. They're full to the brim on non-weekend days. People aren't holding back.

People are still filling their cars. Sales of electrical 'toys' are still bouyant. Sales of holidays abroad and in the UK are still strong.

Interest rates aren't working.

Deutsche Bank raises M&G price target to 230 (225) pence - 'hold'

Berenberg cuts M&G price target to 208 (218) pence - 'hold'

Represents 3.2% of the holding. 20Pc uplift in NVDA SP will see NAV rise ~0.5%

THing is, SMT SP doesn't trade with a tight correlation to NAV. Difference has widened.

Positive sentiment towards SMT will narrow and reverse that spread.

They really need to be selling the trust to funds and pensions.

Getting the $1.8bn regardless of loss based on inflation is better at reducing leverage and drawing a line under that matter.

The leverage is holding this company back atm. Of course there's a better deal to be had, but working in Africa is very difficult. Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana etc all make it very difficult for IOCs to work. They just have a track record of political troubles, corruption which leads to re-neging contracts after they're so far along. The only guys who successfully do business are the Chinese and Russians. But there's a clear difference between how they conduct their business and treat Africans, and how in the current day, N.America and Europe treats Africans.

We're just not in the 'bullying' approach to doing business with such contracts.

If $1.8bn is on the table? Take it and get out.

@lordloadsoflolly.

FED and its compadres send out mixed messages.

But investors’ sentiment was reined in somewhat after Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said the latest economic data doesn’t argue for a pause in rate hikes yet. She noted the June policy decision will be based on inflation and employment data that hasn’t been released yet.

“As financial markets have been obsessing about the state of debt ceiling negotiations, the airwaves have also hosted an onslaught of Fed speakers, who have seemingly been tasked with sending a message to the markets,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial. “The message, that the Fed, at this point, has no plans to cut rates this year, but now also introducing the possibility that another rate hike could be forthcoming at the June 13-14 meeting.”

So why do you think inflation is so sticky? Commodity prices have been diving for the best part of 9months. OIl, Nat gas, wheat. Finished goods on the other hand keep rising. How so? So much of the public sector has gone on crippling strike, one by one, due to higher wage demands. Higher wage demand is fueled by higher cost of goods. So BoE and FED say.."Let's cool demand! Let's raise interest rates, and that'll kill demand". Really? Has inflation tumbled in the UK? Nope! There's a risk of wage spiral at the moment, fueling inflation further. How should BoE/FED fight inflation? The only way it knows is tighter monetary policy. Inflation does fall or abate, raise it again and again and again. At some point, the economy say's no and breaks!.

If you want to stop the main contributor of inflation currently, you need to stop wage growth or make it fall. How does the FED/BoE do that? That will stop wage increases feeding into what you and I buy. Prices stop moving higher and inflation effectively dives to zero. (I doubt we'll see deflation..I wish prices in Tesco would drop).

One of the differences between 80's and 2020's IMO is credit. Back then, apart from Mortgages, credit was not lent upon. People didn't know about it or were too afraid of the concept. Bankruptcy actually struck fear into people. Hence if you raised rates, people genuinely borrowed less and had a hard stop with what they could buy with their wage packet.

Wind the clock forward some 30 years, and its a very different. People feel obliged to their sense of entitlement. Who cares about budgeting? W can borrow money and if we don't pay it back, we'll got CAB and seek help or go through an IVA process. There's no fear of going overdrawn or borrowing on credit cards. If the checkout shows 'card declined due to insufficient funds' - That's a hard stop. You put the items back on the shelf. Demand effectively gets killed.

Another reason for the current wage spiral is during the pandemic, too many people (middle-earners or 50+ called it a day). Employees with those skills vanished.

How do you get them back? That wi

@lordloadsoflolly.

PBV currently stands at 2.5x.

If you valued it based on cash on hand, then its some 4.5x too high. But I've opted for PBV to give it a little premium.

Of course bulls will think its absurd given the success of COVID, but in high interest rate environment, growth stocks are just not in favour. Don't get me wrong, in 10 years, we could be looking at a 4x SP from here based on say 3 vaccines approved, one of which is a Personalised Cancer vaccine. But my point related to SMT buying MRNA at the $200's, when there was no visible product with revenue ramp on the horizon beyond COVID jab. MRNA is trending lower unfortunately owing to a lack of catalysts. COVID was an exception in that FDA approval was fast-tracked. That's not going to happen with non-global emergency vaccines. Phase 3 takes some 3-4 years. And then you have a ramp.

