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I think there's a (relatively) large sell being processed (the price was falling this morning despite people buying). Once that's been cleared the picture might become clearer.

The headlines are totally misleading. Why don't reporters actually read the detail? In 2024, the majority of the Motability premiums are being recognised half yearly on 01 April and 01 October. In 2023, the first tranche of Motability premiums were recognised on 01 September. The supposed 40% decline in motor premiums in Q3 year on year is simply down to Motability premiums being reported in Q4 in 2024 as opposed to Q3 in 2023. Are they actually paid for reporting their gibberish!

There has however been a continued decline in in-force own brand motor policies, with a corresponding impact on in-force rescue policies, as a result of the large premium increases they started pushing through in 2023. The decline was inevitable and although the rate of decline has been slowing quarter on quarter in 2024, it probably won't fully arrest in Q4. However, hopefully the number of in-force own brand motor policies will start increasing again in 2025 once premiums become more normalised compared to their main competitors (both Admiral and Hastings have raising premiums too, if belatedly) and Direct Line has, at last, been launched on price comparison websites (PCW).

As regards the homeware we'll have to see. The clothese business is (I believe) self-righting but future growth is likley to be slower than anticipated a few years ago. Some future discounting might be on the cards but, as can be seen from ASOS and BooHoo, UK e-tailers aren't in rood health and that's unlikely to change unless the paying field is levelled.

At the end of the day clothing is about patterns and design and SOS is now lending its expertise to soft furnishings without risking any of its capital. Laura Ashley did much the same but sunk a lot of capital into the business. There wasn't anything essentially wrong with the Laura Ashley business plan apart from the fact that they were never able to get a grip of the costs of production (they were wedded to UK production when everybody else was going global).

I don't see a problem with SOS investigating soft furnishings with Next at this juncture as long as they aren't committing their own capital; by the time they've a larger store portfolio (in 2-3 years time) they will have garnered invaluable working knowledge to know whether or not to try and introduce soft furnishings into their own stores

Discounting only works if you can generate the additional volumes from your customers buying more. If your customers buy the same but pay less then your losses can escalate a lot faster than they do if you don't discount.

I have no doubt that SOS were running the metrics in H1 2024 and realising that volumes gains (if any) weren't offsetting the lower margins. The losses in H1 2024 weren't simply about SOS going to full pricing; they were a result of sales volumes in Q1 and early Q2 2024 starting to fall short not only of budget expectations but what was needed to offset margin reductions. It's also enabled SOS to subsequently cut back on third party marketing costs. The problem that SOS has had since is that it takes a while to reset (changing to to full pricing doesn't fix problems over night; you have to cut your cloth to fit and that can take a while to work its way through to the bottom line); hopefully H2 2025 should see SOS return to profit.

Also, SOS can't beat the likes of Shein on discounting; Shein pays no corporate taxes in China or the UK and charges no VAT on UK sales. Until HMRC does something about it (like they've now tried to do in the US), discounting isn't going to be the long term path to success for SOS. It would be fairly simple to resolve the economic advantage Shein has over UK-based e-tailers but there doesn't appear to be any political will to try and fix the ineqaulity. SOS needs to build a model that appeals to discerning customers who are willing to pay more for better product (and, to some degree, those types of customers tend to shun the cheap and nasty, including discounting).

The decision to stop discounting was the right decision at the time; trying to chase sales in a recessionary period is a recipe for disaster (they can always return to a discounting model if the economy picks up). As Next has proven, stores aren't dead and the sales data from their new stores is encouraging to date. SOS is not committing any capital to homewares; just in-house design. Time will tell but it may lend itself to a useful source of ancilliary income and might provide a springboard to introducing homewares into their own stores in the fullness of time. It seems to be a low risk attempt to add another string to their bow. Broadening your income stream is never a bad thing if the it can be done at a low cost. One would imagine that SOS will earn a small percentage on any sales through Next but collect invaluable data (they will find out whether their own branded homewares have legs with little or no financial risk).

Pumpkin/Tonno/Redred, I'm not aware that manufacturers are currently under any obligation in any jursidiction to reduce the salt content of their products and, unlike sugar, there are no punitive taxes. Of course this may change further down the road. Also, it's my understanding that the new contracts are with bulk manufacturers rather than niche operators; it's not being aimed at the low volume, premium market segment. These manufacturers aren't going to pay more for their salt if it means lower operating margins given that their customers are highly unlikely to pay more for their product simply because it has a lower salt content (think about your average Walkers Crisp eater as an example).

