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| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dignity Plc | DTY | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
|
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 0.00% | 549.00 | 00:00:00 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 549.00 |
| Top Posts |
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Posted at 17/7/2023 11:05 by exfortisd for those still interested. phoenix mention in the May factsheet they believe DTY is worth £30/share vs the £5.5 paid to minorities. they say plan to create £1bn of equity value in the next 3 years, 30% of which will leak out to phoenix via the incentive fee.meanwhile the clown at Artemis also published a factsheet, in which he brags about "negotiating directly" with the bidders to achieve the heroic price bump of 5%. this guy is also collecting fees on investor capital for such savvy dealmaking prowess... dignity board chairman is still chairman of the regulated entity. despite perjuring himself by endorsing a deal at £5.5 that was marked up to £30 jst months later hxxps://www.castelna hxxps://www.artemisf |
Posted at 27/3/2023 15:43 by exfortisd thanks for flagging, had not seen that. pretty scammy of him to try scare people with the prospect of a rights issue, when their own investor deck says theyre sitting on hard assets worth multiples of current price. and have already got permission to sell assets in into the prepaid trust. company has never expressed any concerns around solvency. assume he is annoyed at the poor acceptance of the lowball offer so he tries to create some fake urgency |
Posted at 08/3/2023 09:55 by exfortisd they delayed the castelnau placing - was meant to close 3rd march, punted it to 14th. 14th makes more sense as investors will want visibilty on the offer acceptance. it was more that the 3rd seemed quite an aggressive timetable to start with. but directionally sounds an incremental negative for their faith in the placing.in fairness they are marketing it with a presenation which basically argues they are buying DTY on the cheap, so not sure why they expect people to accept the offer... hxxps://www.castelna |
Posted at 13/1/2023 19:44 by mtioc exfortisd, Thanks. Good spot re other properties.Kroll emailed me doc. The six crems were acquired in 2009 and 2011, are a mixture of long lease (4) and freehold (2) and appear to be outside securitisation security net (not sure why). Based on really historic data they seem have between half and three quarters the number of cremations of the estate average. Assuming mature average crem of £1m EBITDA*6*0.66 suggests EBITDA of c. £3.5m to £4m for the group. At £70m the range would be 17.5x to 20x. The document is pretty sloppy (e.g. "a Dignity Trust", which as a fundamental commercial point in the whole doc, is not defined in definitions section, even with reference to the clause where it may be defined and I can't search pdf on my device). It will be interesting to see how much info the private investors get to make their decision between Valderrama, Castelnau and cash. We need better explanation of key balance sheet items including crem market value, other property value and lender position. There also needs to be an estimate of the capital required to fix the funeral business with associated time scales. I suspect there may be less transparency than we would hope for. |
Posted at 06/1/2023 17:20 by mtioc Agree with comments above.While I appreciate the logic of restructuring etc.. off the public market, and the option for current shareholders to participate either as part of private Valderema or listed Castelnau, Channon et al seem uncomfortably close to the business for an uncontested offer. Sir Peter Wood is a major investor in Castelnau, so far from independent. If Jakes is part of Valderma now or in future, some may question his 3% purchase on 17 Oct, when negotiations were seemingly quite advanced, and his 6% purchase in Dec, when there appears to be an agreed but unannounced offer significantly above the quoted share price. I wonder if the private investors will get the same information as the bidders to inform their decision to accept (a) cash, (b) Valderma stock or (c) Castelnau shares. At the very least, they should be made aware of the results of the marketing of the crematoria during 2022 and the position with bond holders. Arguably, they should have access to the Valderma business plan. While in these situations, you want to be measured on a public BB, this all seems a little cosy for all the reasons set out in this thread. |
Posted at 23/6/2021 16:18 by hatfullofsky A great read for those that did not make the AGM |
Posted at 22/5/2021 07:41 by mrx9000 Old news from 22nd April but alas just for the record..."Dignity, the funeral director, has suffered a shareholder revolt after investors voted to oust chair Clive Whiley and replace him with a partner from asset manager Phoenix, sparking a wave of resignations from fellow board members. Some 55 per cent of shareholders that voted backed the removal of Whiley, who was appointed in September 2019, with 61 per cent supporting the appointment of Gary Channon, chief investment officer at Phoenix Asset Management Partners. The news was announced at an extraordinary general meeting on Thursday morning. Chair of the audit committee Dean Moore confirmed that Gillian Kent and Paul Humphreys, both of whom are non-executive directors, would resign with immediate effect. Moore said he would also step down from the board in due course. London-based Phoenix holds almost 30 per cent of Dignity. Ahead of the meeting, the asset manager said it did not believe Dignity or Whiley were acting in shareholders’ best interests. Dignity’s share price has plunged 75 per cent in the past five years. The company sank to a loss before tax of £19.6m in the 12 months to December 25, compared with a profit of £44.1m in 2019. That was despite the pandemic causing a 14 per cent rise year on year in the number of UK deaths. Phoenix, which is a long-term investor that seeks out businesses it believes are cheap because of short-term issues, said it was delighted with the results. “We thank our fellow shareholders for their support, we now have to show our ourselves worthy of it and we will get straight to work on that today.” Granular Capital and Artemis, two UK fund managers, each have shareholdings of more than 10 per cent, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. Artemis declined to comment, while Granular Capital did not respond to a request for comment. The ousting of a chair at a shareholder meeting is rare in the UK. Since 2016, only a handful of UK companies have been subject to resolutions to remove the chair, including Petropavlovsk last year, according to SquareWell, the consultancy