I hope I'm wrong, given MRNA is almost 10pc of SMT and that might get us back to 700p if MRNA somehow reaches $200.

On you point 2) US inflation and FED interest rates has more of an impact on its composition than BoE rates. But the FED is no where near pivoting down. Flat perhaps. I Was hoping the breaking of a spring in the regional banks sector would have halted the May rise, but it seems the FED didn't want to hold back. Still seeing them wanting to rise in June too. FED is trying to crash the economy to slacken the jobs market to halt wage growth. BoE also trying to to do the same. Its the only hammer they have to break this nut.

REading the RNS:

1) agree with reducing Illumina. Since their failed bid to acquire $PACB, there's a sense of desperation on where they will grow next or maintain leadership. They monopolised the Short read sequencing market in the clinical space for the best part of a decade and were able to charge high margins. Now with competitors targeting NGS and WGS, they'll a little flat-footed with no 'go-to' solution. They have their Affinity/Infinity product coming soon, but there's questions regarding its authenticity. They certainly won't be able to command the margins they have.

Step up the Grail purchase. They tried to diversify itself, but faced ire of regs due to anti-competition issues in the cancer testing market. They were arrogant enough to ignore those objections and continue with the acquisition. Now they're facing legal pressure to divest it. Their reluctance to do so is a sign of desperation.

Good call Ballie Gifford and any others for moving away from ILMN.

2) Purchasing more MRNA at the top has been a poor decision simply due to it looking like a Novovax stock chart. MRNA is in better shape, and absolutely correct to have a bonanza of late stage trials to apply their tech to different diseases. But revenue from these will not materialise for at least 2 years. Current revs will show Q-on-Q decline and lowered guidance due to lower COVID revs. As well, some trials will give underwhelming results as has shown recently with mRNA-4157 for example. Whilst reduction in risk of death, the stock's SAE's hammered the SP 8%. THeir flu vaccine (mRNA-1010) is not a walking the park. Unless there's a material change of fortune, I see this pushing $50 before it plateaus and is ready for the next product at commercial ramp.

3) WHilst they want you to believe that SMT's long history of buying stocks for the long term might be unquestionable, that doesn't mean they currently have the right managers in the team in the present day. They might cite the events of COVID, but I can see it could have turned out very differently. Whilst the NAV drops due to open market performance of any public listed stocks, the near stock price 20pc discount to NAV is the market's perception of the trust and its running. They are not impressed and pushes SMT to such discount levels. I've read their commentary on why they picked some of the big names, but what they share barely scratches the surface in terms of analysing the business. Looks like they read a pamphlet.

For SMT history does not guarantee future performance. This much is true. Been like this for nearly 18months. Are we going to be happy this trading at such a discount or even the SP remaining where it is? Rates are not going to fall until sometime in 2024 if that even. INflation still not tumbling. Almost like its hit an inflection.

In summary, the people who choose the composition and their weighting need to face scrutiny that they understand the history of SMT is at st

"Wish I have funds to load more!!"

Its trading at these prices for a reason....

Best to wait until it drops to £0.05 per share.....you'll get more than 4x the number of shares.

"Do you hold that in an ISA? The tax now on dividends has dropped and next year will drop again."

Don't you mean tax-free allowance ?

Citigroup cuts Morgan Advanced Materials target to 425 (437) pence - 'buy'

Was it even worth it?

@Chid
That as well.
Let's not forget.....in the end, its a bit of a fluke based on previous behaviour. One day, I could get it badly wrong and miss out on a leg up. No guarantees to my method.

I sold at 253.7p, two days ago before ex-div date and bought back in at 230.9p.
Got my dividend earlier and had my commission (2x) and stamp duty paid.

Might seem like a lot of effort for zero sum gain, but I get my divi earlier.

Take a look at MNG after ex-div.
London shares usually drop more than their annual divi.
Just track record. LGEN is not a fancy exciting stock where people continue to buy it regardless of ex-div.

Once it falls by annual divi or more, give it a few weeks to recover back to today's closing price.

They need to cease investment in the UK and concentrate elsewhere. Hammering a company which has weathered a protracted downturn for several years, only to be hit by a massive tax bill on profits is no way to gain energy independence.

HBR need to follow the example of other oil companies and focus elsewhere.