Hill Station Share Discussion Threads

[jonc] 07/10/2007 20:08

There was a full page ad in the Sunday Telegraph colour supp a week or two ago for a range of Loseley products which I had not seen before.

Looked quite appealing.

[cerrito] 07/10/2007 20:04

somewhat surprised to see Hill Station branded ice cream in the local costco

[cerrito] 28/8/2007 22:02

tiredold broker
like you concerned about moving away from the super premium
I would have thought that given high diary prices they would want to have top quality..and also given their continued issues with working capital they would want to avoid mass market
too bad I could not make last week's egm something came up at the last moment would have liked to have had an update

[jonc] 28/8/2007 11:34

Indeed look at what happened to inter link . Supplying commodity products(own brand) gives you little or no pricing power.

[tiredoldbroker] 28/8/2007 11:14

Not sure it tells us very much that's new - interesting to see my suggestion of a 40/60 sales split between half years confirmed by the chairman. Not sure I like the decision to move away from the branded super-premium segment towards own label for supermarkets, in most food lines own label is a mug's game as the big retailers will kick your behind sooner or later.

[quidzinn] 22/8/2007 14:10

Can buy 1 million shares online with Natwest @ mid-price .... not a good sign

Q

[mrphil] 22/8/2007 11:20

Although life is never that simple, a long hot September would be a terrific help to sales here!

[mrwoo] 20/8/2007 23:26

Well, there's the money. Presumably, had it been in real doubt, the delay-announcements might have had to be accompanied by a suspension. Intriguingly, though, (and unlike previous fund-raisings), only a fraction of the £3+m has come from significant existing investors. Which kinda makes you wonder who has suddenly become so very keen on a big chunk of HLL - and why. Cheap (?) price, of course - but the company hasn't exactly been shy about its problems (and I suppose you just could read Mapstone's reference today to creating shareholder value by acquisition in a couple of ways....). Perhaps things will be a bit clearer when we get an RNS about one or more major new shareholders.

[ponty] 18/8/2007 01:01

Must be finding it hard to rise money,


Hill Station plc (the "Company")

Proposed placing - further delay in announcement of take up under the Placing

Further to the announcement made at 12.09pm today, the Board of Hill Station
plc announces a further delay in the announcement of the result of the proposed
placing, the Company will now make an announcement by 8.00am on Monday 20
August 2007.

Enqu

[hupgomwat] 17/8/2007 18:36

Lovely buys today...this share is a must the ice-cream is gorgeous, and they queue in the ailes for the whole interval in theatres for a £1.70 tub of Losley with a miniscule spoon.....dropped mine as soon as started to tuck in once, so bought another....just for the spoon....fitted the ice-cream in as well!

[tiredoldbroker] 16/8/2007 12:54

LionelH, micki3, I'm certainly not saying to buy, even at todays level - I think that if the fundraising is completed at 0.25p, I might be tempted if I could pay no more than that. Partly because of the management changes, and also I do believe that the most recent acquisition may lift production at Cwmbran to (or beyond) break even point. I don't think Totte had what it takes to run a business, I'm sure he was a whiz at the financial "engineering" and the wheeler-dealer bit of buying companies and piling up debt. But I don't think he could then implement the next stage succesfully. Hopefully, Mapstone will do better. But until they have the cash, its too dodgy for me.

I do agree about the occasional salutary lesson being worth the pain - I was very lucky in starting my City career over 30 years ago working for a cautious partner in the private client department of a stockbroking firm, so I was taught without having to see too much of my own cash go up in smoke ! But I have to admit that even I have sometimes made a fundamentally wrong decision and then compunded it by not steeling myself to cut my loss at an early stage.

[micki3] 16/8/2007 12:38

No, I agree you have to spread around and I have - I suppose I'd gotten used to being pretty successful in my choices and then getting out to my advantage. It's just a nervy time all round at the moment anyway, so just grin and bear it.

