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DGC Dobbies Garden

1,265.00
0.00 (0.00%)
Last Updated: 00:00:00
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Type Share ISIN Share Description
Dobbies Garden LSE:DGC London Ordinary Share GB0002729738 ORD 10P
  Price Change % Change Share Price Shares Traded Last Trade
  0.00 0.00% 1,265.00 0.00 00:00:00
Bid Price Offer Price High Price Low Price Open Price
Industry Sector Turnover Profit EPS - Basic PE Ratio Market Cap
  -
Last Trade Time Trade Type Trade Size Trade Price Currency
- O 0 1,265.00 GBX

Dobbies Garden Centres (DGC) Latest News

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Dobbies Garden Centres (DGC) Discussions and Chat

Dobbies Garden Centres Forums and Chat

Date Time Title Posts
13/5/200917:12Dobbies what price a bid ?157
17/7/200719:18Win Win situation with Dobies fill your trolleys1
30/5/200715:39WOW - DOBBIES STUNNING RESULTS152
22/6/200408:03Dobbies Garden Centres130
13/4/200315:01Garden Centre Comparisons - dobbies vs wyevale9

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Dobbies Garden Centres (DGC) Most Recent Trades

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Dobbies Garden Centres (DGC) Top Chat Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 21/5/2008 07:27 by campbed
Today's agreed offer at £12/share is one in the eye for Mr Hunter (and me) who could have got £15/share from Tesco about nine months ago and who (I didn't) bought shares at a higher price than that to block Tesco takeover at that time.
Posted at 09/4/2008 12:41 by ladyfarmer
They thought it worth £15 a share not so long ago.

And for the record, farmers doing v well right now, thanks to increases in grain and milk prices - not to mention selling off a few acres for housing!
Posted at 09/8/2007 09:33 by gengulphus
I doubt that Tesco's announcement this morning has made any real difference to the price today, because it contains nothing remotely unexpected. Their number of acceptances has gone up slightly (just short of 40k shares) since the last update - I must admit that I'm not quite certain why anyone has accepted recently, but presumably there are a few people in special situations... They were clearly going to extend the offer, given the possibility of Tom Hunter deciding not to bid and the share price subsequently dropping to below 1500p, and the 60-day limit means that August 19th has to be the final closing date except with the Takeover Panel's consent (which I'm pretty certain they'll get if Tom Hunter does bid!).

The real interest today is in Tom Hunter's announcement, which he has to make one way or another by 5pm. If he announces a bid, it has to be at least 1845p, and there will be a competitive situation, so I expect the price to rise to something higher than that level on the possibility that Tesco will then raise their offer. If he announces that he's not bidding, I expect the price to fall, quite possibly to a bit below 1500p, but no lower, and it will be possible to get 1500p anyway by accepting the offer. So on the current market bid price of 1620p, there's about 120p of downside and 225p+ of upside - which suggests the market is assessing the chances of him bidding at about 1 in 3.

Gengulphus
Posted at 19/7/2007 09:00 by gengulphus
Note that there has also been another rule 8.1 announcement: West Coast Capital (i.e. Tom Hunter) has picked up another 25,000 shares at 1600p, taking his stake to 26.02%.

An interesting situation. For small shareholders, accepting the offer is quite simply a silly thing to do - if you want to sell, why accept 1500p when you can get around 1600p on the market, and that level is supported by Tom Hunter's demonstrated willingness to continue buying at that level?

For large shareholders who want to sell, it's trickier: Tesco's offer can be accepted for their entire shareholding, while the 1600p market price is limited by how many shares the market will accept. And that in turn is limited by how many shares Tom Hunter will accept - bearing in mind that if he accepts more than about another 400k shares, he's got to make an offer at at least 1845p.

For both small and large shareholders, the possibility of him making that offer and the possibility of that triggering a bidding war is an incentive not to sell. So he doesn't actually have to mop up all that many shares on the market to support the price at 1600p - at the current rate of picking up 25,000 shares about every 2 weeks, he could easily continue for another 6 months...

On the other hand, the Takeover Code does discourage offer periods from lasting too long, in order to avoid excessive distraction of management from their main job of running the company, and in order to cut them short, the Takeover Panel can and does issue "put up or shut up" deadlines to potential bidders, requiring them either to make a bid or formally commit to not making a bid. I'm pretty certain they would do that long before those 6 months were up.

Also, as Tom Hunter's stake creeps up towards 30%, his capacity to absorb a large shareholding without making a bid steadily decreases - this slowly and steadily increases the risks for large shareholders who do want to sell and are just angling to get the best price. That may speed up the rate of selling, requiring Tom Hunter to buy at an increased rate to continue supporting the price at around 1600p.

