Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
But this is a great turnaround today, @9.45 this stock was in the top 3 fallers on my current stock watchlist and now it's in the top 3 risers of the 36 stocks currently on my FTSE watchlist.
Onwards and Upwards as @PP used to say.
@Scamp the company owes over a billion in bonds, It has a debt rating of Junk.
It's a possibility, albeit a very slim one.
I've seen companies been put forced into administration overnight during the 2009 financial crisis and @newdealz has said this market has not found it's bottom yet.
Well said @Scamp
I don't think I've ever caught the bottom here and I have sold the top either.
Warren Buffett said something very similar about buying value rather looking to catch either the top or bottom.
i agree with what @scamp says about the share price in the longer-term.
Short-term though if there is no resolution to the dispute and the strikes persist through November, December and Janaury there will either need to be some government intervention simply to stop the company going into administration. They cannot afford to lose £25 million each and every time the CWU sheep decide they want a undeserved unpaid holiday.
He may have a similar hairdo to Churchill, but that's 100 % where the similarities between Winston and Dave end.
He really should be sued for plagiarism for his latest twitter rant
" The we will fight them blah blah "
@Dowsie on top of the employees who were given free shares and those employees past and present that remain holders, the two current Royal Mail Pension schemes holds - 6.89 % and 5.60 % of the current market cap.
Whichever way you look at it, this represents a significant amount, and many of the striking CWU members will probably still be buying every month and eagerly awaiting a drop in price so they can re-purchase any they may have sold in the past.
Well said @PP.
It's plain to see on the board here as well, whilst many of the employees, both past and present have excellent information and ideas about the company itself, very few seem to understand the financial aspects beyond a base level.
Hopefully common sense prevails, but both the BOD and CWU are equally to blame for the current dispute and reasoning behind it, plus what is the point of have talks all of last week, when the CWU just continued with the national strike on Thursday and then the company drops the RNS on Friday morning.
Without the RNS on Friday the price would have opened at around 2.15, and without the dispute would be around @3 - 3.50. People here will just point the finger at the BOD and Simon Thompson, but look at the price of BT shares, the share price there has reacted the same since the announcement of Industrial action, and the price there is almost at the price it was at the start of Covid. The only reason the price here isn't at those same lows right now is because of DK and him holding 22 % of the company, without that the shorts would have decimated the price here.
GLA.
I have also dealt with multiple client and redundancies in the past and the first to go is always the lowest cost employees, which again often defies logic because they normally better to a much higher standard then those who are deemed to expensive to make redundant.
The second and third largest shareholders of the company are the current employees, and they represent circa 13 % of the total holdings. I would guess former and current employees are also invested and represent anywhere from another 2- 5 % of the total market cap.
Therefore, not only are these employees losing money from their pay from striking, but there investment holdings is decreasing at a similar rate.
It all defies logic at this stage, when Dave Ward talks about all the money passed on to shareholders does he even realise that a significant proportion of that went to his members, plus they will be the ones who took the money out of the company and chose not to re-invest their dividend income.
They really need to make a deal this week, moreso for the sake of the employees than anyone else.
He calls me immature, but then uses the TOSLO moniker to refer to me in a derogatory manner but expects an impassioned response.
And they wonder why I don't post like I once did and now choose to mock them instead.
The guy is the quintessential parasitic low-level narcissistic trolling parasitic leech, looking for a vertebrate host to both attach themselves to and feed off. Ironically, this is also a description that could be used, to sum up, and describe his 30-year-plus working tenure at Royal Mail.
Has Dave Ward actually announced anywhere what the CWU is actually looking for in any future negotiations or is it still just word salad at this point ?
I have tried looking and have found some interviews he made during the recent strike action and all he does is go on about how the 2 % enforced pay-rise is unacceptable and the other 3.5 % was also unacceptable especially in light of the inflation based cost of living increase and rising energy bills.
Liz Truss though has reduced the energy-bill cap from £3,549 to £2,500 which makes part of his argument their somewhat void.
Other than that all Dave seems to do is ramble on about the £758 million and suggest that the company is lying about the current daily losses it is reporting and how they gave away £400 million to share holders. Surely the recent RNS would make that argument void, unless the company is guilty of posting fraudulent figures which seems very unlikely considering its status as a PLC.
When challenged on any point his base reply at present is to simply say everything the company is saying is a total fabrication of the truth and that they're being less than honest with everyone and to repeat the point about making record profits and then he diverts the conversation to Vesa.
Has the CWU actually put in writing to either it's members or the company what they're actually looking for.
A lot of the changes to terms and condition seems to be around new members and less about existing ones, plus by taking industrial action makes some of the old agreements void.
What am I actually missing at this point, because Dave seems to talk a lot but he really isn't saying anything, and the CWU seem to be spending an extortionate amount of its members money on stationary, posters and banners during the strike action.
Do the members even know the why and what they're striking for at this point ?
@Anger the increase in people costs would have probably saved the industrial action and dispute and it could have been absorbed in costing the output, especially over the long-term.
All that is needed is for RMG UK to churn out 50-100m profit for the next 5-10 years, by which time GLS will have compounded to the point where it will generate £1 billion in free cash flow per year and circa £500m a year in profit. The free cash-flow would have paid not only for it's continued growth but also the modernisation along with satisfying all of the stakeholders not just the shareholders.
There was no need to take on the Union, especially after the financial windfall gained from COVID, the aging workforce would have eventually been replaced via natural attrition and modernisation.
The current Industrial action was always simmering in the background especially pre-covid and all covid effectively did was delay it, but what COVID did do is provide enough funds to ensure all stakeholders could have walked away happy and in the short-term.
The BOD have to accept responsibility for their part in all of this and RMG UK figures without industrial action would have been very similar to the year ended March 2020 figure with circa £100m profitability.
The £200 million share buy back in hindsight is probably one of worst decisions the company has ever made considering where the current share price is.
Dave Ward is gradually metamorphosing into a Jim Jones type figure and the CWU members are his lemming like cult-following and they're currently highly intoxicated on the Kool-Aid.
He obviously will be hoping Liz Truss is outed and we get an expediated general election in the hope Labour brings Royal Mail back into public ownership, and when you read articles like the one below it could be the best option for all parties involved especially the shareholders.
https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/royal-mail
The emotive language that @SIMX describes the CWU using is straight out of the Robert Cialdini Influence handbook, it's cheap persuasion gimmicky combined with sales and marketing manipulations to deliberately incite the members and hopefully garner support from the public and influence from Labour MP's whom they have bought with the £750k donation.
They do have a point about the mismanagement of COVID-19 financial windfall and an extra £200 million should really have been set aside for the employees, but beyond that it really is all just noise from both sides.
You also have to feel for the workers that will be outed because of this and the first to go will not be the lazy ****s with 30 plus years of stealing a living, it will be the ones who will cost the least to make redundant.
When you read between the lines of the recent RNS, UK RMG could have probably booked at least a circa £100 million profit without any strike action, taking into consideration a lot of the £1 million a day losses would have been unwound during the busy season.
GLS, is set to make circa £300-350 million this year and is growing year in year out.
So that would equate to a basic £450 million year in year out profit.
Let's hope common sense prevails with the on-going talks, if the BOD stick to their guns and stall on negotiations, it can only be because of the simple fact that it is very likely a prima facie agreement has already been made with Vesa, otherwise why else would they be stalling give the employees another 3-4 % pay rise, along with only minor changes to their terms and conditions.
GLA.