Imperial Brands Share Discussion Threads

[marktime1231] 09/2/2022 15:56

Healthy demand for IMB even on a risk-on day where things like loss-making 10 year bets on novel energy technology are flying.

Could we see £18 or the magic £18.50 I suggested to NSB before ex-div, still a week to go. Or not. Hard not to be happy either way after such a long struggle, and surely the medium term direction is upwards even if we take an ex-div tumble.

[fenners66] 09/2/2022 14:36

"In five years at this inflation rate you lose half the value of your money "

Well 40% of it

[redbaron10] 08/2/2022 09:07

Ex divi date around the corner.Investors waking up to the yield here at last hopefully.US CPI data Thursday which could be a wake up call to those now realising a 7%+ inflation rate really erodes the value of your money.In five years at this inflation rate you lose half the value of your money if you do nothing with your cash.

[redbaron10] 04/2/2022 21:36

To err is human.

[spud] 04/2/2022 19:00

I've never crystallised a loss in my life!!!Oh and yes, I do believe in Santa! ;-)spud

[stevenrevell] 04/2/2022 17:38

You are right red they never comment on losses tho

[redbaron10] 04/2/2022 10:53

marktime1231 dyor and stick to your own investment strategy.I never take any notice of investors coming on and boasting of their successes because they're only trying to 'big' themselves up and give themselves an ego boost.If you're confident enough in your own abilities to make money, you don't need to brag and tell everyone else about it.I come on these boards to share experience and learn things about the companies i invest in that i might have missed in business pages or a fellow investor has an angle or insight i haven't been aware of.It's free,doesn't cost any money and you either take the advice or you don't.More knowledge and information on a subject is vital to investing imho.I don't know enough about much technology or cryptocurrencies to invest with confidence in those spaces....so i don't.

[spud] 03/2/2022 13:32

As to your last para then yes, for now. But you just watch the timing and I'll almost guarantee that the stars don't align then.

spud

[marktime1231] 03/2/2022 13:24

Oh spud I guessed you would be banging that drum and to your credit you have been resolute in your opposition. But look at the size of the vote man, you are marching out of step. You might possibly just be wrong? Or right but in a room on your own.

It could be good sense to reduce the issue by 5% on which there is an 8% dividend liability versus repaying debt which charges 4% interest? Twice the bang for our buck. Why do you think all the big investors voted in favour? Pure economics.

Whether or not the buyback moves the share price, the best return for shareholders is without question a buyback over debt reduction, but only for as long as the share price is so low and while interest rates are below yield. It is / they are, so it is.

[spud] 03/2/2022 08:09

I hope never, but BBs are so entrenched in company policy of returning value to shareholders that it’s a given so some time during 2022/3

Far better to divert all surplus monies (less dividend) to debt reduction imo.

spud

[1viky] 03/2/2022 00:09

That's right , my mistake, when do you think the buyback will commence ?

[marktime1231] 02/2/2022 23:46

Non-smoking meeting? Always used to be item 1 at my old cricket club AGM.

Res 19 gives the discretion to buyback up to 94.6 million shares at market price. That would mean spending £1.5-2B in the year ahead. Roughly 10% of mkt cap, but that is a top limit so maybe 5% on the cards, which would embed healthy dividend progression.

Everyone in favour. Go for it if there is surplus cash after meeting debt control ambitions, lots of corporate holders happy to sell at this cheap price for ESG or whatever reasons.

Nothing in the AGM slides or transcript about trading or financial outlook, just Bomhard saying he is delivering the plan.

[lendmeafiver] 02/2/2022 22:33

The AGM Script and Presentation all seem fine.

[spud] 02/2/2022 21:30

99.57% in favour doesn't exactly look like a narrow vote!spud

[1viky] 02/2/2022 21:06

It looks like they norrowly passed the motion of share buybacks in the AGM. Can anyone throw more light on this? Thanks

[redbaron10] 02/2/2022 10:01

Where's old 'buywell' these days and his less than a tenner share price prediction here? I miss having my laughs.

[cassini] 02/2/2022 02:36

1viky,

Yes.

However, if instead you sold, say, the day before ex-div, on the 16th, you'd still in effect get the full value of the dividend, but it would form part of the share price.

On ex-div day, the 17th, IMB should open 48p lower than at the close the day before as the 48p dividend has then theoretically been taken off the company's books (and therefore share price) overnight and allocated to shareholders. So, you will get the 48p per share dividend paid to you (a while later) but that 48p divi just came off the price you got for the share!

To complicate matters further, it seems a lot of people (for tax reasons or whatever) like to sell out of IMB a little before ex-dividend day rather than take the divi so it's not unusual for IMB's price to peak a week or more before ex-dividend day (and crater in the days following ex-div day), so it can pay to actually sell out early.

There are no guarantees things will go the way I described though so selling out early is a gamble, IMB has been showing strength recently.

[1viky] 02/2/2022 01:50

If I sell on Feb 17 as soon as the market opens, will I still get the dividend? Thanks

[philanderer] 01/2/2022 11:12

MORGAN STANLEY RAISES IMPERIAL BRANDS TO 'EQUAL-WEIGHT' (UNDERWEIGHT) - PRICE TARGET 1,955 (1,680) PENCE

[spud] 01/2/2022 08:26

The oil sector could follow in the footsteps of tobacco - More Inter

Source: Dow Jones News

James Mackintosh,

The Wall Street Journal

LONDON (Agefi-Dow Jones)--If you want to know the future of the oil industry, look at the past of the tobacco sector. Depending on who you choose to believe, it takes the form of either a machine to make money greener, or that of a reformed sector dedicated to reversing the damage caused by its old products to the planet and health. As confusing as it may seem, their future may well take both forms at once.


