We could not find any results for:
Make sure your spelling is correct or try broadening your search.
Customisable watchlists with full streaming quotes from leading exchanges, such as LSE, NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX, Bovespa, BIT and more.
| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Grid Plc | NG. | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.80 | 1.02% | 966.20 | 16:35:04 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 957.40 | 950.80 | 966.80 | 966.20 | 956.40 |
| Industry Sector |
|---|
| GAS WATER & UTILITIES |
| Top Posts |
|---|
Posted at 14/1/2025 15:07 by utyinv 1Carus,Shareholders won’t cough up, won’t need to. The only reason why there was a rights issue recently, was because OFGEM stated that some pain will have to be taken by the shareholders rather than win win etc. NG is no ordinary company where upgrading the system is borne by the business. It is written into law that any upgrade to improve the system’s reliability, efficiency or new connections is paid for by customers, through their bills. However, once completed Ofgem say the asset base alone will be worth £20.80 / share so it’s only right shareholders are seen to contribute. Happened before years ago at the last ‘rights’ issue, when the price was £7 / share. Don’t forget 50% of the business is US based. If we don’t see a significant increase in share price I can see institutional investors plugging a London delist and go with the US. Rio is faced with the same dilemma, where major institutional investors are trying to persuade Rio to go alone with the Aussie stock market and drop the London dual listing. The London Stock market is vastly undervalued. |
Posted at 15/11/2024 18:53 by xtrmntr The UK's ageing transmission system requires at least £60bn of investment, and the first results for National Grid (NG.) since its mega £7bn capital-raising in May this year showed that life as a monopoly infrastructure provider is not so bad. Underlying earnings per share increased by 8 per cent to 28.1p, despite sustained levels of capital expenditure, which was £4.6bn, 17 per cent higher year on year. This spend was driven by grid connections, which underlines how much extrainvestment is needed; the company expects to double overall spending over the next five years, compared with the past five.Management was also at pains to emphasise that the US election would have little impact on its business, with its utilities regulated at the state level. The US division contributes about a quarter of National Grid's overall profits. Indeed, the company still expects to invest £17bn in New York and £11bn in New England in the five years to 2029.Financing this spending from new money was another positive impact of the rights issue, as the company's net debt is now expected to decrease by around £1.5bn, from £43.6bn as at 31 March 2024, with the reported gearing reducing to the low 60 per cent range.It is in the nature of National Grid's business that it must splurge the cash every 40 years or so as its infrastructure wears out. Investors won't be excited by the previously announced rebased dividend, but at a FactSet price/earnings ratio consensus of 13, the company is slightly under its long-term average. Buy. |
Posted at 08/11/2024 00:26 by philanderer Investors ChronicleNational Grid rights issue secures the balance sheet The infrastructure company looks financially stable after a big fundraising this year BUY |
Posted at 18/10/2024 18:11 by xtrmntr Hampstead is the deepest underground station in London. Late in the evening, however, residents can still occasionally hear the rumble of trains as they lie in bed. It's a reminder of the world that exists underneath the capital – and the country as a whole. Tubes, gas pipes, sewers, water mains, electric cables and telecommunication lines all stretch below our feet.One of the biggest infrastructure projects currently under way in the UK is the London Power Tunnels programme. Run by National Grid (NG.), it involves rewiring the city's ageing electricity system via a series of new tunnels buried 40 metres below the surface. The project started back in 2011 and is expected to cost around £2bn in total. The stakes are high, therefore – but for National Grid, it's just one of the challenges on the horizon. In May this year, the utility giant announced £60bn of investment over five years to upgrade and expand the power grid in England and Wales (as well as to bolster its US assets). The capital expenditure plan is far larger than analysts had expected and is nearly double that seen over the prior five years. Investment in the grid is increasingly urgent. Electricity demand in Great Britain is expected to be 50 per cent higher by 2035, with electric vehicles and heat pumps proving particularly burdensome. Artificial intelligence could add to the strain; analysts at UBS expect data centre usage to