Member Info for TheTrotsky

Given the number of customers TEP picked up from the demise of other utility companies over the last couple of years and the opportunities to cross-sell other, higher-margin services I think TEP is following its long-term trend of rising lows. It fell c40% over approximately 18 months from its Nov 2013 peak before starting its long road to recovery and has thus far fallen c41% from its Nov 2023 peak over a period of approximately seven months.

As it currently stands, TEP might indeed fall further. 1200p is, perhaps, a possibility but I think 1000p is probably is unlikely; it will really depend on whether TEP starts to lose customers if, and when, the utility market regularises. Historically TEP has seen fairly low customer churn but a lot of its newer customers, unlike its older ex-British Gas customers, are probably more likely to switch to find the best deals (if TEP doesn't remain competitive). Against which, you've got to factor in that they've likely picked up a lot more active distributors in the last 12 months, as people start looking for opportunities to make some additional income, and that may give rise to new, additional customers to help counter other outflows.

As it stands, I think the yield is still too low (suggesting that the sp has further to drop) and there have to be question marks over whether TEP can continue to sustain the current projected 80p dividend, if starts to see (large) net customer outflows. Personally I think TEP would have been better advised to propose a modest increase in its previous ordinary dividend and proposed an additional special dividend top-up until the utility market had settled. You don't get slaughtered for cutting or stopping a special dividend and if TEP now pays part of its target 80p dividend as a special dividend then that could have a further adverse impact on the sp because there's now an expectation of a recurring 80p ordinary dividend. The next couple of half yearly results are going to be interesting.

$37.5m? They're selling a half interest in the CE for $22.5m. A a result, CASP will only receive half the revenues from future charters. Where do you get the other $15m from?

LTbeliever, I think you'll find that audited accounts are a listing requirement. I was making reference to trading updates and the unaudited interim accounts, none of which are signed off by the auditors. At DVRG, GB milked these opportunities for all they were worth; he basically lied and fabricated information to suit his purposes and then proceeded to further augment his lies and fabrications with misinformation on his Twitter account. You don't overstate sales 50%+ by accident.

As regards GB being under the microscope, it would appear that he's been there before (pre-Integumen) and hasn't learnt his lesson yet. Also, the cash position can be window dressesed (to a degree); it certainly wasn't uncommon in the past for companies to make a big pre-year end push to collect outstanding debtors and delay payment of creditors to improve their closing cash position. So you need to scutinise the audited accounts very carefully and watch out for "bouncing" debtors; it's not unheard of for companies in similar situations to give each other a "helping hand" e.g. repaying debts just before the year end only for the money to be returned to them shortly thereafter (this should be picked up by the auditors cash checks and adjusted if found to be material).

Absolutely nothing that GB says should be taken on face value.

GB has left an utter mess. Not sure what's happened to the pre-STC Labskin business. Was the commercial testing business all bogus? Has that been closed down too? Were we sold a pup when Modern Water was bought out by Integumen? What's happened to Modern Water's business? All of the recent orders appear to relate to Glanaco. The lack of information coming from BoD is deafening. Why aren't they now suing GB personally or at least referring him to the reulatory authorities? As it stands, Burton (by virtue of his appointments at both DVRG and MSYS) seems to be enabling GB. We need a new, independent BoD.

Based on past experience at DVRG, I wouldn't trust any RNS issued by MSYS regarding orders or any unaudited sales figures. Before resigning from DVRG, GB announced during the fund raising that DVRG's FY22 sales would be c£18m. Post year end this was revised to c£17.2m but, following the appointment of a new CFO in February, FY22 unaudited sales were revisited and subsequentlt found to be 50-55% overstated! I wouldn't trust a word that GB, or his sidekick Camillus, says.

More than likely (plus the recent poor results from JD Williams and the current upheaval in the Barclays' Empire, the owners of the Telegraph Group and Very, amongst other businesses). SOS doesn't seem to get much credit for that the fact that its target customers tend to be more affluent middle-income earners who, thus far, have been more resilient than some other groups. That said, times are a changing, inflationary and borrowing costs are, for some, only now beginning to bite.

I think that SOS will continue to benefit from the addition of more platforms (e.g. Sainsbury's) and more product lines being introduced to those platforms, but I suspect that new customer acquisitions, average spend per customer and/or average number of transactions per customer will prove to be be less than forecast. I wouldn't be too surprised if SOS fell short of current FY24 targets; I think it's going to be a tough ask in the current market.

Jatw, You, like the rest of the market, seem to have a very short memory. We saw a lot of upheaval in Q1, culminating in the collapse of SVB. The fact that M&G saw any upside in what was a difficult quarter for most markets is actually a major plus.

To suggest it's the death knell for ASOS is a market over reaction. The withdrawal of credit insurance means that ASOS will need to commit more cash upfront to secure supplies. ASOS has the cash resources (following its recent fund raise) but it may well require ASOS to reprioritise, which may not be a bad thing. As it currently stands, ASOS is wedded to running its own distribution centres even though it may not always make sense outisde of the UK and the EU; a change of approach may help rather than hinder.

No, "dear old" Clive can't. At the end of the day, if he doesn't play by the rules then its down to shareholders to report him so that the appropriate sanctions can be imposed. I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a director being disbarred for failing to follow the listing rules; it's in everybody's interests for directors to comply.

Has anybody got any thoughts on the upcoming interim dividend? As a REIT, it's my understanding that SAFE has to pay out at least 90% of its UK Adjusted Diluted EPRA EPS as dividends to avoid the requirement to pay UK corporation tax.

