Member Info for The.Crowman

In a word No.

I will be staggered if PG is looking to bid for anything except possibly another charity sports top - to virtue signal he is not a total knob.

PG is looking to divest himself of his empire not add to it. Now whoever buys it from him might well look to bid for Debs or maybe in advance.

Finally were I completeley wrong PG needs sell nothing to buy Debs for around 500m - he has that and more in the bank. Or well Tina does.

It would be most encouraging if Cheshire and others bought also.

This buy today has been awaited for a very long time. A huge positive IMO.

Wish I had timed my purchases as well.

Finally a bit of new skin in the game and frankly as big a positive as we are likely to see before Xmas.

Was today the bottom?

As for the idiot troll on here. Stop feeding him, I read him correctly from the get go. Prize Tw*t. Ignore him.

That we seem to settle lower and lower suggests the former - before the idiots on here start posting I hold 640K of these and I never in my wildest dreams thought we would be here.

I laughingly thought these were fair value at 55p.

Mkt cap of £100m and still declines in the sp in stark contrast to the stores and the ongoing investment.

LSE200 posts gibberish aside of the point not one BOD has bought a single share below 29p - why is that? Will they ride the upturn and buy at 20p to give the share momentum or am I frankly clutching at straws. Probably the latter.

If we get to 5p then I thing we are finished in all but name - those in the know for thats what this will at that point will devour the profitable carcass.

Sorry to be so negative but I think this might be terminal. Yet for the life of me I do not have any good reason to understand why.

What happened to Magasin du Nord?

Have to agree - Nokesa

Nothing by way of reward before this goes past 50p - as if the packages on offer are not sufficient.

Not impressed by this at all.

Read it again KRSS!!

LSE is without question irrational.

He either trolls here - IMV most probable or simply does not understand what decisons he has made and why, hence the flip flop between buy and sell.

The share price here is suggesting DEB's is almost entirely unloved - no II seems to want to take a position - indeed some are selling out. That is a real concern to me.

Treaty

I appreciate BB's like this are stoked with folk like you - too illiterate to understand pretty much anything that is slightly counter to their own opinion. But to read my posts as knocking requires a level of stupidity that must make you special!

Mrs Green is a classic example of 'fronting'. She has no involvement in Arcadia at all.

It has in all but name been PG's show.

I recall his stupidly cheap deal for Sears and the equally cheap purchase of BHS - he got his £200m back in full after less than two years - that he left it whither on the vine and go bust is another matter.

Last year he was exposed as trying to sell Arcadia and although he denied it even in print he was exposed as a complete liar two days later.

He definitely wants out now. Sadly whatever trade price he gets will be lower but aside of his ego that will hardly matter - he has more money now than he could ever spend.

Expect a trade sale within the next six months.

DEB's is front and centre for Arcadias high street presence and it makes sense. Any owner of Arcadia will have a strong interest in DEB's.

Now what would PG take for Arcadia - profits down to £120m from over £200 - sis times earnings would be little more than he got from the yanks for buying 25% of Topshop a few years ago so I expect the price tag to be near to 1bln.

Debs could comand perhaps 350 - 500.

What is the guided profit projection for DEB's anyone - hillariously I have no idea?

For clarity "Far better for us would have been a CVA closing the likes of Plymouth , Birmingham and Oxford Street"

I meant HOF CVA not DEB's.

Consumers do not use an asset except via self interest.

Villages losing their local are prime examples - they moan about closure but mostly never go in. DEB's will be the same.

When I took a look at Plymouth the other month - 1st time ever I was struck by the scale of the shopping area and the long lost grandeur of it all. Today its shrinking its retail space and I suspect will continue to. It is still home to HOF and DEBs and I was surprised MA kept HOF except for the fact he will have got it rent free. If HOF had closed it would have joined BHS as an empty unit for perhaps another 15 years - the clear disintegration of the shopping centre is that large.

DEB's by contrast is slightly closer to the newish shopping mall - with good footfall and they will be paying large sums for a equally underinvested site.

Guess which one might turn a profit?

HOF going to MA was a bad day for DEB's - will the landlord of DEB's take a near 100% haircut just to avoid paying the business rates? I sadly doubt it unless via the same arrangement or a CVA. Far better for us would have been a CVA closing the likes of Plymouth , Birmingham and Oxford Street

Can the vastly better DEB's sites carry the dross is the real question and for how long?

For the record I have hardly been scathing. If anything I have been overly optimistic - I have two well placed (or at least I thought so) folk who work within the company who along with my analysis of the diverse proposition DEBs offers gave me over confidence that they would stabilise profits at around the level of £90m. That would have given them eps of circa 7-8p and a dividend of around half.

In reality they have screwed that idea up big time. No one was more shocked with the first of three profit warnings given after Xmas.

I sold up over half my holding at the begining of March for 30p and then MA increased to 29.7% and I dumbly thought he was a buyer for the whole company so stupidly rebought the lot back.

I have since added 150k shares at everything between 25p and 8.5p.

I am accepting I have made a big mistake - I may yet live to see them recover and I may see my money back or even a profit. But I am also accepting that I may well have lost most/all of my investment given I average around 42p.

If MA buys DEB's from the shareholders then I think Oldtimer's view is the price may be circa 30 -40p, but that will assume DEB's is on a recovery path and he does not want to pay a greater price thereafter. Sadly though MA wants to buy DEB's off the administrator / prepack. In fact I would suggest its the only way he wants to buy it. Given he can screw the market down this Xmas with HOF (at a cost to himself I grant) I suspect he will be trying to bring down DEB's this Xmas season.

On the plus side I believe DEB's has finally grasped the fundamental issues but off loading leases and the cost associated will need co-operation from landlords I cannot see why they would - short of being given equity in the company by return.

So for me its a giant screw up. For investors now its a risk/reward bet for which were I doing it all over I would put in no more than £5k at the moment. If they show they can grow profits - I have not one clue what they are predicting for this year BTW and reduce debt then they will be a storming buy.

But with a recesion looming (I ignore the near communist propaganda put out by the govt/OBR) the prospects are not great.

They need a whole new idea for the stores that are under performing - discount village type? Who knows.

Why I have told you all this I have no idea - too much time on my hands but please be assured I want/need no more fecking DEB's shares.

Ps I am adding not one more share here.

PG has never run DEB's in any way shape or form.

Pearls - stop writing nonsense.

Burton Group was in large part a collection of clothes brands and Debenhams - ceased in 1998 to become Debs Plc and Arcadia Plc - later to become Ltd as part of PG's buy from Stuart Rose.

Fast forward to today and the logic of reuniting these two companies is more profound than ever.

I also believe PG wants out and is not a buyer of Debs - but whoever buys Arcadia will undoubtedly take a view to consolidate DEB's into the purchase of Arcadia. One is sort of dependant on the other.

I may just live to see my average of 42p come around.

Papers love retailers in trouble - easy to relate to their readership.

Only good thing is its soon forgotten, that said today was not exactly a stunning turnaround. Not the 4p disaster some predicted but here we are still in single figures.

I am not sure what I see on the horizon that will see the sp climb to a more respectable footing. Certainly todays press will not help.

Do you think anyone of them are going to put their hand in their highly paid pockets and buy a meaningful number of shares?

Pearls

I do hope you are correct.

I truly do.

DC - pretty much mirrors my purchase.

Never in a thousand years did I see us where we are today.

I think we may have turned a corner.

For me though profit is 30p away - assuming I do not sell any of the recently bought ones.

For a safe but dull divvy stock this has been a bad call on my part.