rise from 2.8 per cent of European electricity demand today to 8.4 per cent in 2030. There is another problem, too. National Grid is rewiring the network to accommodate more power from renewable sources, such as wind. This is needed to hit the government's goal of a net zero grid by 2030. Unlike dirtier forms of power, though, renewable energy tends to be generated in remote areas – often offshore in the North Sea. These new sources of supply need to be connected to cities and towns."It is the biggest build-out of the networks since Victorian times," says National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew. "Most of our networks were built in the 1960s when they were transporting energy from the north of the country, where the coal mines were, to the south of the country, where most of the population was. Now we need to rewire Britain so energy is coming from offshore wind in the North Sea and the Celtic Sea."Read more from Investors' ChronicleWhy watchlists could be investors' secret weaponCore holdings from the 'sin', technology and investment trust sectorsYou don't have to be invested in China to care about the market rallyHow to solve London's housing shortageExisting infrastructure isn't robust enough to support these changes. Bottlenecks in the grid mean electricity from northerly wind farms sometimes cannot reach areas of demand. As a result, wind farms are paid to stop generating electricity, while power stations are paid to produce electricity closer to where it is needed.Battery storage providers have also been frustrated at National Grid's infrequent use of their technology. A representative of National Grid's electricity systems operator – the oversight business sold to the government in a deal that completed this month – told the FT in September that outdated computer equipment and cable shortages were partly to blame. An investment opportunity Tackling these issues won't be cheap. However, National Grid doesn't operate like your average company. It is a monopoly whose returns are determined, largely in advance, by energy regulator Ofgem. Rather than hurting profits and breeding uncertainty, therefore, the group's huge investment programme has transformed its growth prospects.Before digging into this, though, it's necessary to understand what National Grid actually does. At its simplest, the company makes sure electricity is transported safely and efficiently from where it's produced to where it's needed. Its main focus is transmission, which involves moving?electricity at a high voltage through a network of pylons, overhead lines, cables and substations. The company has over 7,000km of overhead power lines across England and Wales – enough to stretch from London to Miami. The distribution business is smaller, and involves moving electricity at a lower voltage from the grid to customers. It serves people in the Midlands, South West and South Wales.National Grid's revenue comes from us, the customers. In everyone's electricity bill, there is a small charge – roughly £20 a year – that covers the cost of transmission. National Grid also charges about £100 a year for distribution in the areas it serves.The more complicated question, however, is what drives these revenues. The amount of money National Grid can make primarily relies on the size of its infrastructure network – or its "regulated asset base". This is roughly calculated by taking the value of the assets at privatisation, plus all the money that has been poured in since then, minus depreciation. Ofgem then determines what level of return the company can make from these assets, taking into account the cost of debt and the cost of equity. The calculations are complicated, but the core idea is simple: the more National Grid invests in the network, the more it can earn (in the UK, there is another tailwind too – the asset base is indexed to inflation). In theory, therefore, National Grid's investment push should increase its earning power. Its asset base is expected to swell from £63bn this year to £100bn by FY2029, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 9.5 per cent. Analysts at Bernstein are forecasting that operating profit will grow even faster in the same period. "National Grid offers exposure to multi-decade growth in electricity networks in stable and well-regulated markets, providing excellent earnings visibility," HSBC analyst Charles Swabey concludes. Schroders fund manager Ashley Thomas agrees, stressing the group's "secure and transparent" growth profile. These enhanced growth prospects are not necessarily reflected in the share price. There are a variety of ways to value the company but, given its presence in both the UK and North America, many analysts favour a sum-of-the-parts approach. JPMorgan, for example, says – given the structural opportunities – the UK network should be valued at a 40 per cent premium to its regulated asset