I've had a look at the results for FY22, FY21 and FY20 and, based on the Adjusted Diluted EPRA EPS disclosed in the accounts and deducting the estimated non-UK Adjusted Diluted EPRA EPS (which I've estimated based on the disclosed overseas tax charges and the underlying rates of tax thereon), I'd estimate that the UK Adjusted Diluted EPRA EPS in those 3 years would be c41.9p, c27.5p and c23p respectively and that 90% thereof would approximate to c37.7p, c24.7p and c20.7p repsectively. By comparison, over the same 3 years, SAFE has paid PIDs of 22.45p, 25.1p and 18.6p respectively.

Therefore, just based on those 3 years, there would appear to be scope to pay a c17p PID plus whatever UK Adjusted Diluted EPRA EPS is earned in H1 FY23!

I am somewhat flumoxed as to why there was the need to pay only 25% of FY22 interim dividend as a PID and perhaps SAFE has overpaid PIDs in the periods prior to FY20 but I'd be interested if anybody has any thoughts. Obviously my calculations could be wrong but, on the face of it, I don't think my assumptions are far off the mark.

I note that brokers have pencilled in a full year dividend of 33.31p for FY23 but that looks (very) light based on the EPRA EPS the UK business is likely to generate and the need to comply with the REIT distribution rules.

I'd initially penciled in an interim dividend of between 10p (for prudence) and 12p but I'm beginning to wonder if it could be more. The distribution of 90% of SAFE's UK EPRA EPS is the minimum distribution that SAFE needs to make. It could opt to pay more but in the current environment would be unlikely to do so.

PS. I did wonder whether SAFE's insurance and other non-storage earnings should be stripped out but it doesn't pay any UK corporation tax on these earnings and so, absent any brought forward losses, this ancilliary UK earnings would appear to be subject to the same REIT rules as its self-storage earnings.

Have some of yesterday's threads been removed? Wasn't there some supposed correspondence with ANX about the share price drop?

Hghotshot, This is what it says on the DEC website:

"... Pursuant to Section 7874 of The Internal Revenue Code, Diversified is treated as a U.S. corporation for all purposes under the Code. Therefore, dividends from the Company may be subject to US withholding taxes, depending on the country of residence of the shareholder, and whether the country has an income tax treaty with the United States. The statutory rate of withholding under the Code is 30 percent, which may be reduced by an applicable treaty.

For non-US Shareholders who are individuals that have not previously completed the appropriate US Withholding Tax Form, Form W-8BEN (or W-8ECI in some cases) relating to US withholding tax for non-US investors should be completed. For non-US Shareholders who are corporate entities, Form W-8BEN-E (or, if applicable, Form W-8IMY or Form W-8ECI) relating to US withholding tax for non-US investors should be completed. In some cases, Form W-8ECI may be applicable to individual Shareholders that have other U.S. taxable income and file a U.S. income tax return.

For Shareholders who complete and return the US withholding tax form relevant to them, the rate of US withholding tax will be adjusted to a rate of between 0% and 30% depending on the elections provided by the Shareholder in the Form W-8 and in accordance with the withholding rate under the applicable double income tax treaty (for example, 15% under the US-UK treaty) ..."

Section 7874 of The Internal Revenue Code can be found here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7874

Actually, I think the statement from Barclays is factually incorrect.

Barclays seem to imply that because DEC is a UK registered company (it's registered at Companies House) that it's outside the scope of the W-8BEN i.e. that it only applies to stocks listed on the Nasdaq or NYSE markets. That is factually incorrect. DEC derives all of its income from dividends paid up by its US subsidiaries and, as such, the dividends DEC receives would normally be subject to withholding tax (the withholding tax would be deducted from the dividends DEC receives). However, where the dividends paid up are paid out (i.e. the company merely acts as a conduit for the dividends), it's permissible for a company to elect that any withholding tax be paid by its shareholders instead (which DEC has done) AND said dividends are then within the scope of a W-8BEN.

That's my understanding.

I think £1 is too low. There could be an element of selling down to try and make any offer look better on paper. There have been some positive developments since 2021 and concentrating on cash collection and paying down debt may not be a bad thing (I'd say it was overdue). The judicial backlog is not helping us.

Utter tripe

I'm just saying that it's a very niche market

That's a licence fee of £50 per unit! The pillows aren't going to be cheap! Hardly mainstream market.

Shein have no need of ASOS's baggage. Also, it might mean that Shein would have to go "legit" i.e. pay the corporate and sales taxes that they are currently evading ;-)

Scrip (it's not an acronym) dividends are an allotment of new shares by the issuing company. So, in principle, all the broker needs do is add them to your existing nominee account record. It's not a corporate action.

Netzero, Have you actually bothered to look at recent results. ASOS is a basket case at the moment. There is absolutely no way (in a rational market) that it's worth £10 currently (it may even need another, large, capital injection before it's sorted itself out - probably could do with reducing bank borrowings if it can).

This is an opportunistic bid from a smaller rival (by turnover) with yet another ridiculous, unjustified SoftBank valuation attached. Hasn't anyone heard of Shein? The competition is tough and has a major tax advantage (it doesn't pay corporate tax on its Chinese exports and appears to evade sales taxes everywhere else without sanction). Despite Trendyol being loss making, it's apparently currently valued at $16.5bn, more than double ASOS's c$7.5bn valuation in its pre-Covid heyday!

It would seem that snake-oil salesmen are all the trend these days.