Finsbury Food Share Discussion Threads

[jpjp100] 14/4/2012 20:56

from the interims ...'These arrangements do not meet the conditions necessary for hedge accounting to be applied and, therefore, changes in their fair value are recognised immediately in the income statement resulting in a charge of £35,000 (2011: credit £570,000).'

[sir rational] 14/4/2012 20:04

need to establish if they are pure vanilla or gambling

[sir rational] 14/4/2012 20:04

swaps might indicate 'gambling' FD function

[topvest] 14/4/2012 20:00

There isn't normally a charge for such swaps as it is set into the swap deal itself.

[sir rational] 14/4/2012 17:17

swaps either go your way or not

[aleman] 14/4/2012 14:27

I don't know. I have limited knowlege of accounting for hedges and find them confusing. I see the swaps were taken out with HSBC, the bank that deals with all FIF's debt. If there is a cost, it's possible it might just be consolidated into the finance expenses for the year.

[boffster] 14/4/2012 00:23

Would such an amount, if there was one, not be specified in the accounts?

[aleman] 13/4/2012 12:53

How much did they pay to enter into those swaps, though? It's like getting a really low rate on your fixed mortgage for 3 years but you pay a £2k fee.

[jpjp100] 13/4/2012 12:49

maybe its simply that banks are expecting interest rates to stay very low for the term

maybe its the bank showing a touch of support for FIF

maybe the FD has been earning his corn

but don't get too excited as these deals actually result in a charge of £35k to the accounts for the period.

from the interims ...'These arrangements do not meet the conditions necessary for hedge accounting to be applied and, therefore, changes in their fair value are recognised immediately in the income statement resulting in a charge of £35,000 (2011: credit £570,000).'

[boffster] 13/4/2012 11:39

How have they managed to secure such low rates? Any ideas?

[topvest] 12/4/2012 20:58

Yes, absolutely...looks a good deal!

[jpjp100] 12/4/2012 16:24

for me its not a matter of liking (or not) your posts or the info in them, but that there are only so many times one can listen to a story without getting fed up of hearing it.

your points have been clearly made markt, there is no need to keep rehashing them again and again and again and again. All you are doing is diluting the message by putting more and more people off reading your posts!

[boffster] 12/4/2012 15:55

Just seen an interesting couple of lines in the interims: -

On 21 February 2012 the Group entered into two forward dated swaps:
£3.0m for four years from 25 May 2013 at 1.65%
£6.0m for three years from 2 June 2014 at 1.89%

Looks cheap!

[boffster] 12/4/2012 15:45

Neither Beale or Marshall have an executive role with the company. This means they are not involved in the running of the company.

[markt] 12/4/2012 14:35

The Lightbody acquisition and the price paid is very relevant to FIF now I think.

David Marshall and Edward Beale seem to think that the valuation for food producing companies that sell mainly to supermarket chains and that produce tiny profit margins should be valued at 90% of the turnover.

Those 2 people are still on the board of FIF.

If they are involved in acquisitions in the future will they make similar acquisitions ?

---

And is the BOD in any way interested in the shareholders ?
The Lightbody acquisition made Mr Lightbody very rich...and also the then Chairman of FIF. It could be argued that shareholders got shafted.

Most of the same people involved in the Lightbody deal are still running the board of FIF. (Lightbody, Marshall , Beale, Monk ...that is 4 votes on the board....and Lightbody, dirs. and Marshall control imo > 50% of the votes of LFI if exercise options)

So I think that very valid points are
- do they know how to value a company for an acquisition ?....and if not....will they make similar over priced acquisitions in the future ?
- do they care about providing a return to shareholders (noting that many paid 85p for an acquisition that would provide 'many synergies'...and now the share price is 26p !)
-----

The people that paid 15-20p for their shares.....do not care about the share holders that paid to acquire Lightbody at 85p.....and only care about making money for themselves.....and hence dont like my posts or the info in my posts. Noted. BUt I disagree.

[markt] 12/4/2012 14:26

"AIM Cowboy Directors from Hell - Rogues Gallery"

...I've proposed D.M. non-exec. at FIF to be considered to be added to directors covered by the title of that thread. For reasons why, read the LFI msg, brd.

[aleman] 12/4/2012 14:25

From this report it looks like Cenkos maintained their forecast of a 1p dividend after the interims. I didn't know there was a broker called Fairfax with a buy recommendation on FIF.

[spaceparallax] 12/4/2012 12:35

There are few objective points to Markt's posts

[jpjp100] 12/4/2012 11:25

I understand your point markt and, in part I agree with it - some of the past actions of FIF don't look good and were, as it turned out, damaging to the company and enriching for parties involved in making the decisions back then.

We can see the evidence of the lasting damage done just by looking at the current balance sheet. It is taking a long time and a lot of strongly led control and management of the company to recover from that episode.

However, the current CEO and FD (the 2 main positions on the Board) had no involvement in that at all. Moreover, in their first listed plc CEO & FD roles, presumably with ambitions for more, I am pretty sure they did enough due diligence to make sure that they could go into and get out of FIF tarnish free.

So, if it is accepted that the past deal was a bad one, but that we are where we are, surely its time to consider the investment case based on current trading and future prospects?

Or do we have to wade through even more iterations of the same story from you? A story that really has had no relevance to anyone investing since the new CEO & FD were appointed.

[markt] 12/4/2012 10:57

I think you have completely missed a large part of the point of my post.
...I leave it you if you want to read it again, slowly.

(whether you agree or disagree, that is up to you)

----

BTW
are the initials to your name F.L. ?
( a person that has some links to D.M. director at FIF)

[aleman] 12/4/2012 10:51

I've never come across a poster so stuck in the past. Net debt/EBITDA was 4.6 in 2009. It was 3.1 at the interims and is forecast to be 2.8 in 2 months. It looks to have fallen to a manageable level and the rate of improvement suggests a significant margin of comfort. Commodities prices have improved since the summer. Try dragging yourself into the present!