CM22, Good point. Half the salt for the same taste does give SALT some pricing advantage. You'd think they'd be able to charge double the normal price for 1mT but I suspect they'd be lucky to achieve 150% (quite possibly less) on the basis that the manufacturer would want to pocket a good slug of the cost benefit (improved operating margins) and quite probably the larger retailers by extension (they pay a lot of attention to their suppliers operating margins and are quick to claim a price reduction when they see costs falling). Depending on its cost to manufacture compared to normal food grade salt, SALT may actually be willing to completely forego any pricing benefit if it can obtain long-term, high volume contracts (that's where the real money is to be made because SALT should also then be able to benefit from economies of scale).

Lokiloo, Entirely agree but, at the moment, larger contracts are the hope rather than the reality and the current share price appears to already be pricing in those 10s of thousands of MTs before they have become a reality. In my experience the market tends to expect tomorrow yesterday and tends to be impatient and lack any commercial sense. QED unless SALT notifies some new large orders in short shift (say 1-3 months) the share price is likely to start falling back. Personally, I think SALT has taken a major step forward and, by the sounds of it, new orders will be coming but I suspect that the orders will not be quick enough to satisify the market.

As I say, the market is devoid of any commercial sense. Manufacturers always tend to be very cautious when making major changes and will not rush bulk orders. Ultimately it will be the mass consumer who decides whether the half-salt snacks do actually taste the same as, or better than, the full-salt snacks. In principle they should but sometimes changes can be subtle e.g. their might be a barely perceptible change to the bite, the crunch etc. that might put off their regular consumers. You only need to look at what happened at Coca-Cola when they reformulated their eponymous soda to see what can go wrong if you rush in head first.

CJ39, You may as well ask what's the point of working if you're going to have to pay tax, national insurance and/or student loan repayments! 18%-24% on capital gains is considerably less than it used to be (albeit that the annual capital gains tax-free allowance has reduced by 75%) and the dividend tax rates compare very favourably to the income tax rates. As Robleo says, if you put your money into a stocks and shares ISA (maxiumum of £20k per annum) any gains and dividend income is tax-free and there are no restrictions on withdrawals.

Icecool, Why do they need to incentivise? You get tax relief at your marginal rate of tax when you pay into your pension and are entitled to take out a 25% lump sum up to £268,275 (the lifetime limit) tax-free from the age of 55 onwards and pay tax on any additional withdrawals at your marginal rate of tax. Why shouldn't your spouse simply inherit those benefits at your death?

Now I do have some sympathy for the beneficiaries of those who die before the age of 55, and perhaps those who are still in full-time employment and die between the ages of 55 and 67, being allowed to take the pension tax free (particularly if they aren't entitled to any other death benefits) but why should the beneficiaries of those who die between ages of 55 and 75 be treated any differently than those who die after the age of 75 if they've already stopped working full-time and have chosen to defer all, or part, of their pension because they already have sufficient other income to live off?

When everybody else is/was being asked to tighten their belts and pay more tax, this entitlement always appeared to be overly generous.

PS. You get tax relief on your pension contributions (it may not always appear that way but you do) whereas contributions into ISAs are made from your after tax income. Tax relief is a perk in my book.

MaryBr190, I like tax to be simple and holistic. This is neither; it's actually going to be quite complex to implement. Also, it messes around with investment strategies; I've been investing in my SIPP to generate recurring income, not making lump sum sales to pay potential IHT liabilities. All in all, I think this was a badly targeted budget. It leaves companies and people still in work carrying the brunt of the additonal tax load whilst leaving better off pensioners to fiddle whilst Rome burns.

The new IHT rules may force people to consider using pensions they'd intended to pass down to their beneficiaries (and thus paying tax that they might not have otherwise paid) but for most who were considering doing this it probably won't because they don't need the money to live. I'd have preferred Reeves to change some of the existing rules e.g. if you die before 75 your beneficiaries (or at least your spouse) can still, as far as I'm aware, draw down your pension entirely tax-free (why?). If Reeves thought the rules introduced by the Tories were too generous, why didn't she just change the rules so that any withdrawals from pension pots inherited by your children and/or other anticedents would be liable to tax at (say) 40% rather than their marginal rates of tax. Far simpler to administer.

Personally, I was interested in passing my SIPP to my children (if I could afford it and didn't need to use it for care home fees) to help augment their future pensions because, unlike my wife and I, they have large student loans to repay and are therefore likely to have less money to put into their own personal pensions (let's face it, any "salary premium" derived from a univerity education if often more than offset by the incumbent loan repayments). Also, unlike them, my wife and I are fortunate to have more generous final salary pensions. My "ungrateful oiks" are well and truly lumbered with taxes and loan repayments (even if they do find decent, well paid jobs) and will be very fortunate indeed if they are able to afford to retire before 65 and enjoy the fruits of their labours.

