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SSPG Ssp Group Plc

196.70
-2.60 (-1.30%)
26 Apr 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Ssp Investors - SSPG

Ssp Investors - SSPG

Share Name Share Symbol Market Stock Type
Ssp Group Plc SSPG London Ordinary Share
  Price Change Price Change % Share Price Last Trade
-2.60 -1.30% 196.70 16:35:14
Open Price Low Price High Price Close Price Previous Close
200.00 197.10 201.20 196.70 199.30
more quote information »
Industry Sector
FOOD & DRUG RETAILERS

Top Investor Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 18/5/2022 10:55 by ram376s
Only if investors sell .GDR new test 300 nurses to train .multi bagged possible .
Posted at 18/12/2020 08:17 by undervaluedassets
rarther..

The results are awful .. of course they are.

But it is not about this set of results is it? or even the next set.

It is not nice for the company and those that work for it to be caught up in this pandemic. Heathrow airport reported airport traffic down by 88% in November. Everything involved in travel is taking a beating and all companies involved in travel will have results that will be awful. But does travel come back? Of course it does.

Investors need to ask themselves 2 questions..

(1) Does this company survive?

(2) If so does the current price represent a screaming bargain gifted to us by the pandemic and the fear that this company will not survive?

For SSPG .. I say yes to both

You will learn nothing from the current results being awful ... that's a given.
Posted at 16/12/2020 14:28 by rarther
undervaluedassets look back to the posts here from March 2020... i was the only investor here buying SSP at £1.60 at the bottom, everyone else said avoid... i only became bearish here as economy got much worse and SSP diluted and doubled on false optimism.

Results tomorrow. How are they going to spin this absolute bag of doggy doo into a really optimistic and positive announcement for the period ahead which is also going to be atrocious? I'm sure they will find a way!
Posted at 01/7/2020 23:57 by philanderer
MARKET REPORT: Railway station and airport cafe chain Upper Crust leaves investors with sour taste after warning it could axe up to 5,000 jobs
Posted at 25/6/2020 17:17 by rarther
These brokers are either delusional or straight up lying to you.I am from Central London and i can tell you that hardly anyone is travelling by train anymore and out of those who are, definitely no one is buying crusty old sandwiches anymore. SSP's business is selling crusty old sandwiches for high prices in places where there is no competition. The demand side has collapsed and their valuation has yet to collapse.If you are long on SSP... do you know how many stores they have open right now? While sports direct and greggs are open, SSP's crusty sandwich shops are all closed because there is no demand.If you are blind to the realities that anyone living in the UK with a pair of legs can witness for themselves, then you can just await the RNS's stating that Covid 19 stole our baby, our sales are more than 50% down and we are laying everyone off.I only post this negative stuff to help my fellow retail investor avoid holding toxic garbage when it explodes. Leave it to the professionals like UBS and friends to hold it...
Posted at 03/6/2020 13:04 by philanderer
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: 'The share placing announced by travel food and drink concessions operator SSP feels like an act of financial gymnastics.

'The company clearly felt obligated to pay a final dividend which had been approved at the AGM back in February but also wants to conserve cash at a time when much of its business has been wiped out by coronavirus.

'That explains the give with one hand, take away with the other nature of today’s update as the company effectively asks shareholders who are eligible for the dividend, which is to be paid after a delay on 4 June, to reinvest or give the cash back to the business. This "offer" is being extended to retail investors too.

'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and it will be interesting to see how many of SSP investors choose to hold on to the cash rather than funnelling it back into a business which faces acute challenges due to the pandemic'
Posted at 03/6/2020 08:13 by rarther
So basically, shareholders refused the proposal of waiving their dividends and now the management have to do this massive workaround to still get the money whilst avoiding an embarrassing climbdown.They may well have just said institutional shareholders have refused to agree and now we are going to free up £30m of our debt facilities, instead of serving up said investors with cheap shares for money they won't even need for 6 month to a year from now.
Posted at 25/5/2020 15:24 by rarther
Autogrill is a good barometer for SSPG. They're up 12% today on borsa italiana due to some positive guidance, while SSPG is not traded today due to UK bank hol. Big bounce here on Tues perhaps?"Autogrill prolongs the rebound that started last Thursdayof Financial Trend Analysis, published on May 25, 2020 at 13:02Autogrill, + 9.5% to € 4.67, continues the rebound started last Thursday. In that session, the stock had overwhelmingly reversed its course after a negative start in the wake of the results of the first four months (at 30 April) of 2020. Revenues fell to 963 million euros -33.9% y / y at current exchange rates and -35.3% on a like for like basis. In April the figure showed a drop of 88% y / y. EBITDA dropped to +50.8 million (from +178.6) and EBIT to -157.7 million (from -8.8). The group, however, reported the "Very first signs of recovery, especially in Italy and the rest of Europe, and in particular in the motorway channel, following the partial relaxation of the lockdown measures in the first half of May": probably operators and investors concentrated on the latter indication after metabolizing the sharp drop in data for the first four months of 2020. Banca Akros reduced the target on the share from 6.50 to 6.00 euros but confirmed the buy recommendation."
Posted at 27/4/2019 07:09 by sogoesit
Sorry, tabulation not pasting....

"Can SSP's shares climb much higher?

A few weeks ago I wrote about WH Smith’s (SMWH) travel retail business and liked a lot about it. Compared with the challenges of the UK high street, having captive customers in places such as railway stations and airports tends to lead to higher sales per store and higher profits. I think the business model has a lot of attractions for investors.

