Member Info for WiganWarriors

I notice that H & M have announced that they will start selling other non H & M products through their eBiz platform. Just reinforces the fact that Ingenuity (THG eBiz platform) is nothing unique, and is just an expensive proprietary platform. Another nail in the coffin of the planned Ingenuity IPO.

You are correct. I failed to multiply by 100 to get actual percentage.

Hmmm, with ~ 3.6bn shares in issue and current buyback will reduce that by ~ 100m (~0.027%) they can continue for quite a while :-)

Unless I have become dyslexic , I read the RNS as Blackrock having lifted their holding from around 5% to around 10% (Shares, CFD's and borrowed). However, LSEG news item says that Blackrock have 5%, from a prior 10%.

Something amiss.

Wonder if Blackrock acting in concert with Elliott, or just think that Wimps is undervalued. A ~10% holding will most likely be in breach of individual fund limits, which probably explains why it is spread across a wide range of funds. Which of course would take some organising.

Noticed the closing auction was up at 133.7.

See how the market takes it.

@Graham. Well, that depends how many are being sold.

@ShearClass. I agree that beauty is a solid business. However, if that is what you want to invest in then I would suggest that L'Oreal is a far better investment than THG. Current market volatility provides an opportunity to get onboard at a reasonable price.

@Anthony. In a word; NO.

THG share price will never hit £8 again. Some posters (rampers / trolls) are telling porkies and retail investors need to wake up and smell the coffee. Most likely options are, long slow painful recovery over many years if they stay independent, and even then may never get beyond £2 / £3. Or, a buyout of some kind, and that will likely be below £2, and only after another twelve months trading figures.

I would also add to Sam's scenario. Wimps have attracted an element of "hot" money (Hedgies etc., and general speculators) since Elliott joined the shareholder register. Much of this hot money will be leveraged, and is now fleeing Wimps as the market tumbles. Also, generally when the market gets volatile speculators need to meet margin calls quickly and will often dump the most liquid holdings first; for example FTSE100 stocks.

Add all this together with Sam's scenario and you will better understand market behaviour. However, if you can buy without margin, and take the view that the world is not about to end, then Wimps will no doubt prove to be a good investment over the medium term at these prices, with the joker that Elliott might just stimulate a PE, or takeover offer in the short term.

Personally, I prefer buybacks as it is more tax efficient for anyone who has a reasonable holding. Easier to sell a few at CGT rates rather than pay income tax rates on dividends, and you can choose when to sell, or not. Also, given where we are with recent share price performance it is useful to have ~ £1M per day chasing Wimps shares, although Citi will be smarter than that when choosing when to enter the market.

The £25M retained gives an indication of what will be required for SAYE and management LTIP arrangements, at least in the short term.

Recently Wimps have been reticent to engage in buybacks, after the last time they tried during the 2007/8 meltdown destroyed a huge amount of shareholder value by buying into a collapsing market. The then CFO paid with his job.

Let's see if Elliott now communicates again after this update, although I assume they were fully aware of everything that was said today.

About time we had a rerating me thinks ...

Well, the BoD have said that they are considering any special distribution to be in the form of buy backs. So there won't be any special cash dividend, just the usual maintenance dividend, and I would guess this will have a healthy uplift to maybe 4.4 or even 4.5.

That leaves any excess for buybacks. Given the BoD have committed to increase output in 2022 / 2023 that will tie up more cash in WIP so I cant see more than a couple of hundred million made available for buy back at the most.

Don't forget UK GOV has put their hands in the builders pockets and take out monies for cladding already, and they want more to be decided by end of March, so Wimps BoD will have to be cautious re any shareholder distributions.

We will see.

@Hosai. " ... Ocado had 13% more revenue than THG last year but has an 850% higher market cap. Hmmm, just comparing simple metrics without context is a little naive. The market has clearly lost confidence in THG, and MM has a lot t do with that. Also, it is likely that SoftBank has woken up to the risk involved in taking up the option given MM's plans to split the business into three, and float of Ingenuity.

Clearly, until THG get some competent management in situ, nothing will change. Who will be willing to take the vacant Chairman's position, apart from someone who is just chasing the money. No experienced big hitter will accept the job, until all the skeletons are publicly exorcised.

Once that happens, that will be the time to tentatively take a position on a reasonable risk / reward basis. Otherwise, resist the temptation to buy on the basis of they seem cheap compared to their IPO price. Remember, Keynes advised " ... the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent ...". Wise words.

@smartpee. Maybe there is some creative accounting going on, we know that MM has form there. However, I suspect that the fall is more to do with a realisation that " ... the King has no clothes ..."

@Goldy. It's not the managements job to try and manipulate the share price, just because a minority of mostly retail traders are under water. THG will issue market updates when it has something meaningful, and potentially price sensitive information which need to be made available to all investors.

If it does issue updates which are clearly attempts to manipulate the share price, then that will invite more selling, just like last MM's attempt which triggered a huge fall.

@Pencil. Most clients of IG are small retail investors, who are psychologically hard wired to take long positions. However, they are small potatoes in the wider scheme of things and have near zero effect on the SP. Nothing new there.

However, given the latest news re Putin mischief making and expected small incursion into Ukraine any speculative money is exiting the market. THG are speculative, so it's hard to see any upside at the mo. No serious institutional investor will allocate more to the speculative end of the spectrum, it's "risk off" time again. Hard to see why THG won't continue to drift lower, and test all time lows this week. We will see.

@MunchBox. " ...Good luck my THG army …. Let people post willingly, know what you own. I own shares in a company that achieves 6 sales every second on its retail side of the business. I’m happy with that ..."

Reminds me of the old adage ... "but you are losing £1 on every sale ... Don't worry I'll make it up on volume ..."

Thanks Ben. I think we are in one of those phases when the market is driven by macro events; central bank intervention and war. Just have to ride it out.

@Poker. 1) look at any large IT programme and you don't get much change from £100m per year. Most UK GOV IT systems run at more than that. You have hundreds of IT staff, Contractors, System Integrators, Software Licence costs, Tech refresh cost etc.

2) Should have been deployed in the cloud, not as a capital intensive programme.

3) Their business is retailing via eCommerce, not tying up capital by building high risk IT platforms,
and trying to write R & D as an asset on the balance sheet.

... unless of course MM was quietly meeting the margin calls for him in an attempt to save a PDMR to be known (via GS) to be selling THG shares.