Rumpel, You might think that it's a gift with reservation (of title) but my reading of that legislation is that it only applies to property (not cash). The legislation was specifically introduced to stop people gifting their principle private residences on the understanding that they could continue to live in the property rent-free. In reality the legislation potentially did a lot of people a favour because the tax planning relied upon an understanding that people could continue to live in the property without any legal obligation on the beneficiaries and some beneficiaries were already "doing the dirty" and reneging on their "gentlemens agreement".

The (large) firm of accountants I worked for when this type of tax planning suddenly became de rigueur actually refused to recommend it to any of their clients, even before the anti-avoidance legislation was introduced to "nip it in the bud". They actually considered it morally wrong! Accountants with scruples; who'd have thought it!

I don't believe there is any other specific anti-avoidance legislation but stand to be corrected. It might be cavalier to suggest that you might draw up a legal document (you could forego the legal agreement if you trust your beneficiaries to honour a verbal agreement) but the money would only "return" in very limited proscribed circumstances to be expended on care fees and, in such an event, you could argue that the final estate would actually be no different than if the money had never left the estate in the first intstance (it wouldn't be in the final estate in either instance). You might also argue that the settlor derives no enduring benefit from the gift.

Littleaston, Are you referring to perpetuities? As I understand, perpetuity pensions are very rare and, even so, I'm not sure that they would now be exempt from IHT (basically the intention is to bring into IHT any pension pot that is capable of being passed on to your descendents). Also, I would expect the rate paid on perpetuities to be less than annuities.

Know-Little, The intention is that any IHT on the pension element of your estate is paid by your pension fund directly to HMRC. The beneficiaries of the remaining pot would then still be liable to income tax at their marginal rate of income tax on any subsequent withdrawals from their share of the remaining pension pot. So, if the whole of your pension pot was liable to 40% IHT, the remaining 60% of your pension pot (after IHT) could still be liable to income tax of up to 45% depending on your beneficiaries personal circumstances. 45% of 60% = 27% i.e. a total potential tax take of up to 67%.

The problem with trying to give it all away before you die is that if you are unfortunate enough to need nursing in a care home then that could easily cost you upwards of £100k pa (and that doesn't even get you 5* accommodation et al!). You could agree with your beneficiaries that they would bear the cost up to the value of the gift in the event that you require the funds (you could probably even draw up a legal contract to that effect) but beware the 7-year PET rules (and definitely ensure that any payments made by your beneficiaries on your behalf are made direct to the care home, otherwise it could become even more messy if they were die within 7 years of making the payments).

Rumpel, you are losing the plot. Firstly, annuities die with you and 60% of something is better than 0%. Secondly, you are ignoring the fact that most people save into pensions for the pension benefits rather than the IHT benefits. Thirdly, I think the change to the IHT treatment of DC schemes (DB schemes are unaffected - they die with you/spouse) will only serve to increase the onus on the younger generations to maximise their own pension contributions because they will now be less likely to benefit from bequeathed pension pots (or at least diminished pension pots)

How much revenue would 1mT of food grade salt generate? A quick check online suggests that 1mT of food grade salt might currently generate between $600 and $1,900 of revenue (not sure whether those are the retail or wholesale prices).

Although MicroSalt may offer health benefits it seems improbable that it would retail for a price in excess of the above range to a bulk manufacturer who's unlikley to be able to pass on any additional cost to its consumer (they would want to reduce the sodium content of their existing product without increasing its price).

So, in the absence of any volume sales information in MicroSalt's financial statements, it would seem unlikley that the new orders (on annualised basis) announced yesterday are likely to generate more than (say) $1m of annual sales. It's a start but one would suspect that MicroSalt would need to be sellling 1,000s, if not 10,000s, of mT before it was making meaningful retail sales to warrant the current share price.

Is it? The tipster says he's keeping a watching brief because there seems to be disparity between the current share price and brokers' FY25 forecasts; the concern being that management will spend OMG's cash badly. The tipster is still sitting on the sidelines (he's not investing).

I'm not sure that IVS/Sempre will "fail to perform" per se but management, thus far, have failed to set out any targets for the new businesses beyond the normal "status quo". Both businesses appear to be "Steady Eddies". Chelsea has suggested that smart manufacturing is the sector to be in but neither IVS/Sempre are currently setting the sector alight; their recent growth rates are in single digits. That could change but, thus far, management haven't set out their "vision" and what impact, if any, that will have Vicon.

