Conduit Share Discussion Threads

[markt] 06/2/2012 13:23

....in part I am interested in promoting the new power given to shareholders by the Company Act.....small shareholders can now get resolutions put into the AGM agenda...100 shareholders with at least 100 pounds of shares each

imho....if directors don't perform then the shareholders should change the directors..(and stop them getting bonuses while reduce the headline EPS)..rather than change the shareholders ! (ie. sell and buy something different)
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my sanity....well, since London stock markets are a bit of a sewer imo,,,with massive insider dealing, directors selling company assetts to their own companies (Seymour Pierce), opaque company accounts, numerous penalties of directors/companies by the FSA
....one perhaps needs a certain amount of insanity in order to want to 'play the game' !

[cambium] 06/2/2012 12:57

or £1000.23!!

:o(

Im out im afraid, good luck all

[rivaldo] 06/2/2012 12:55

New contract win - six-figures implies anything from £100k to £900k!



"1 February 2012 - 9:01am | by John Glenday | 0 comments

Bobst appoints Nelson Bostock to global PR brief

Bobst appoints Nelson Bostock to global PR briefNelson Bostock Communications (NBC) has been appointed by Bobst, a supplier of machinery services to packaging manufacturers, to act as a PR hub for its 23 global sales offices.

NBC's role will see them provide advice on integrated marketing initiatives as well as conducting strategic consultancy and tactical programme execution.

The six figure account will be led by Nelson Bostock's associate director, Rebecca Jones.

Simon Glazer, Head of Nelson Bostock Communications, said: "Our brief is to ensure the company's leadership is effectively communicated to customers and other stakeholders around the world. We're proud to add yet another prestigious client to our roster so early in 2012."

Raluca Dan, Communications Manager, Business Unit Sheet-fed, Bobst said: "To communicate our global industry leadership and help effectively position ourselves within a rapidly evolving market place, we needed to appoint an agency with proven experience at driving compelling, creative and effective international PR campaigns.""

[cambium] 06/2/2012 11:57

With respect, cut your losses and move on, markt. Its not worth your sanity

[markt] 06/2/2012 11:53

Any interest in organising an AGM resolution to remove the renumeration committee ?


...the renumeration committee is rewarding the 2 exec. directors with bonus payments and free shares as a bonus....while the performance against the headline EPS (which is the item against which exec. dir,. performance is measured by the committee for the exec. dirs) has fallen !

Reversed into a shell at 96p/share.....
with inflation that would be worth 150p now.
..while shareholders see a price of 50p. 1/3rd.
and dividends have been low over the last 10 years.

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The total benefit to the 2 exec. dirs. is about the same as the benefit in dividends to all of the shareholders. And shareholders have put up approx. 100M including retained profits....so, the 2 exec. dirs. have taken the same income as the shareholders despite the shareholders having put up 100M. Complete imbalance in my view. Exec. dirs. taking too much.

Don Elgie has seen his total benefits/income multiply.....by X 3 or X4 over the last 10 years....while shareholders have put up 100M (shares + retained profit - dividends) but are now holding shares worth only 30M....because the company has not performed under the control of the exec. dirs.
approx. 500-600k + 100-300k benefits is too much salary for a dir. of a company that has turned 100M into only 30M.
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Company has cost around 100M so far to shareholders. = 160p/share. Last dividend = 3p. 1.9% wrt cash used. Dismal.
If achieve 9p EPS, = 5.6% wrt cash used. Again, dismal imho.

For such bad performance imho the exec. dirs. should not have seen their pay multiply and then receive bonus payments. Bonus payments for reducing the headline EPS !. Crazy.

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To propose a resolution for the AGM needs just 1 or 2 institutional shareholders or 100 shareholders with at least 100 pounds of shares each (ref. company act).

[markt] 03/2/2012 12:31

....one problem with the EPS predictions is that for Creston the predictions seem to be all over the place over the last 8 months....ie. that can't be trusted imo....with any news the analysts just change their EPS prediction and say forget the previous one...

GCI a few months ago said that Investec predicted 16p....and others predicted 15p....all those predictions have gone up in smoke now....

..and imho difficult for any analyst to come up with an EPS prediction with any confidence since the Creston profit warning does not give much in the way of numbers...except that headline is expected to be similar to last year....and if reported EPS is also similar to last year then that infers 9.4p EPS...rather a long way away from Investec old prediction of 16p ! and 1st half was good....infers that 2nd half has been very bad imo.