And Tesco can of course at any point try to alter the way things are going in their favour, by increasing their offer. At present, they're presumably calculating that:

* If they put the offer up now, it will end up costing them a great deal more in the event that Tom Hunter does not want to bid.

* If they don't put the offer up now, it will slightly increase Tom Hunter's resources in the event that he does want to bid, because he can pick up about another 4% of the company at about 1600p rather than 1645p+.

Overall, that balances out as an argument against raising the offer now unless they assess the chances that Tom Hunter is going to bid as very high...

It will be interesting to see how it all works out!

Gengulphus
Posted at 26/6/2007 09:36 by tuffbet
The market cap of DGC is small beer for the players round this table which is what makes me think the price eventually paid for DGC will not reflect so much it's value as a stand alone business.

For Tesco it's a strategically important broadening of their base and having now shown their hand to the opposition ie how they are thinking and what direction they are moving in they have much more than the added value of DGC as a part of their empire to lose if they don't now get it.

As for M&S + Waitrose getting DGC would be more important as a spoiler - they have to do as much as possible to stop Tesco achieving even greater dominance and buying power so that although they won't admit it would be their prime reason for participating if indeed they are. The fact that DGC would also be a pretty good addition to either retailers business model gives a rival bid from them something of a double whammie so I can certainly see why they could be interested.

I said earlier at DGc's market cap level a few pounds more on the share price is neither here nor there in the bigger picture - just have a look at what level executive benefits have now reached,even paying the failures off now cost hundreds of millions and shareholders don't generally bat an eyelid.
Posted at 21/6/2007 08:05 by gengulphus
My view of the state of play: Tom Hunter has achieved his obvious immediate goal: blocking Tesco from an outright takeover of the company - without his agreement, they cannot win the vote if they use the scheme of arrangement route, and while they can still take control of the company if they use the traditional takeover route, they cannot take full control or delist the company, let alone compulsorily purchase the shares they don't control.

By lowering the acceptance condition to 50%, Tesco have indicated that they would be OK with getting control but not full control. However, they're not going to be getting many additional acceptances of the offer beyond those they announced had been given irrevocably in their original offer announcement: anyone who wants out can get a better price in the market, and those purchasing the shares at current prices are unlikely to be doing so with the objective of selling them on to Tesco at £15... If they want their bid to succeed, they have to either raise it or wait and hope that the market price will drop to below £15.

With his blocking holding, Tom Hunter can now afford to take a breather from buying shares. He has three options for his route forward:

1) Sell out to Tesco, which he will presumably only be willing to do if they raise their bid sufficiently.

2) Content himself with his blocking holding - let Tesco take control, but be a significant irritation to them, especially as any profits they make from the company will also be enriching their competition...

3) Make a bid himself, which has to be at least at the highest price he'spaid for shares recently, i.e. 1845p.

If he goes on buying at the rate he has been, he'll just be limiting his own options - first by driving the price up further, which raises the level at which he has to pitch a bid if he makes one, secondly by forcing him to make a bid if he goes over 30% of the company.

So I would expect him to ease off on the buying and see whether he can let the price drift down again - until and unless Tesco raise their offer or the Takeover Panel issues a "put up or shut up" deadline, he would probably prefer to be buying slowly at prices more in the £16 region than rapidly in the £18 region...

So my impression is that for the immediate future, both players would probably prefer to see the share price drift down - their short-term goals probably don't diverge from each other until the price gets rather closer to £15.

Whether market excitement will permit the share price to drift down that much is of course another question, but I suspect we're going to get at least a bit of a breather compared with the last week or so...

Gengulphus
Posted at 19/6/2007 17:53 by bigbertie
SAGEM - this is old stuff. At the current price of nearly 1,800p Dobbies enterprise value is nearly £230m (180m mkt cap plus about 50m debt) but its net assets are only about 40m. So if property freeholds are undervalued by 20m the present share price is still well above the true valuation. Your numbers look out of date (it's some time since WCC had only 3.7%) but even if the undervaluation were double that, ie 40m, the current share price is still at a huge premium! I'm not complaining of course.
Posted at 01/6/2007 08:25 by glyn10
wanhelm/tuffbet,

Tom Hunter has been interested in DGC for sometime and is the cause of the majority of the share price rise in the last 12 months. The company is well run and turns a tidy profit and would indeed give increased sales and better buying power.

