Member Info for valuewalk

We have a special condition appended to the share. And I quote, "Bid Situation: This is where London Stock Exchange has been notified by The Panel on Takeovers and Mergers (POTAM) that a specific security is currently engaged in a bid situation, whether hostile or otherwise."

We are in a Bid Situation.....https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/summary/company-summary/GB00B4QMVR10GBGBXSET3.html

To every story. It's clear, I think, that I am a bull on this. So, take what I say with a pinch of salt if you wish, but the fact that Flybe can still get debt financing must be a good sign- nobody, least of all banks, lends to companies which are decidedly on the way out. Yes, secured debt means that they will get the property back, but look at the LTV. £4.7 million plane on which they have lent £4 million.....put it this way, it will not be lucrative for them if Flybe goes bust, because they will have to find a buyer for a single plane which will be a pain.

Similarly, would the airport have agreed to the S & L of the hangar if they thought Flybe would not be around to honour it?

I think it's just inertia and the effect of weak Sterling/uncertain oil prices. They want a real, real steal clearly. That's understandable for any business, but I think what will happen in a take-over scenario is someone will make the first (probably piss extractingly low) bid. Let's say 20p. Then the others will crawl out of the woodwork and bid it up until nobody wants to pay any more. They aren't stupid, for one thing, unlike most of us, they are actual experts in aviation- they will look at Flybe wholesale in a way most investors can't. They will see what is worth having and what isn't.

And just lol at the idea any bidder wants to wait for them to go into administration.......yes, you might save a few million quid on the acquisition price. Do you know the onerous obligations that come with an officially insolvent business? Especially one as active and unforgiving of time losses as aviation? Administrators assume massive liability, in some cases personally......they won't give you the freedom to do anything. Want to have your other airline take over a Flybe route for synergies? Nope, asset stripping/TUV. Want to borrow money? Sorry, can't, damages position of existing creditors. Disagree with us on anything? See you at the High Court in eighteen months to discuss it. It is a poisoned chalice to wait for the IPs (and their £500 an hour fees) to move in when you could just take the business over as a going concern (which it, emphatically, is), use it to bolster your existing operations or just run it until things recover- dumping in equity or even debt (depends on Flybe's covenants with existing lenders) as and when its needed.

No way does anyone want Flybe as a carcass, just being an airline means the meat would taste s***

Has anyone read this properly? I am guessing it was not as positive as had been hoped, if it were I think Flybe would have experienced a small boost.

This, to me, is the reality for the British High Street/retail trade. I'm looking at Debenhams too and reading their report makes it clear that they are being strangled by rents. It is the same across the board. Rental contracts mean nothing if every tenant company goes under, and there will either be a reckoning with landlords or everyone, landlord and retailer, will lose out long term, big style (or 'bigly' as one might say for effect).

As a whole we have about 60% of our national wealth, £6 trillion or so, tied up in land and real property. We fetishise land as a country, historically (as in many other places of sufficient heritage) land ownership determined how important you were. People who wouldn't dream of dipping their toes into the market with us coo and speculate over their house going up by X% a year. Buy to let was free money for a long time. Partly this is harking back to our feudal past, partly it is that we have had 1,000 years of stability (so people see it as worthwhile to buy houses), partly it is Thatcher's fault/doing, partly it is because we are densely populated and very concentrated in certain areas.

Anyway, the net result is to secure the future of them both landlords and tenants have to negotiate. Ultimately it's not as though ten new retailers are lining up to fill the 113 empty Carpetright stores we'll have if they go into liquidation, is it? No. If Carpetright is not allowed to make any money ever again, any profit, that is what will happen eventually and landlords must, on some level, know it.

If you were looking to really take over Flybe at 20p what you would need to do, in my view of the sentiment on here (fairly representative of remaining shareholders, at a guess), is to hope the Pound is still weak in 6 months, hope fuel prices start to stabilise or rise and then pounce at 20p when the share hasn't budged from 8p in months. Undoubtedly some real vultures have already considered this and are ready to fire if the shareholder base becomes extremely desperate, but we are just nowhere near that point today, tomorrow or next week.

I maintain, and I may yet be proven wrong (if I am it is a bad sign for Flybe's true position), but I don't see a bid of less than 20p. Well, someone may try it on but I think they know too many holders are entrenched at much higher prices. 20p would allow me to double on 80,000 shares...so far from the end of the world, just not a recognition of Flybe's potential value. But if I had bought in at £1 or, worse, £2.50 near the peak I'd rather no takeover and stuff just plays out. Too many people are in that position.

