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I don’t think that’s the answer Thetadecay. The cost base of THG is way too high. There’s very little detail on the costs make up in the accounts but a big part of the difference has to be due to the contract with Ingenuity. I’ve said before that if Ashley manages to takeover THG his first act would be to cancel or renegotiate that contract with Ingenuity and at a stroke take a huge chunk out of the cost base. Ashley would challenge Moulding and his mates to take THG to court for breach of contract as it would shine an inconvenient light on the whole relationship which would show the reality of the so called arms length nature of the deal.

Any chance that at the next results presentation one of those bright and brave analysts will ask Moulding why THG margins are so woeful in comparison with APN. It’s such an obvious and fundamental question to ask that they probably won’t bother!

A statement from our mute Chairman? Dream on.

The further fall in the share price has provided an opportunity to invest at a price even lower than Matt and his mates. Still not decided though whether I really want to throw yet more money at this dog. I’ve bought so many shares already in the hope of averaging down, only to see the share price continue its inexorable decline. But surely surely it can’t fall much further than this? Famous last words perhaps.

Glad now that Retail Investors were excluded from the latest placing otherwise I’d have been foolish enough to participate, just like I did in the 49p raise a few months ago.

MA will know whether or not the Ingenuity deal is on market terms. If its on market terms (unlikely) then it isn't so much of a poison pill. If it isn't on market terms Ashley won't be shy in testing the contract in court on the grounds that the parties agreeing to it were conflicted and failed to consider the interests of all shareholders. Moulding, Lord Allen and the other puppets on the Board had better be damned certain the deal stacks up on genuine commercial terms.

With the share price continuing to tank, retail investors will soon be able to buy additional shares at the placing price after all, thereby eliminating or at least reducing the dilution that was forced on them by the latest financial engineering play. Silly me took part in the 49p fund raise a few months ago - wish I'd never bothered.

It seems to me that one or more of the equity investors (amounting to £8m) have now decided they want some of what Matt got, ie an option on THG shares via an additional convertible loan rather than participating directly in the equity placing. What a bizarre way to run a fund raise. Chopping and changing the structure from one day to the next. The latest RNS states that Matt is still contributing £60m so the extra £8m loan must be from other investors.

* pre-emption rights

I managed to miss the after hours RNS on Monday night but even if I’d seen it there wasn’t any provision made this time for private investors to get shares on the same terms as the institutions- the RNS trumpeted the fact that pre-emotion rights had been respected. But this wasn’t true for retail investors. It seems some shareholders are more equal

than others. What a carry on. What say you our mute Chairman.

Moulding has essentially given himself £55m worth of share options at a strike price of 32.3p. Heads he wins tails we lose.

Thanks for the info Ste4001. I’ve submitted my report on the FCA website about the suspicious fall in the THG share price prior to the RNS on Monday evening.

It’s profoundly depressing and disappointing because I still believe there is a massive opportunity here if they could just get it right.

Correction- it’s actually £26m of EBITDA

They need to check out what Applied Nutrition is doing right. They’ve managed to generate £24m EDITDA in 2024 on £86m of sales. And their model is to sell through bricks and mortar retailers who must want a decent % cut on the sales. THG is largely selling direct to the consumer and still can’t manage to come close to those EDITDA margins. Something is badly wrong somewhere. THG’s overheads must be monstrous in comparison. Paying to much for the Ingenuity services perhaps?

It really does take a special kind of useless Board and Management to destroy so much shareholder value whilst the market they operate in grows strongly. Just this morning the Telegraph reports that “the global protein bar market is projected to grow from £3.71 billion in 2022 to £5.6 billion by 2029”. Do they never look in the mirror and ask themselves if they’re in the wrong line of work.

I’m at a loss to explain a 10% drop in the share price based simply on a struggling competitor taking a few steps to address their failings. No guarantee at all that these steps will work mind you. I thought perhaps by exposing ASDA as potential takeover target for Sainsbury’s that prospect might have explained some of the drop in the Tesco price, but I see that Sainsbury’s share price has suffered a large fall too. Who knows what’s going on here. All very strange.

I can’t see anything that ASDA have said today which would justify such an adverse impact on Tesco shares. This is a competitive market that Tesco operates in. Surely no-one thought that ASDA would just sit on their hands and do nothing. But nothing they’ve said today guarantees any sort of meaningful recovery at ASDA never mind a material negative impact on Tesco specifically. Could be some other information which isn’t yet in the public domain of course.

THG paid him £400k in 2023, whereas he was paid £320k Balfour Beatty in the same year, a much larger company in terms of market cap and revenue. I’d love to know the rationale. Surely he should be in line for a significant reduction in salary in line with the much reduced market cap of THG on his watch.

@vicioushippo We’ve been round this block a few times already. There are very good reasons why investors didn’t want shares in a private company, for example someone who holds their THG shares in an ISA would be giving up their tax wrapper and suffer capital gains tax on any Ingenuity gains. There are also liquidity and governance and transparency issues with private companies so it really isn’t good enough to keep telling the lie that everyone could have taken a share in the demerged business.