[lionelh] 16/8/2007 12:32

Not quite a dead duck yet, micki3. Something has clearly gone wrong but I wouldn't write it off quite yet. We all need these "salutary lessons", micki3, as they are part and parcel of what is required to make a wise investor. It is something you have to learn for yourself. Nobody can teach you it. I did learn a while back that investing in something because you "like the product" is not a very good reason of itself to invest in a company though not investing in a company whose product you dislike is still a sound principle to me. You might have uniquely diabolical taste in which case you might be the only consumer of the product there is! For what it's worth the biggest lesson I learnt is not to put a large capital sum in one share. Spread your risk by putting it in several shares. Even good well-run companies fail for unforeseeable reasons - if you put all your money in it without spreading the risk you are in effect taking a large gamble! Spreading risk by investing in at least five shares reduces risk markedly to an acceptable level. That lesson cost me a couple of k but I do not regret the experience as it made me a better investor.

[lionelh] 16/8/2007 11:13

Problem is, tireoldbroker, is that this might be the last fundraising. Only 12 months ago £1 million was raised (when shares were trading at 4.5p) by issuing 31.45 million shares. Chairman Pieter Totte said then "I am pleased with the progress made to date in integrating our businesses and that we now have the further resources to complete the process". In view of the new fundraising, obviously not! I agree integration has been the major problem here but you would be very brave to invest much in this as things stand in August 2007. As you say as well, uncertainty tends to breed uncertainty especially in the minds of major retailers which is alao not terribly helpful. This is touch and go as far as I'm concerned. There's been a major tighening of credit everywhere and this feeds through to people's appetite for risk.

[tiredoldbroker] 14/8/2007 13:30

I don't think seasonality is such a big factor here - I think the sales split was no worse than 40/60 for the 6mo. to 30/4/06 and 6mo. to 28/10/06, and a Tesco buyer told me that their winter ice cream sales were actually quite sound. The real problem has been the handling of the transfer and integration of production from 3 old plants around the UK to 1 new one in Cwmbran, and the capacity level they had to reach at Cwmbran to achieve positive cash flow.

They are squeezed by raw material costs and obviously poor summer weather does them no favours, but its more about capacity and customer confidence - e.g. a major supermarket won't promote HLL's ices if there's any fear that they might not still be trading 3 months down the line.

My feeling back on 30 July was simply that at 1.25p with a huge fundraising likely at 0.25p, the shares were going to drift down towards the fundraising price. They seem to be doing that.

[lionelh] 14/8/2007 12:27

I've looked at this share for a while without investing to date. Given the precipitate fall in the share price from 2005/6 to 2007 I think my judgment was sound. Companies affected by seasonality (who buys ice cream in the winter?) always seem to have these problems. Higher dairy costs are also clearly yet another unwelcome factor at the moment. The prospects for this company seem to me to be very much in the balance. I do not like the look of the debt they have. Any interruption in cash flow they have could become fatal for them, making them hostage to future events, including higher interest rates. If you cannot pay suppliers you become insolvent very quickly! Let's see how the fundraising goes. As said above, they are in the last chance ice cream parlour. If it doesn't come off, they've had it.

[tiredoldbroker] 30/7/2007 15:25

Though I don't think there's any value in the shares at the current 1.25p offer price, this is probably their only chance of survival. Without seeing the circular to shareholders, I'm assuming that the placing will be 1.4 billion shares at 0.25p, to raise £3m after rather steep expenses of £750,000 (be interesting to see who picks that fee up).

The punitive terms of the November 2006 loan stock issue have been moderated, the July 2007 loan stock issue provided survival capital, and if they manage the integration of Real Ice better than past purchases, they could actually get capacity utilisation up towards the point where Cwmbran trades more efficiently.

Apart from managing the integration, the other key issue is that HLL actually gets the £3m its now trying to raise, without which its a dead duck. Obviously, they've been caught between bad weather hitting sales and higher dairy/input costs hitting margins.

We won't necessarily know until 17 Aug whether the placing has succeeded, and I'd hazard a guess that with the likely issue price and the sheer quantity of shares to be issued, the share price will slowly sink towards 0.25p. But without this placing, there's nothing left at all for the shareholders.

[jonc] 30/7/2007 14:50

Someone should shoot this dog and put it's shareholders out of their misery.

[jonc] 25/7/2007 13:40

Down 90%....

[giardap] 25/7/2007 13:31

What about premium ice cream sales?

[jonc] 24/7/2007 06:55

I see that sales of icecream in supermarkets is down 38% due to the poor summer.

Man the life boats....