Member Info for Vbig

did anyone see the presentation this morning? Maybe my questions below were covered during that.
I've just looked through the Powerpoint of the presentation but there was more on ESG and "diversity" than on concrete plans for debt reduction. I would like to have seen debt reduction actions with estimated numbers against them and timescales.
- Page 47 says "£150-£200m cash savings by end 2023". I assume that's a one-time thing rather than a recurring saving?
- CAPEX being reduced from £130m to £80m. OK but that's not necessarily good if plant does need replacing or new products need investment CAPEX. What does the £50m reduction relate to and will that now hamper operations?
- "Five year UK export finance package of £450m agreed". Is this a new thing or did they have export finance before? Does this help cashflow or is it just export credit insurance?
- Dividend suspended. OK needs must, but it is hardly an action that took much hard work. It's a rights issue under another name.

I've finally thrown in the towel today and sold out. I'd rather have whatever meagre amount I can salvage from this holding now that other better opportunities are appearing in the markets. I think I can get a better return elsewhere on a 3 year view now.

So much for the Capita "turnaround complete" claim. Long-term shareholders would have been in almost the same position had the company declared bankruptcy.

I had a quick look through the Half-year Report. It looks to me like they are closing Indulgence down. They've stopped production at the moment so I'm not sure if the staff are on furlough being paid or have been made redundant. I wouldn't be surprised if production doesn't restart and Indulgence is wound-down or absorbed into Shire Foods. Once you've stopped production it can sometimes be hard to restart it.

I'm not quite sure why Indulgence wasn't merged in with Shire Food (Leamington Spa) immediately after acquisition and production moved to Shire. Indulgence wouldn't have needed to be rebuilt like a start-up then as it would just have become part of Shire's existing operations (piggy-backing on Shire's well established systems and processes). Maybe there wasn't room at the Leamington site or some other factors made that unattractive at the time?

Anyway, it could have been a big acquisition that went awry rather than a tiddler like Indulgence. Valuable experience learned for the board of directors.

What is the likelihood of a rights issue to improve the debt position?
Until the economic situation is clearer I'll wait on the sidelines.

Great day. I own a garage and just charged some mug £800 to service his Ducati.

I imagine that the retail platform "CMC Invest" should be launching soon. I think the last announcement said it would launch towards the end of the summer. I had assumed 2022.

Retail platforms seem to me to be an overpopulated market anyway. A lot of strong incumbents in there. Maybe CMC will surprise me with some new innovation.

Net debt is $1bn, yet excluding the costs of the Adhesives acquisition the H1 freecashflow was a negative -$62m mainly from working capital increases resulting from inflation and the higher WC ratio in the acquired adhesives business.
$1bn of the $1.5bn debt facility comes up for refinancing in mid 2024 at likely higher interest rates.
The net debt/leverage ratio is now 2.3 and the covenant is 3.5, but we are entering a recession which will erode demand and with input costs are going up rapidly from inflation the EBITDA in this ratio may come under pressure.

In the past whenever I have lost money it has been because the companies had too much debt, which means when things turn down due to recession they have no room for manoeuvre.

I was thinking of buying this morning after the price drop, but I looked at the presentation and did an about face and got the F.O.O.T. as fast as I could.

Reduction of future EBIT guidance from 4% now 3% was a big blow. If that was permanent guidance then market cap expectation would be 3/4 of what it was expected to be previously. Consumer tightening has only just begun so far too early in my opinion to know the state of affairs in 12 months time.

I think there'll be an chance to buy-in at lower share price levels than now over the coming months. I also think a good buy signal will be when the short positions close out.

Yep, I hope things should look up from here.

I think the Indulgence acquisition has been a bit underwhelming but COVID was probably a big factor in that. I've always thought that buying business out of administration can be a bit of a double-edged sword. They are in administration for a reason and that might not just be due to back luck. Anyway, I don't know the full details so I shouldn't really express an opinion.