base, and values the US infrastructure at 1.4 times its current worth. As such, it has a target price of 1,200p for March 2026, up from today's price of around 990p.The stock looks reasonable from a price/earnings (PE) perspective too. National Grid has traded on an average forward PE ratio of 15 times for the past five years, but now attracts a multiple of just 13.6 times. Given its rapidly expanding asset base, this discrepancy seems unjustified. Glitch in the systemNot everything is set in stone. A shortage of trained workers and supply chain hold-ups could hamper National Grid's investment plans. Meanwhile, Ofgem still has the power to cause problems."Given the expected step-up in UK transmission capex, the crucial unknown is the regulatory framework that will underpin regulated assets growth and returns," says HSBC. The current regulatory period ends in March 2026, with a new five-year regulatory period starting the following month. For now, though, the signs are positive. Last year, for example, Ofgem introduced the term 'investability' in a consultation to "recognise the scale of investment required in coming decades". In July of this year it also expressed an early view on the returns National Grid should make in the next regulatory period. This was largely as expected, with Ofgem guiding for a return on equity of 5.43 per cent for the UK transmission network. More negotiations will follow. "You have seen some regulators shift from being purely focused on minimising the cost to the consumer to also thinking about how we allow the energy system to decarbonise, and what we actually need to do from a grid perspective," notes BlackRock fund manager Alastair Bishop. For investors, though, there is another fly in the ointment. One of the ways that National Grid raised money for its £60bn capex plan was through a £7bn rights issue announced in May. This took a lot of the pressure off the balance sheet, which was looking strained, and paves the way for higher overall profits in the future. However, it also swelled the share count by roughly 30 per cent. Earnings growth on a per share basis looks muted, therefore – and National Grid's own forecasts should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. The company expects underlying earnings per share (EPS) to grow at a compound annual rate of 6-8 per cent between financial years 2025 and 2029. However, by starting the guidance from 2025, the management team has avoided showing the impact of the elevated share count. Deepa Venkateswaran, head of European utilities at Bernstein, calculates that if an undisturbed EPS figure for 2024 were to be used instead, the compound annual growth rate will only sit at between 2.8-4.3 per cent. Accounting for bonus shares issued in 2024, this growth figure climbs to 5.1 per cent. These numbers are lower than the 6-8 per cent EPS growth achieved in the previous five-year period and lower than the forecasts communicated by the company, Venkateswaran concludes. The rights issue also impacted National Grid's famously reliable payouts: the dividend has been rebased from 58.5p a share down to 45.3p a share. It is set to start growing again in line with inflation from next year, under the same progressive policy as before. The dividend hit suggests there has been a strategic shift towards growth at the expense of income – but many are unfazed by this. "It remains a classic income thesis," says Tommy Kristoffersen, fund manager at EdenTree Investment Management. "But instead of it being a wobbly, risky income thesis, it's underpinned by this £60bn capex plan which, in turn, is underpinned by a government that knows that it's necessary to support renewable expansion."Schroders |
Posted at 22/9/2024 12:22 by bountyhunter Yes that is a longer term chart :)The same principle applies but your chart does show more clearly that the long term trend has been favourable for the few that have held for that long! Buy and hold used to be easy but with 'free' online dealing at the click of a button churning portfolios has become more the norm, which has not necessarily been a good thing for investors. What I don't like about the 'free' brokers is that they often don't give you the price ahead of executing a trade. |
