Dignity Share Discussion Threads

[lochgarman] 23/6/2021 22:20

hatfullofsky....great read...cheers.

[hatfullofsky] 23/6/2021 17:18

A great read for those that did not make the AGM

[mr5k] 23/6/2021 14:26

There is so much value to unlocked. It's clear that this business was being run via spreadsheet from head office. Quite shocking what management were doing with pre paid funeral business !

[imastu pidgitaswell] 23/6/2021 13:04

Very good - 13% and counting on the day; well up since 600.

[hatfullofsky] 23/6/2021 11:57

The AGM is fantastic, Gary doing an excellent job, so many ideas. 10 more crems over next 10 years. Valuation on unused property portfolio

[hatfullofsky] 23/6/2021 11:27

What's Dignity Property going to become

[hatfullofsky] 22/6/2021 14:49

"On 12 April 2021, I laid out my vision for Dignity which contained a number of potential actions aimed at securing Dignity's future and building a better business for bereaved people, our staff and our partners. As we navigate out of the pandemic, and in light of regulatory changes in our industry, our hope is to lead positive change in our sector and become the true market leader with an unrivalled focus on quality, standards and choice. We are working hard on this plan and look forward to presenting it to shareholders at our AGM on 23 June 2021."

I'm looking forward to it too, especially if you spin off the Crem assets to a Listed Infra Fund.

[bmnsa] 18/6/2021 09:03

Dead as can be round here.

[hatfullofsky] 11/6/2021 16:53

What the hell is going on !?

[mrx9000] 22/5/2021 08:43

Open Letter from Phoenix, dated 31st April, for the record...

31st March, 2021

Open Letter to Shareholders of Dignity Plc

Re: Shareholder Circular & Notice of General Meeting

Dear Fellow Shareholder,

This Letter is a direct response to Dignity's statement published yesterday making claims about why we have acted to requisition the General Meeting.

We have called this shareholders' meeting because we believe we can no longer trust Clive Whiley to be Executive Chairman of Dignity. Therefore, we don’t think it is in the best interests of Dignity and its shareholders for him to be involved with the business.

This is because, as part of our work assisting the Company this year, we uncovered what we believe are some very serious issues in the prepaid funeral plan business (referred to as "pre-need"). We gathered the relevant information and sent it to Clive ahead of the budgeting process and finalisation of the annual results. In our view, his subsequent actions in dealing with the matter, internally and externally, left us no choice but to seek his removal as a director. Conflict is not in our nature but doing nothing would have gone against our company principles and long held standards of integrity.

We are bound by our confidentiality agreement with Dignity and so cannot share all of the details with you. However, we would encourage shareholders to speak with the board to understand this issue in detail.

We must also apologise because we were instrumental in Clive’s appointment. We received advice from people we trusted to avoid working with him. Regrettably, we ignored them.

We have spent the past three years trying to assist Dignity in finding the right strategy to build shareholder value. As we increased our stake and got closer to the Company, it became apparent that the board was dysfunctional and so we put forward a member of our team, James Wilson, to join the board to assist with the issues at hand.

James’ work on the strategy led to some successful trials but we believe that further progress was thwarted by internal vested interests. It seemed that there was resistance to change and that the vested interests favoured short term optics over long term shareholder value.

In such a rapidly evolving funeral market, where the competition grows stronger with every day of Dignity’s stasis, we concluded that wholesale change was needed in November 2020. After meeting with the NEDs and asking them to replace the executive management, including Clive, we compromised in order to avoid the distraction of a shareholder vote and left Clive in place on the basis that we could work together.

We tried our very best to work with Clive in a collaborative and transparent way. Our approach was not reciprocated, and the pre-need issue was the final straw, so we asked the board to remove him.

The work we began in the first couple of months of 2021 started to unleash the wonderful and talented people in Dignity, who we found had all the answers if we just listened to them. That work will resume, but unfortunately the board decided to pause it during this process.

If you look at the other instances where we have a large stake in a business, like Hornby or Stanley Gibbons, you will see that we treat minority shareholders as partners and we don’t take a single penny from the companies in salaries or Phoenix expenses. You can expect the same from us at Dignity where we are proposing no pay and no expenses for Gary. We are also giving you the peace of mind that we won’t use this situation to make a bid for the Company.