However, word of caution. In the short term you can make good money on the back of the hunter interest but long term the business results do not support the high share price (currently). As was seen in the drop from 12500 to just above 11000. Only the renewed interest by the Hunter stake has stopped the share price dropping further.
Posted at 30/5/2007 15:33 by tuffbet
As his wealth would suggest Hunter has his business head well screwed on and I think he is again right on the ball if he is indeed looking to buy DGC as his holding suggests.

While Mr Hunter and Dobbies are now nationally known both have their roots (no pun intended) in Scotland and I think this is significant because I have a feeling that Mr Hunter would love to get his hands on this prized Scottish asset. While he is a hard headed business man an would I am sure never let sentiment rule his business judgement I have a feeling that sometimes, but especially when you are very rich, you are prepared to pay that little bit more or go just that bit further to get something which you can associate with in the early part of your life and the ownership of which could never have been considered as even a remote possibility. If a fight develops for Dobbies, which I think it will, I don't expect Mr Hunter to give up easily so as I see it the price could go much higher .

The second factor which makes me think the current price could be well below the takeout level is that it's generally accepted that whatever your buying you pay as little as possible in order to maximize the profit potential or simply the pleasure of securing ownership at a price which seems a bargain relative to the joy of ownership. The fact that purchases are being made at or around the all time high for DGC's share price suggests that the buyers are fairly desperate or determined to mop up whatever shares they can get now . Why should taht be ? Well perhaps they think there is little chance of getting them much cheaper and if they wait for a better opportunity ie a lower price a third party may just pick up a strategically vital percentage of the shares before they do.

Just my own humble opinion - glad to hear what others think .

On a separate but related note I am just back from a holiday in Scotland and visited one or two garden centres during that visit none of which were owned by Dobbie's. What I came away with on each occasion was renewed confirmation of my long held view that a well run garden centre is a potential gold mine. I watched the buses rolling in and each contained about 30 people average age around 65 all with time to burn and money to spend. Those who were not spending on gardening items were either spending in the cafeterias or buying gifts, cards etc all the items with high mark ups - I can't think of a better business to be in right now it even looks recession proof !

Throw in the asset side of thinks ie valuable land and you have a business model which it seems to me the likes of Warren Buffett would be keen to invest in ie asset rich ,cash generative, relatively simply franchise and one which can be expanded globally with some modification .

May be wrong but I can't see Dobbies going for under £15 in the midst of the current acquisitions boom
Posted at 30/5/2007 14:52 by tuffbet
As his wealth would suggest Hunter has his business head well screwed on and I think he is again right on the ball if he is indeed looking to buy DGC as his holding suggests.

While Mr Hunter and Dobbies are now nationally known both have their roots (no pun intended) in Scotland and I think this is significant because I have a feeling that Mr Hunter would love to get his hands on this prized Scottish asset. While he is a hard headed business man an would I am sure never let sentiment rule his business judgement I have a feeling that sometimes, but especially when you are very rich, you are prepared to pay that little bit more or go just that bit further to get something which you can associate with in the early part of your life and the ownership of which could never have been considered as even a remote possibility. If a fight develops for Dobbies, which I think it will, I don't expect Mr Hunter to give up easily so as I see it the price could go much higher .

The second factor which makes me think the current price could be well below the takeout level is that it's generally accepted that whatever your buying you pay as little as possible in order to maximize the profit potential or simply the pleasure of securing ownership at a price which seems a bargain relative to the joy of ownership. The fact that purchases are being made at or around the all time high for DGC's share price suggests that the buyers are fairly desperate or determined to mop up whatever shares they can get now . Why should taht be ? Well perhaps they think there is little chance of getting them much cheaper and if they wait for a better opportunity ie a lower price a third party may just pick up a strategically vital percentage of the shares before they do.

Just my own humble opinion - glad to hear what others think .

On a separate but related note I am just back from a holiday in Scotland and visited one or two garden centres during that visit none of which were owned by Dobbie's. What I came away with on each occasion was renewed confirmation of my long held view that a well run garden centre is a potential gold mine. I watched the buses rolling in and each contained about 30 people average age around 65 all with time to burn and money to spend. Those who were not spending on gardening items were either spending in the cafeterias or buying gifts, cards etc all the items with high mark ups - I can't think of a better business to be in right now it even looks recession proof !

Throw in the asset side of thinks ie valuable land and you have a business model which it seems to me the likes of Warren Buffett would be keen to invest in ie asset rich ,cash generative, relatively simply franchise and one which can be expanded globally with some modification .

May be wrong but I can't see Dobbies going for under £15 in the midst of the current acquisitions boom
Dobbies Garden Centres share price data is direct from the London Stock Exchange

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