Not to mention, as I've said a few times before, the Directors won't want their last slice of Flybe pie to be a sliver...

Is not helping things I suspect. Again, short termism. Oh well.....another day means nothing to me.

As others have said, whilst the production costs will not be ultra-low they won't be ultra-high either, based on where we have assets. As and when oil, as it does cyclically, peaks we could unlock $1 billion + of value. This could be a three hundred bagger in the event of oil prices sharply rising (something I do, to be frank, consider unlikely)....but even if oil never goes up again we are looking at a 20 bagger.

I 1000% agree, Flybe is worth much, much more than £20 million. At present it is worth £50 million +, with the macroeconomic alterations we all seem to agree are coming (we disagree on timing perhaps) it could be worth £500 million (inasmuch as it could easily generate more than that in profits over the next 10 years). However, it has always been worth more than £20 million, so I don't read into it that anything will happen tomorrow or next Monday or the Monday after that to reflect that.

Markets misprice and the intelligent take advantage of that. The difference between value investors and scalpers is that value investors don't mind if the mispricing lasts months or years, scalpers lose out if they can't be right to the millisecond. I am a value investor for that reason, among others.

If your kid forgets his swimming gear I'm sure he can borrow some on here.....plentiful supply of shorts here.

No. You will, as the giftor, pay capital gains tax based on the acquisition price. CGT is at an historically quite low level (history being relatively short, there was no CGT until the 1960s) so it might be a good time for it.

Is almost irrelevant. If it takes five years for them to pay out we're still looking at 80% a year, assuming the market cap does no more than reflect the value of the award. I will admit to some ignorance of the likely tax position vis a vis the award, they are Isle of Man headquartered so it could be complex.

I think going bust is, probably, more likely than a 15p takeover- and I consider, as anyone who has read my previous comments knows, going bust is extremely unlikely. Nobody is going to sell out at 15p, too many people are entrenched and bought at much, much higher prices.

I could see a stalemate developing. Which, as I've said, may be the best thing. Nobody takes us over, we shore ourselves up over a year or two and are worth £1 a share- much higher ROI in the end. Plus the BOD know they'll be replaced if there is a takeover, no more freebies etc. Not to mention the capital losses they'll take on the shares they bought (probably have some options too, which are worthless at current prices).

You can view Flybe as just a leveraged currency/fuel play, majorly leveraged. As the Pound appreciates not only is fuel cheaper (aided by drops in the price in USD too) but their USD loan obligations become considerably less onerous.

Lesson for the future management....you only sell in Pounds, so do your loans in Pounds.

I'd almost prefer they didn't pay a dividend. They can find better uses for money than that. Not least of all shoring up their cash reserves so we don't get this ridiculous merry go round whenever the tide turns a bit. I want to be in for the long haul. I've long admired Flybe but couldn't justify buying until the market started to really, really underprice it- that day came not long ago. £1 a share, £2 a share- it is all not just possible but, long term, likely.

I could see a small hedge fund making a play here. If you had £5 million going begging, sweet FA to most hedge funds (at least most equities-focused ones) you could buy enough to block any takeover and agitate for change. I sincerely hope someone does this, forces some value out of what Flybe has to offer (a lot) and boosts the price massively over a year or two.

You would just start demanding that they hedge less, close some unprofitable routes, probably try to get some thinly disguised government subsidy for a new route (you ARE a hedge fund after all) and sit on it.

Indeed. Am I the only one here who has actually read the Insolvency Act 1986? It doesn't work like some here think, you can't just say, "Oh business is a bit crap, we will declare ourselves insolvent".....you have to be unable (to put it in very, very simple terms and ignore a lot of nuance) to pay your debts as they fall due. Flybe is nowhere near that position.

Administration, liquidation, a CVA etc. None of it is on the horizon. Either people are lying or they have never practised and actually dealt with winding up petitions, restructurings etc (albeit nothing on the scale of a Plc). Directors, as a rule, are utterly loathe to put their companies into insolvency procedures, you do not do it when you have a year's worth of cash. You lose the upside completely, you stop getting paid, you only ever do it when things are so dire that if you carry on you'll end up in the dock for it.

Hahahaha. And why would you care if you don't have a short position?