The business

SSP (SSPG) is a play on a similar theme to WH Smith’s travel business, with a similar business model. The big difference is that it gets its sales from a different mix of customers and products. In 2018, 64 per cent of its sales came from airports and 31 per cent from railway stations. Unlike WH Smith, it has a limited presence in motorway service stations and hospitals.

The other difference is that it makes its money from just selling food and drink. It manages a portfolio of 500 different brands, which are tailored to each individual travel location. It operates concessions for leading brands such as Starbucks, Burger King, Yo Sushi and Leon, as well as having its own brands, including Upper Crust – which sells baguette sandwiches – and Ritazza coffee.

The UK remains the biggest source of operating profits (£89.5m), just ahead of Europe (£79.5m). In recent years the company has expanded in North America, Asia and South America through a combination of winning new contracts and acquisitions. The company currently has a presence in 33 countries.

The airport business is based in 140 airports. It has higher gross profit margins – more on this later – than railway concessions, but has to pay higher concession fees as well. The concession contracts tend to last five to eight years in Europe, but are generally longer in North America at 10-16 years.

Railway concessions typically last 10 years before they need to be renegotiated. They also tend to be less profitable than airport concessions. Even though railway stations tend to have a lot more passengers, they don’t tend to stay there very long before catching a train and therefore tend to spend less money. SSP’s key rail markets are in the UK, France and Germany.

In return for being granted a concession, SSP pays a concession fee to the station or airport owner, which is usually based on a percentage of sales subject to a minimum fee. The company also has to spend money fitting out the retail outlet with fixtures and fittings and equipment.

Competition for sites is understandably fierce given the profits that can be made. However, barriers to competition do exist. This is a business where good long-term relationships with landlords count for a lot, as the landlord is unlikely to throw a tenant out if they have been a good and reliable source of income. SSP has been good at renewing its concession contracts when they expire.

The business has performed well over the past five years and has more than doubled its operating profits. However, the numbers throw up some interesting issues, which I will look at further.

Tabulation not pasted.

A positive sign is that sales growth has been pretty good. The company has been able to eke out sales growth from its existing concessions in the 3 per cent range. During the past couple of years there has been a significant boost from new contract wins – particularly in the US and emerging markets – and this trend has continued into 2019. Acquisitions have also helped. What’s good is that most of the growth is coming from organic sources – like-for-like (LFL) sales and new units.

The other big driver of profit growth has been a significant improvement in profit margins. Investors probably don’t spend enough time looking at gross profit margins in my opinion, but calculated correctly and simply – revenue less the cost of inventories expensed – they can tell you a great deal about the strength of a business.

SSP’s gross profit margin is very high at over 70 per cent and has been improving. However, concession fees have been taking a bigger chunk of revenues as the business has moved more towards airport locations over railway stations. Labour costs and overheads have been well controlled in order to offset this.

As a result, operating margins have increased. Bear in mind that depreciation has been helpful to margins in 2018 as SSP has been operating some units in the US before they have been redeveloped and so benefiting from the absence of closure costs and higher depreciation costs.

The one possible area of perceived weakness is in the generation of free cash flow (FCF), but I don’t think this is anything to worry about. As the business has grown, it has become more capital intensive due to the costs of opening new stores.

It is good at converting its operating profit into operating cash flow due to generally good working capital management (selling its stock before it has to pay for it) but a growing chunk of that cash flow has been ploughed back into new assets. This is a good thing as it fuels future sales, profits and cash flow growth. I do not think that rising capex is a sign of underdepreciation and overstated profits.

Return on capital employed (ROCE) looks good at19.4 per cent, but this excludes the impact of rented stores where the assets are still off balance sheet – this will change in 2019. Adjusting for these assets is not straightforward due to the temporary length of concessions. However, if investors are valuing the profits on the basis of concessions being retained – as many will – then valuing the concession assets on that basis would bring down ROCE considerably and perhaps halve the number.

My estimates of rent-adjusted ROCE based on multiplying the annual rent bill by seven and adding interest on that number at 7 per cent to operating profits is shown below. I appreciate, though, that in this instance the calculation is complicated and should be seen as a rough-and-ready estimate.

Can it keep on growing?

Rail and air travel passenger numbers are not immune to economic downturns, but have proved to be reasonably resilient to the ups and downs of the world business cycle. UK rail has seen quite soft passenger numbers over the past year or so and might not grow that much in the short term, but in the longer term increased congestion and the growth in high-speed rail across Europe should be helpful to growing sales and profits.

The long-term outlook for air travel remains fairly bullish, especially in Asia and Africa where people’s disposable incomes are expected to keep increasing. In more developed markets the continued growth of low-cost carriers is supportive.

A more general trend is the increased check-in times now commonplace at airports across the world. This tends to mean that passengers are spending more time in the airport, which could lead them to spend more while there and to buy food and drink to consume on the plane. That said, operating concessions airside – the other side of security – is more complicated for SSP due to checks on staff and the absence of nearby storage and kitchen facilities in some locations.

SSP – and WH Smith – still have a very small slice of the global travel retail market and SSP’s reputation as a trusted operator augurs well for it winning new contracts across the world. Acquisitions should not be ruled out. The company should therefore have a decent chance of growing its sales and profits over the next few years."
Posted at 21/11/2018 08:51 by sogoesit
Or discounting/not liking the cash distributions?
The £150m is equivalent to about 37p plus the 5p or so dividend so adding that back in gives a (relatively) unchanged share price
(My experience is that investors do discount cash-out ahead of its actual payments).
Anyway, who knows!

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