[rivaldo] 03/2/2012 11:22

QS9, good to see you buying in here.

May I ask which broker was noting that CRE was a takeover target, and also what are their PBT and EPS forecasts now? Broker notes are like hen's teeth, so any further details appreciated!

[markt] 03/2/2012 11:15

It is cheap....but....many shares in the marketing sector are cheap at present....so perhaps they stay cheap....



PROS
- cheap (but recent profit warning....big miss of EPS expectation,....



CONS
-Linked to David Marshall (he reversed it into a shell)...terrible track record...LFI same price in 1990-1994 as now in 2012 !!...with 7% return it would be X 4 !)...concerns about whether LFI functions for shareholder benefit or for Marshall family (eg. son employed as director of subsidiary for years and kept secret from shareholders)
- risk of unknown. size of damage in turnover reduction is not known to the mkt
- risk of X of more profit warning(s)
- profit warning appears to be massive crash in quarterly profit numbers
- existing CEO has been a disaster since 2000. Reversed into a company at approx. 100p and now, 11 years later the share price is 50p !!
- profitability per worker is very low, while fixed costs are high
- risk of UK recession or slow down affects sentiment and P/E ratings for the marketing sector...
and appears that customers are cutting back their spend per month, ref. RNS
- possible complete destruction of instutional confidence in the company
- no numbers in the profit warning


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Would anyone buy them ?
Other marketing companies have cheap shares as well.....but some have debt so can not take on more debt.....or are not big enough to buy Creston (many listed UK marketing companies have cap. values similar or smaller than Creston)

WPP has built up a stake in another company CHW I think....so I don't think they would be interested...

an private equity fund would I think not be so keen on buying into marketing sector with risk of recession or economic slow down...and see RNS....and it would be quite a big buy ...not so many private equity vehicles with tens of millions for 1 transaction imo. (and funding part of any deal with bank debt , difficult, banks perhaps not so keen to lend in current climate)

[qs9] 02/2/2012 22:34

Interesting broker note I read today, talks of yield and ev/ebitda ratio making this look very cheap and if don't get going then someone may take them out....dyor etc, but am in on this basis at sub 50p.....

[markt] 02/2/2012 19:54

Riv
Does your Xcap analysis include the impact of the recent profit warning ?

Recent news is that should expect slightly lower Headline eps than last year....

...'if' reported diluted EPS is also the same as last year then that means 9.4p and not 12p as per Xcap analysis, big difference.

Any idea on what could cause the big difference ?

(personally I don't believe at all a DEPS or EPS number of 12p.....since company has stated headline EPS will be slightly below prev. headline, ie. 12p region, or 11p. And reported EPS must be lower than headline....
...makes me think of same EPS as last year....ie. 9.4p ....and made around 5p EPS in first half...infers only 4p for all of 2nd half, and that is strongest half !
..'if' made 4p in Q3 and then 0p in Q4 it is not so good....

imo 2nd half profit numbers are quite bad compared with previous year, noting acquisitions.....but how much is one off layoff costs and how much is due to reduced underlying revenue we don't know...

makes me think that the profit input expected from USA acquisition is just not happening.

But happy to be corrected. Any views ?
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The real situation inside CRE, we don't know...a temporary blip or a step reduction in business ....
if Q4 EPS is zero then one wonders about what next year's EPS number !


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The EPS prediction had been 15p-16p I think I recall for most of this CRE fin. year....if drops to 12p then that is a big drop just due to Q4 performance...if turned out to be 9p as per last year then would be a massive drop from prediction of 15.16p.

[madengland] 02/2/2012 11:34

Agree 100%. I think the IMS has reset expectations on the low side now riv. Even on those low expectations its undervalued. Markt, I dont think it will be long before you can get out on a par if thats what you want to do.

[rivaldo] 02/2/2012 11:17

The new forecasts from XCap Securities are 11.2p EPS for the year about to end and 11.3p EPS for next year.

With 3.1p and 3.3p dividends respectively.