Posted at 04/6/2024 10:30 by anhar Well if you insist on the official statement on this, here's the relevant extract from the 171 page prospectus, page 50, para 4b of Part II:If you do not want to take up your Nil Paid Rights, you do not need to do anything. If you do not return your Provisional Allotment Letter or make an online application subscribing for the New Shares to which you are entitled by the required time (which is 11.00 a.m. on 10 June 2024, if you are a Qualifying Certificated Shareholder; and 5.00 p.m. on 7 June 2024, if you are a Qualifying Corporate Sponsored Nominee Participant), the Company has made arrangements under which the Underwriters will try to find investors to purchase New Shares in respect of all entitlements that have not been taken up. If the Underwriters find investors who agree to pay a premium above the Issue Price and the related expenses of procuring those investors (including any applicable brokerage and commissions and amounts in respect of irrecoverable VAT), you will be paid for your share of the amount of that premium, so long as the amount in question is at least £5.00 (except Qualifying Corporate Sponsored Nominee Participants, who will be paid regardless of the value), in pounds sterling by BACS payment to the mandated bank account registered with Equiniti Limited or Equiniti Financial Services Limited for the payment of dividends. But there was never any doubt about this, it's how lapsed rights are normally dealt with. You did say that: In other rights i've had, if the rights weren't taken then the underwriters simply got them at the cheap price and the rights holder got nothing. I've not seen that after many rights issues over the decades so as I said, afaik, receiving nothing would occur only where the xr shares fall sufficiently so that the gearing effect reduces the npr to nil value or close to it. That has happened. |
Posted at 27/5/2024 14:06 by albajack @utyinv:If 'z' is being calculated from 'x' and 'y', and then 'z' and 'y' are being combined in a reverse calculation, the result is 'x'. It does not matter how experiened an investor might be, or whether the calculation is performed by an administrator, the result is exactly the same as the original number. There is no value to be discovered from the process: 10 / 2 = 5 10 / 5 = 2 I'll repeat, but rephrase: calculating value on an *unknown* shareprice at some point in the future is a wholly different set of questions and statements - and likely answers. I am retired, have also been investing for a good many years, and am aware of different situations regarding rights issues, having been in them myself (*Segro). One situation, which I have not seen mentioned on here, is how to account for lost income when selling a holding and trying to guage a re-entry price. If the share price goes XD and falls below the perceived valuation price, does this trigger a purchase? This is less of an issue with NG's forthcoming final dividend as the investor already has the dividend in the bag if the share is sold before the XD date. However, if shares are not repurchased before the subsequent dividend, i.e. the next interim, how is that to be incorporated into a valuation point calculation? Once the opportunity to take that dividend has passed, the investor suffers a permenant loss of income - and this is also something which should matter to an income investor. Leave it too long before buying back in and the loss of further dividends can lower the valuation price required to recover accumulated cuts to income to an unrealistic level. If the investor wants income from this security then there will come a time when the shares will have to be bought even if they are above the preceived valuation price. This is one of my own experiences. It is a similar problem to trying to time markets. Something else that I have not seen mentioned on here is how raising debt instead of equity can lead to a cut to the dividend. Interest payments have priority and have the potential to reduce cash available to pay dividends. NG's dividend cover is already low - last number which I have from ShareCast is 1.2. NG's credit ratings are also towards the low end of investment grade. Take on more debt and the risk is of being downgraded to junk territory. If this happens then coupons on subsequent debt will be higher - and this will matter a good deal once existing investment-grade bonds with lower coupons need to be refinanced. And there is the ongoing problem of how to refinance the debt just raised when that matures - another round of replacement debt? There does come a time when raising finance as equity rather than as debt is sensible - and safer. A current example of how debt can truly destroy shareholder value is Thames Water. Instead of putting new equity into the company, shareholders preferred to have new finance raised as debt. Now they are very likely to be wiped out. ...and...on an entirely tongue-in-cheek note... New infrastructure is needed not just because of the Green Transition. New infrastructure is needed whether the electricity is green or grey. The area around west London, alone, is struggling to build new housing because of contraints on the electricity supply infrastructure. These contstraints are due to the number of data storage warehouses in the area (greater Dublin has a similar problem, just FYI). These centres require air conditioning to keep the environment cool enough for the servers that they house. As the number of servers increase there comes a time when a new air-conditioned building has to be built to