Norway’s oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, voted against the proposal to oust Whiley and replace him with Channon, while a top-20 shareholder said he was extremely worried about the outcome. He said: “We are very concerned there is going to be complete vacuum and chaos. Phoenix are acting extremely irresponsibly. “For the company, the stakeholders, the bereaved customer, it is potentially a disaster for everyone.” Phoenix previously said it was not “seeking to control the board” and that its proposals were in “the best interests of the long-term shareholder value of Dignity”. Channon would not receive any pay if he were appointed executive chair, the group said. The asset manager is now due to present a plan for Dignity at the company’s annual meeting in June. Dignity and rival the Co-operative Group Limited together account for 30 per cent of funeral branches in the UK. In December, the Competition and Markets Authority found that funeral director fees quoted by Dignity were on average £1,400 more expensive than those quoted by smaller, typically family-owned firms. The CMA concluded that, because the recently bereaved tended to be “insensitive to price”, it was not surprising that a “lack of effective competition has resulted in higher prices than we would expect to see in a well-functioning market”. Dignity’s share price jumped about 4 per cent immediately after the meeting but has fallen back since then. It is up almost 1 per cent, at 650p. " |
Posted at 03/4/2021 11:13 by tnw78 The problem for Dignity Management is that it's hard to be credible when they have no CEO or CFO and the Executive Chair is part time. Meanwhile, Phoenix are not usually activists and clearly see something exceptional here that means they have had to step in. Without much information (eg on this pre need issue), I have to favour a long established fundamental value investor vs someone who does the job on a part time basis and a bunch of NEDs who are all fairly new to the business. |
Posted at 01/4/2021 07:02 by imastu pidgitaswell Getting messy - Pheonix responds:The shareholder seeking to oust the executive chairman of Dignity has said that it acted after uncovering what it called “some very serious issues” in its pre-paid funeral plan business. Phoenix Asset Management told fellow investors in an open letter yesterday that it had sent its concerns to Clive Whiley, Dignity’s executive chairman, but that his response “in dealing with the matter, internally and externally, left us no choice but to seek his removal as a director”. Phoenix, which owns 29.9 per cent of Dignity, said that it could not disclose further details because it was bound by a confidentiality agreement with Dignity. It is seeking to replace Whiley, 61, with Gary Channon, Phoenix’s founder and chief investment officer, at a shareholder meeting on April 22. The allegations regarding Dignity’s pre-paid funeral business are potentially significant as the Financial Conduct Authority is due to begin regulating the sale and administration of funerals plans next year in the wake of concerns about misleading and high-pressure sales tactics in the industry generally and a review by the Treasury. Companies are required to apply for FCA authorisation from September. Dignity, one of Britain’s two big funeral operators, sold about 60,000 pre-arranged funeral plans last year, about a third of the market. Dignity said that it had “listened carefully to the concerns raised” by Phoenix regarding the pre-paid business ahead of last month’s board meeting and a spokeswoman said yesterday: “The funeral plan sector is undergoing a complex consultation process with the FCA. It is of the upmost importance that considered and correct process is followed.” |
Posted at 31/3/2021 08:50 by imastu pidgitaswell It's a good one this - from the sidelines still. Popcorn required:Dignity, one of Britain’s biggest funeral operators, has accused its largest shareholder of trying to take control without paying a bid premium after Phoenix Asset Management moved to oust its executive chairman. The company has revealed that Phoenix had prepared a formal bid for Dignity in the second quarter of last year when the share price was weakened and the company “on the back foot” from the pandemic, board changes and the pausing of its transformation plan. Dignity urged investors to oppose attempts by Phoenix, which holds 29.9 per cent, to replace Clive Whiley with Gary Channon, Phoenix’s founder and chief investment officer, at a shareholder meeting next month. Dignity’s response to Phoenix’s requisition notice yesterday also revealed that Phoenix threatened to requisition shareholder meetings on a number of occasions “to get its way”. This included, ironically, pressing for the appointment of Whiley as chairman in 2019. It also said that Phoenix was behind the departure of Mike McCollum, Dignity’s chief executive who resigned suddenly a year ago, and that the search for a replacement had been suspended after Phoenix rejected a shortlist of candidates. The escalating row brings to the surface a long-running breakdown in the relationship behind the scenes between Dignity and Phoenix. The April 22 shareholder meeting comes after a downturn at Dignity, which has been battling a price war with the Co-op, profit warnings, criticism over a lack of transparency on pricing and increasing regulation. Dignity, based in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, owns more than 800 funeral locations and operates 46 crematoriums in the UK. Attempts to respond to the pressure with lower prices and a restructuring have been hit by the pandemic and senior changes. Dignity said Phoenix’s move was a “wholly unnecessary act . . . at a time when the board had been making considerable progress towards the completion of the previously announced root and branch review” due to report in June, and Whiley, 61, was having a “galvanising effect on the business”. Dignity’s independent non-executive directors said Phoenix was not acting in the best interests of the majority of shareholders as a whole, “but is instead driven primarily by its own self-interest” In a letter to shareholders ahead of the meeting, Channon said Phoenix was not seeking to control the board, it would have one Phoenix representative, would not increase its shareholding beyond 29.9 per cent and has pledged not to make an offer for the company, unless a third party has bid. “We believe that although the company faces many significant challenges as the funeral industry changes, there is great value to be unlocked if the right course is pursued in an expedient manner,” Phoenix said in the letter. Shares in Dignity, which traded at more than £28 in 2016, closed down 41p, or 6.1 per cent, at 621p. |
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