The only way we can benefit is by rapidly helping the business find the right long-term strategy that builds shareholder value. We sit right beside you as shareholders and our interests are aligned.

Gary Channon does not seek a long-term position on the Dignity board. We intend to use the position to put in place the right leadership team and then fall back to a supportive role as before.

The fairest and most transparent way to settle this is to allow shareholders to decide on whether they want Clive to continue working for them. We remain open to working with the rest of the board if they wish to stay, but the real asset in the business is the caring and compassionate people who look after our clients every day.

We promise you honesty, hard work and full transparency on both the good and the bad that we find. We have not sought to address every twist and turn of the board’s statement here but if you have any questions, then please get in touch using the email address below.

Sincerely,

Phoenix

[e-mail]



Note to shareholders:

Phoenix Asset Management Partners is a fund management company founded in 1998, based in Barnes, Southwest London.

We have an investment philosophy inspired by the teachings of Benjamin Graham, Philip Fisher, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. We are known for the depth of our research especially our monitoring programmes that are based upon lots of fieldwork as we experience companies through the eyes of their customers. We have a long term track record of generating returns significantly in excess of the market and manage £1.2bn.

Over the past 23 years we have built Phoenix using a principles based approach to business that emphasises integrity, transparency and fairness in all our dealings. You can learn more about us at www.phoenixassetmanagement.com.

[mrx9000] 22/5/2021 08:41

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. "

[hatfullofsky] 16/5/2021 10:38

They did indeed but they explicitly stated - Market share / Average Cost - BELOW expectations- Q2 deaths BELOW 5yr average- Risk of a big drop in death ratesWhich is probably why there has been an adverse reaction in the share price

[velocytongo] 10/5/2021 22:38

Hat .. I think they said that the market share mod are v difficult to calculate to timings of reporting of deaths .. vt

[hatfullofsky] 10/5/2021 21:31

Mixed bag on Q1 (forward looking statements a little worrying)

Rev £95m +14%
uOp Profit £26m + 35% (Funerals £26m / Crem £14m / Costs £10m)
Deaths 204k +27%
Cash £71m / Free Cash £39m (Q1 burn £2.6m)

Market share / Average Cost - BELOW expectations
Q2 deaths BELOW 5yr average
Risk of a big drop in death rates
Pre-need EXEEDED +13,000


Big news will have to wait until June, I expect a timetable for listing the Crem business

[mr5k] 07/5/2021 14:08

Dignity already offer one from £995 via Simplicity

[bmnsa] 07/5/2021 13:56

Co-op doing rock bottom basic funeral for £2,999. Sign of it displayed today.

[hatfullofsky] 28/4/2021 09:56

A series of 101 x 100 trades from 09:37 just hit the SP

Total value £65k

[velocytongo] 26/4/2021 09:38

I agree.

Stop the sale of pre need with current fee structure
Put in place the right management
Monetise the crem business to free up cash
Improve the management of the funeral director business

[hatfullofsky] 24/4/2021 07:43

Tongo, what's your view on first actions ?

I'm thinking :

1 Sorting the Funeral plans (well they have stated that)
2 Listing the crematoria business

As you know I have been harping on about the Crematoria business for a while. Listing it would be a big quick win. If we remove significant debt and retain control at an operational level we are a much stronger company, with further locations paid for by the new entity.

It will also allow DTY to start paying a significant dividend.

[velocytongo] 23/4/2021 07:05

Thank goodness this business will now receive the TLC is desperately needs !

[hatfullofsky] 23/4/2021 06:56

Did anybody notice the 2 x "Billion" was mentioned in Phoenix replies, pre-paid and Crematoria. That's some valuation

[hatfullofsky] 21/4/2021 20:17

Added significantly today. News tomorrow and then at the AGM on 23/06 (If Phoenix succeed)

[hatfullofsky] 21/4/2021 20:14

I think DTY are making it as difficult as possible to vote.

"Further details of the Resolutions and the General Meeting (including the procedures for participating and voting) are set out in the Circular"


A copy of the circular published today will shortly be available on the Company's website www.dignityplc.co.uk and available at the National Storage Mechanism w hich is located at .

[velocytongo] 21/4/2021 16:09

You can see Phoenix’s proposal on their website