house them. These servers store internet-generated data. Some of this data is social media, e.g. Meta, X, etc. Some is from sites such as - ADVFN. As more posts are made on ADVFN, more server space is required to store them. Eventually, a new server required, leading to...a ripple up the chain. Therefore, every post being made on ADVFN which is criticising the NG. rights issue is doing a little bit more to speed up the need to upgrade the very infrastructure upon which their published criticisms are reliant... :-) Do try to read it in good humour, please - it's a Bank Holiday...! *Segro: being my most previous situation of a capital raise prior to NG.. Not enough cash on hand to fully subscribe to my entitlement. Took up what I could. Subsequently topped up when sufficient funds had accumulated. My situation now is different, having just sold something before the RI announcment with the intention of reinvesting elsewhere. Instead, these funds will go towards NG. and the other will have to wait. Two identical requiremens, two different situations, both managed accordingly. |
Posted at 27/5/2024 11:24 by utyinv Pierre,You are right, I am trying to keep things simple. As I said, in previous post it will take many years for the prospective promise of a Company valued at £100 billion to come to fruition. So to cover the lost income from new cash invested to take up the rights will make a break even more longer than the 20 years I refer to in my previous post. The prudent investor is being punished to serve a Socialist ideal. In Natsonline’s post 9176 :- I've effectively lent 8.5K to NG (I'm a banker now) - I will not see a return on that 8.5K for years to come, the infrastructure it's building to make me a return hasn't been built yet. - We as wealthy investors provide the up front capital, the general public pay us back in monthly installments. My take on that is, well that’s all well and done if justice is carried out in the future, but, ‘IF’ and when NG does raise bills to compensate their investor’s pain, will the Left Wingers in the Labour Party force Starmer to say that the profits are unreasonable, when people are struggling, and impose a windfall tax on shareholders returns? If anyone stands up and says “ hold on we have invested our money and we require a return”, I wouldn’t put it beyond Labour to say ‘Tough’ this is our form of a ‘redistributio |
Posted at 27/5/2024 09:24 by utyinv Albajack, post 2157 :- The advantage for those of us who have not sold is that there is no need to try to time a way back in. And by taking up rights in full we suffer no cut in total dividend received.What you might not be getting is something that Bounty has eloquently put it, we all have different situations. Two scenarios that need to be taken into account especially when referring to options that people like Bounty are trying to evaluate. 1) many on this Board have had investments for the past 30 years ( NG floated in 1995 ). Over the years, using the old PEP system which was replaced by the ISA, investors have bed and breakfast’d shares to make them tax efficient. So much so, that many have shares that would require far more capital to be raised in the ISA than the annual allowance permits. 2) many investors on this bb have been proactive investors in having a wide range of stock and funds within the tax shelter, using stock from UK, USA (W-8BEN req) etc. So that is why there are so many permutations that the likes of say Bounty are evaluating. Bounty is the administrator of this bb and as such it is not wrong to assume that Bounty is knowledgable about investing. Bounty and Pierre have been investing for many years One simple calculation I did for a friend was that to fork out the Capital to effectively break even on dividends would require a lot of faith in the money raised by NG being used wisely and quickly enough to realise a benefit. My friend did not take up the option and as a result the loss in income from dividends as apposed to the outlay in new capital would take 20 years to break even and he is already in his 70’s. So for him that might be the right thing to do. None of us have crystal balls. Yes he could do a part ‘take-up’ I have faith in the outcome, due to many reasons, but others might not have time on their side. |
Posted at 24/5/2024 13:16 by natasonline I think a lot of the tipped off institutional investors that sold yesterday will be the same investors buying up all the Rights shares being sold on by in to the Market. We have been screwed, a crystal ball would have been nice, personally I'm buying the Rights then existing as soon as I break even. |
It looks like you are not logged in. Click the button below to log in and keep track of your recent history.
Support: +44 (0) 203 8794 460 | support@advfn.com
By accessing the services available at ADVFN you are agreeing to be bound by ADVFN's Terms & Conditions
Hot Features
Premium