The tipster refers to the businesses that OMG buys failing to perform but fails to consider whether the new businesses have, or will have, a knock on impact on Vicon (by distracting management's attention).

At the moment, Vicon has problems and it's not abundantly clear whether that's a sector wide problem or a Vicon-specific problem. Management would like us to think that it's the former but the CEO has already made a big blooper in her interim statement so her comments need to be taken with a pinch of salt until the situations becomes clearer and/or she has shown herself capable of making statements that can be relied upon.

I think there are two main issues here that are outside GSF's control.

Firtsly, market wide supply side issues. It seems to be a common theme across my portfolio in various market sectors that we are still experienicing delays is the supply of electrical components and chips. Part of this may be due to a step change that had already started occuring before the onset of COVID; namely, that we were beginning to need more and more chips with everything, however prosaic, and part of it may be due to price gouging (which shouldn't occur in a free market but mysteriously does). The chip industry has been notorious in the past for boom and bust (moving from chronic under supply to chronic over supply over regular cycles). The chip manfacturers now have the upper hand over their customers and are looking to keep supply stable and prices high (we've seen where this has got us in the housing market in the UK; there's no incentive to markedly increase supply).

Secondly, whilst the UK government has been dishing out incentives to increase green enery production, it's done nothing to improve/prepare the transmission network. Most of the delays in energising GSF's UK assets are down to National Grid not being able to give them an available window and GSF is not the only supplier to be affected by this backlog. The UK has had a laughable energy policy for decades now (it's totally uncoordinated).

Dividend cover is improving. They went through a period where they were churning assets which meant that EPRA earnings, and in consequence, EPRA dividend cover were always taking a hit until the proceeds could be re-invested into new assets. The market always chose to focus on the (temporary) shortfall in EPRA earnings without giving the managers any credit for generally being able to sell the properties for more than their book NAV and more than cover the EPRA earnings shortfall from realised profits on property sales.

There haven't been many property sales in the last 12 months and the funds realised from previous property sales have now been re-invested. As a result, EPRA earnings and dividend cover have both improved (the market always chose to ignore the lag effect between assets being disposed and new assets being bought).

Over many years now the management have shown themselves capable of repeatedly trading up (selling mature assets and re-investing the proceeds in properties offering better earnings potential). I also like the fact that the managres tend to buy assets with one eye on their alternative use and how they can add value i.e. they aren't wedded to their existing tenant and/or the property's current use. It means that they can take problem tenants in their stride and are always ready to pivot if the need arises e.g. reducing void periods and/or moving into alternative use if necessary.

What's happened to the daily NAV disclsoures? They seem to have been disappeared. I do sometimes wonder why I bother to subscribe to LSE!

What's happened to the daily NAV disclsoures? They seem to have been disappeared. I do sometimes wonder why I bother to subscribe to LSE!

Chelsea, the signs were not "very clear" as you suggest. I looked upon the investment in IVS as a "project", no more. That's not me having the last word, that's just my view.

PS. I have every right to criticise the CEO, expecially since she made a major gaff in the June RNS (her statement couldn't have been much wider of the mark if she'd tried) which has since seen the share price fall nearly 50%. The acquisition of Sempre does not let her off the hook for botching the RNS. Having been involved in acquisitions and dispsosals by SMBs in the past, I know that they can be a major distraction for a small executive team and, as a long term investor, I'm left to question whether the (questionably desperate) search for acquisitions following the sale of Yotta was justified. I think they may have fallen into the trap (the tail wagging the dog rather than vice versa) that always concerned me but would be glad to be proven wrong. Smart manufacturing has its merits but, given the potential impact on the day-to-day management of the Vicon business, was the price worth paying? Sometimes it's better to be the king of one trade rather than the jack of all!

In fairness, the header rather gives it away. CityWatcher isn't suggesting that this is anything to do with Filtronic but another tech company that Filtronic investors might be interested in.

Personally, I've been watching Ensilica for a while. The only real question is whether it might need to do another cash raise in the next 12-18 months to fund a further expansion. It's currently trading above the the May 2024 placing price of 45p but below the pre-placing price of 55p. The company currently expects FY25 revenues of £30m and EBITDA of £5m (compared to c£25m and c£2m in FY24 respectively).

Having held ARM, CSR, Imagination Technologies, IQE and Wolfson at various times in the past, I've always found UK chip designers a good investment (even if the returns haven't always been as stellar as I'd first hoped). I'd probably have had a pop before now if I wasn't primamrily investing for dividends these days (my investment in Filtronic pre-dates my change of investment strategy).