A P/E of 4.5 and a 6% divi yield make the current share price ludicrously cheap, whatever you think of Elgie etc:

2012 2013
Date Rec Pre-tax (£) EPS (p) DPS (p) Pre-tax (£) EPS (p) DPS (p)
XCAP Securities 30-01-12 BUY 9.60 11.20 3.10 10.20 11.30 3.30

[markt] 01/2/2012 15:59

...I got it wrong !...and got caught up in the excitement at that time and bt. some....
....fortunately I cut my losses only a few pence below when it failed to keep going up...

back in with some at 67p expecting a good trading update...so 20p/share loss to here at 47p :-(

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..sadly the directors will probably make money out of running the company badly....99% likely imo that will issue new share options ....and then one day when price gets back to higher price, one assumes, then they can sell and make some money

but while the share price goes up and down....(but goes no-where over medium/long term)...long term shareholders don't make any money (in fact they are showing large loss at the moment over 10 years since first started)...

[markt] 01/2/2012 14:16

it is interesting the spin from the directors....

effectively that lower expected sales is almost a benefit for shareholders !

(because fixed costs will be reduced....giving a benefit to profits...)

(to have a market expectation of 15-16p/share, big increase on previous year,
and to then, suddenly, close to the year end come in with an expectations miss of 3p (20%) and indicate a headline EPS lower than previous year is pretty dismal performance (since 1st half EPS was up 10% and Q 3 was OK'ish it indicates that 4th Q performance has really crashed imo)....and very bad communication to the shareholders in my view....imho they knew before.... and insiders/trade were selling in advance imo, see the chart for last few months....


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If compare with clone company Chello.....happy with their pipeline of future sales and for 2012 as a whole...
and I assume they compete with Creston, similar company, similar operations,...so perhaps Chello are competing with Creston in bids and winning.

[zipstuck] 01/2/2012 07:06

Appropriate actions have begun to align operating costs to the lower expected sales levels, the effects of which will predominantly be realised from the start of the new financial year.

How much lower will sales be - Fixed costs are difficult to trim.

Don't see the directors buying yet until sales are growing again.

[madengland] 31/1/2012 17:13

Job done, that will clear all remaining earn outs and reduce our salary bill by 800k, plus reduced mistakes at helm. Be back to 15 eps and deserving of a pe 12. Will ask around

[markt] 31/1/2012 16:53

Megagland
"Just an idea, shall we put Don Elgie up for sale?"

je je !

let's see...

800k income in 2011 incl shares.
If we say a yield of 10%

that gives a selling price of 8M pnds. je je !

[markt] 31/1/2012 15:08

Directors pay

Don Elgie
2010 = 694k +
2011 = 530k +346k shares. (at 114p = 394k)
= 876k

B Brien
2010 = 443k
2011 = 338k + 191k = 529k via selling awarded shares @ 114p.

Approx. combined pay of 2 main execs = 1M pounds.
Approx. PAT of Creston = 5M

Creston employs approx. 800-950 people I think.

2 people get 20% of the profit generated by Creston, which employs 800-950 people.
Doesn't make sense in my opinion. ...
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Compare with Chello which is very similar to Creston, almost a clone.
2009 Exec 1 = 278k
Exec 2 = 201k

2010 Exec 1 = 382k incl 123k bonus
Exec 2 = 283k incl 91k bonus.

much closer to 1/2M total....while Creston 2 execs. manage to pocket around 1M. despite similar turnover, similar profit and similar cap. size.
imho the 2 exec. Creston dirs. are overpaid, by a factor of X2.

[madengland] 31/1/2012 14:53

Interesting Cambium, thanks. HNT doing pretty well today not that investors realise the ground is not falling in.

Just an idea, shall we put Don Elgie up for sale?

[cambium] 31/1/2012 14:46

Parts of CHW are up for sale

Re: Media speculation

Chime announces that its chairman has asked the board if he can pursue the possibility of he, Piers Pottinger, and certain other members of the senior management team acquiring some of the businesses within the Public Relations division. The board has agreed that he can pursue that possibility.

No proposal has yet been made and there can be no certainty that a proposal which the board can recommend to shareholders will be forthcoming.

[madengland] 31/1/2012 08:56

Interesting update from hnt, pre close. Cre looks way way too cheap imo

[madengland] 31/1/2012 08:22

I expect we will this rise pretty sharpish today or tomorrow. Poorly written rns added to a disappointing quarter. Don't think the wheels have fallen off the bus personally, but who knows