I take a lot of comfort from the fact that Volvere seem very cautious about what acquisitions they make. There must have been 100's of business which have landed on the Landers' desks (sorry) over the past couple of years that have been rejected. A fool and his money are soon parted and so patience and self-control is something I value very highly.

...and the share price didn't move until the announcement was made. So it looks like the OMG staff and advisers can keep a secret and have some integrity.

I imagine that one advantage for EKF is that if Verici needed to raise money from shareholders in future e.g. via a rights issue, then the individual EKF shareholders would have to stump-up the cash (as they would then be holders of the Verici shares) rather than EKF.
Also don't some of Christopher Mills investment trusts have a limit on how much of the funds' value can be invested in any one holding, and their holdings in EKF were in the past getting towards that limit. I assume this is one reason why EKF keep spinning our these companies, because otherwise the EKF market cap might be higher, meaning that Mills's funds may be nearer their limit of how much they can invest in one holding. This would also be a reason to transfer the Verici value out of EKF and to the EKF shareholders.

I've got my own agenda to dispose of my shares at a the highest possible price. So I think only positive posts should be allowed.
I'm expecting it to be announced shortly that the Guandong Metal Extraction Corporation is going to bid £900m to buy the Tjate licence.

I went in my local Morrisons the other day and had a look at Volvere's own Nasty Vegan brand in the frozen food section. Quite a lot of the boxes had come open. Not a good look. I thought we'd just invested in a new packing machine? Maybe we need better glue.

(1) Is there anyone out there that understands Company law and where we as investors stand vis a vis the situation with Polo Resources?
(2) Does anyone think there is any chance that this could come back from the dead or is it a capital loss tax write-off?

Great analysis and interpretation of RNS by people on this board, but shouldn't the company be giving their analysis of the situation in the same detail so that people on this board don't have to bust a gut?
Why do people on this board have to debate the meaning and interpretation of things in an RNS when it should be clear?
The CFO of Jubilee needs to show some leadership and take responsibility for this as Leon Coetzer and Colin Bird have always been lightweights when it comes to complete clarity. I've been a holder for 16 years, well before Leon came on the scene, so I feel I have a valid complaint.
I've never been able, over that time, to have sleepless nights over this investment.

What's making me a bit nervous here is the 4% EBIT margin. If sales fall a bit then I imagine it could become loss-making quite easily. I can't work out how much sales will fall if households start to struggle financially. If your washing machine breaks then you have to get a new one, but you can put-off a purchase of a better TV. Or will people buy more on credit? Don't know.
My gut feeling is that the share price has a bit further to fall before it bottoms-out. Long-term prospects look good to me though.

I was thinking of buying in this morning but decided to wait a bit. I can't quite work out whether Unilever will be recession resistant or not. In a recession consumers might move to cheaper brands and ditch Unilever's. Or maybe people struggling don't buy Unilever products now anyway.

I do think at this price it'll be completely safe in the medium term but better opportunities might come along in the short term. I'm feeling very indecisive.

If the shares are such a bargain, and they should know as they have all the inside information, then why aren't the directors re-mortgaging their houses to buy more. A £100k buy is peanuts for these people. It's like your average guy in the street buying £5k.

I can't wait to sell my holding in this one. I am disappointed with the focus on "food manufacturing" (and I think they mean frozen food) which I'd always thought of as a low margin, high volume, relatively capital and/or labour intensive business. Frozen food also tends to be bought by lower income households so the consumers are very price sensitive. Also, if you want to sell your own branded-stuff then distribution means getting into supermarkets. Lots of red flags.

Also, I think they go their fingers burned with the purchase of Indulgence. They said in the last RNS it was basically a rebuild from the ground-up scenario. Lots of management time taken up for a business that has only £5m sales. They basically got it for free but it still doesn't look like it was worth the hassle to me.

However, I guess they have experience with Shire Foods so they should know what they are doing.

I'm expecting big news on Tjate also. That deposit should be worth a fortune now. This is a pressure cooker about to "blow".