From the 1980s to a relatively recent period, Big Tobacco was a dollar machine. While cigarette sales fell almost every year, prices increased much more than necessary to offset and profit margins were, well, fatal. New technologies have changed everything. The development of electronic cigarettes and, to a lesser extent, heated tobacco, has revolutionised the sector's business model and marketing. Today, the tobacco sector is trying to present itself as a leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG) - and even health.


"We consider our ESG strategy to be "H+": H for "health", explains Kingsley Wheaton, Director of Marketing at British American Tobacco (BAT), the largest tobacco company in terms of turnover. "This is the sine qua non condition for our transformation."


ESG investment has established itself in the world of finance and, according to its followers, it can help change the world. I took a critical look at the ESG trend in a series of articles for the Streetwise section of the Wall Street Journal. The tobacco sector is a good model because it faced the same type of challenge forty years ago with investors who adopted a moral posture against its products and governments who wanted to tax and regulate it until it disappeared.


Oil is as addictive to the economy as nicotine to smokers. Environmentalists and governments want to wean consumers by offering them alternatives, mainly electric cars but also potentially hydrogen or simply through a decrease in consumption. Just as the prospect of ever-increasing regulations associated with the limits imposed on marketing has made it almost impossible to start a new tobacco company, future actions envisaged against fossil fuels have hit investments in new drilling. Many investors believe that the limits imposed on supply expansion mean that oil prices could remain high.


Volumes will decrease but rising prices will inflate margins


The oil industry and its investors are now divided between the same two approaches that had been adopted by the tobacco industry.


On the one hand, there are those who think that the path to less oil consumption will resemble that used by tobacco from the 1980s to the 2000s. Volumes will decrease but rising prices will inflate profit margins. Thanks to consumer dependence, cigarette sales continued even when legal restrictions radically reduced marketing expenses. Gasoline sales will continue for years, but oil companies may no longer spend as much money as in the past on exploration and drilling new wells, which will lead to higher prices and margins more generously as existing wells are exploited to the lees.


As with tobacco, this strategy cannot last forever - but if governments' promises of carbon neutrality by 2050 are serious, drilling has no future anyway. And in the meantime, oil companies could pay large dividends like those insured for decades by tobacco shares.


Most companies that adopt this strategy are not listed on the stock exchange and buy assets sold by listed companies trying to reduce their emissions. In practice, these programs will continue to be produced but with new owners. However, the creation of an autonomous oil producer with a limited lifespan is part of the argument of hedge fund activist Daniel Loeb, who is lobbying to break up the British oil major Shell.


In the opposite camp are the major oil players, mainly in Europe, who believe that the future implies a gradual transition from oil to other energy sources such as wind farms, for example. Like what the tobacco industry has recently done, they use a share of the profits from the sale of oil to invest in new sectors.


Beware of greenwashing


Like the tobacco industry, these oil companies trumpet their environmental, social and corporate governance projects to everything, which disgusts activists who describe these approaches as "greenwashing" designed to divert the attention of customers and investors from the damage inflicted by these companies. BAT even removed the word "tobacco" from its brand in 2020, removed the tobacco leaf on its logo and added the slogan: "A better tomorrow."


"Despite all the importance that BAT, newly revamped, places in the ESG, what is quite clear is that if BAT has repainted green, under the paint layer it has not changed," says Andy Rowell of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the English University of Bath.


In an interview at BAT's London headquarters, Kingsley Wheaton is outraged at the idea that his efforts are only aimed at diverting attention. "If you knew all the energy devoted to building the new company, you wouldn't say it's greenwashing," he justifies. "When you leave my office, I'm not going to sneer: 'Hahaha, he has everything swallowed'."


At least some of the agencies that rate companies on ESG characteristics believe so. Last year, BAT was ranked third best company in the FTSE 100 by Refinitiv, and Sustainalytics, which belongs to Morningstar, assigns it a medium risk, 88th out of the 598 companies it evaluates in the category described as a "food products" sector worldwide. S&P Global believes that BAT is among the best tobacco companies, unlike MSCI, which estimates it as an average only in the sector. MSCI, on the other hand, believes that Shell is doing very well for an oil company and gives it an "AA", the second best score, while Refinitiv says Shell has the best governance in the world.


The historical argument put forward by the two sectors has the same stages: first denial (cancers or climate change), then fierce lobbying campaigns to divert restrictive laws, which in some cases have led to accusations of outright corruption. The reasoning that currently prevails is that people will want cigarettes and fossil fuels for many years to come, and that they will have to be provided - it is therefore better for them to be provided by a large listed company rather than by small unlisted companies and without the slightest transparency.


Some players in the tobacco industry have reached the acceptance stage and believe that cigarettes will eventually disappear and that it will be necessary to transform or die. Not all oil companies are there yet, but the debate is underway. Shell and other European companies are investing heavily in change. Some investors, however, prefer the option of death, with good big profits by then and perhaps a longer lifespan than ecologists would like.


ESG investors who expect large carbon emitters to reap what they have sown are not there at all. There are still a lot of opportunities to make money from oil before we can do without this polluting fuel, exactly as was the case with cigarettes. And this money could very well end up in the pockets of investors who care about ESG like a guigne.


spud