Northern Foods Share Discussion Threads

[mrphil] 15/2/2017 17:34

An OK day for my lot, the SIPP dropped back from earlier gains but still edged ahead by +0.18% with LLOY, GSK & AGL leaqding the risers. The pot di even better at +0.95% thanks to AMS, LLOY & LGEN.

Who Do You Think You Are tonight so just a quick nip around our local Tesco. That will waste the next SBRY voucher but I'm not sure we need to spend £60 anyway.

[aleman] 15/2/2017 17:33

Some bad news - just ignore it like markets do!

[aleman] 15/2/2017 17:22

I started as an apprentice at 17. I earned about 1/4 of the final rate for my eventual occupation to begin with and was on about half at 21, after a bit of a jump at 18. When I got the proper job at 22, I doubled my pay - and that was without occasional overtime, although I did have to work rotating shifts as part of the deal and deal with managing 10 men, which apprenticeship did not train me for. I think part of the deal with appreticeships was that you might get poached so they did not like paying high wages as well as the high costs of training in case it was money down the drain for them. It seemed fair enough to me at the time and still does. Remarkably, I managed to get a loan at 18 large enough to buy my first house, a back to back terrace. The building society manager seemed to think I seemed sensible and had good career prospects. I'm not sure I'd get through the computer program these days. Life was frugal as the mortgage rate went from 8% to 15% but it was satisfying that I coped okay.

-0.1%

It was setting up for a lovely spring day, with a sunny morning reaching 10.6C, but it dropped 2C as the murk set in before lunch and it's now a bit drizzly.

[blueliner] 15/2/2017 17:06

Was it £5 a week or a month all those years ago? must have been per week. when I started.

+0.18% for the Folio. [FTSE250 +0.21%]

Highest percentage riser : FOG +61.9%.

Day has turned into night, rain falling in torrents.

[mrphil] 15/2/2017 16:29

I can add a slightly different angle to the minimum wage discussion.... I am all for people earning a decent wage, but I can remember when I started out in the big wide world you started at the bottom on a low wage job where you either stayed at that level through choice or you put yourself out and worked your way up the ladder to better earnings. I had no minimum wage to protect me, I just made damn sure I worked my way up.

In our industry, at the lowest level we have basic assemblers where no experience or special knowledge is required, as long as they can work a screwdriver, and historically the pay was pretty low to reflect that. The job was perfect for school leavers and youngsters looking to get into employment, gain experience and decide what direction they wanted to go. The difference now seems to be that these "first step" jobs are being treated like a long term career and are expected to provide a far higher wage than the historic norm, thereby completely upsetting the basic structure of those businesses. Since the advent of the NMW (now NLW) we have seen our wages bill go through the roof with 28% of our turnover now spent on wages compared to around 21% a few years ago - more than we would expect to make in total profit! Couple that with the simple fact we already cannot compete with Far Eastern products then there is only one way to go.

A typical example is a particular product we can (and sometimes do) buy from China for £5.88 We produce a virtually identical product ourselves in the UK, but bear in mind it takes one of our assemblers 35 minutes just to assemble the parts, so we are almost at the cost of the complete unit and we haven't bought the components or packaging yet!

It's great to come up with these ideals, and maybe a totally inexperienced school leaver should be earning £20K per year as an assembler, but somebody has to pay for it somewhere down the line!

[aleman] 15/2/2017 13:45

US CPI jumped more than expected to 2.5%. Bond yields up. 10-year +0.05 to 2.52%. It seems a bit odd that US prices should be rising more quickly than UK ones - although I think we'll catch up in the next few months.

The £2.50 packet of haddock fish fingers that we like has lost two fingers with no price reduction!


Still plenty of bad news from US. This is interesting because of the size of the miss



And these two are big names although relatively modest disappointments





Weather, perhaps?

[mozy123] 15/2/2017 11:30

Would be a good chance to reduce unemployment benefit and the period it can be claimed if there is such a shortage of low paid labour!

[shadowside] 15/2/2017 11:09

Maybe if you advertise those sort of jobs you get inundated by unemployables who the DWP are insisting complete multiple job applications each week or they get sanctioned.

[aleman] 15/2/2017 10:58

Shdowside - your conment seems sensible but why aren't those employers advertising vacancies if they are short of foreign workers?

[aleman] 15/2/2017 10:53

Thanks, DF. I finally got in after 70 minutes. I don't know why I could not before but my broadband keeps disconnecting from my laptop for some reason so that could be why.

The poorer trend of recent months seems to have abated a little with this report but it is still rather mixed. I note the vacancy trend is down or plateaued. It needs more data points. Again - this seems odd in light of the claimed shortage of foreign workers in 42226.


Why is everything so confusing of late and why do stockmarkets just disregard any bad news?

[shadowside] 15/2/2017 10:52

It is odd Aleman but I think we have been in a situation where cheap immigrant labour has been freely available for so long that employers in some sectors regard having to pay more than the minimum wage as somehow unthinkable. Not helped by Gordon Browns tax credit system which topped up low pay. It will take time for this psychology to change.The dismal productivity data is part of the same problem. The only sensible future for the UK lies in a higher wage/higher productivity economy with a stable population so hopefully this will help nudge us in the right direction.

[mrphil] 15/2/2017 10:51

Not sure this really says anything we don't already know but worth a read anyway.

[deanforester] 15/2/2017 10:41

Aleman, that took me to with no trouble.

Don't know what you were looking for, but the reports about labour statistics are on the DNS web site. They have made some changes and I always download EARN01, which took some finding. That and the rest of the data can be found at

About +7°C this morning, with broken cloud. Not a bad morning.

DF

[aleman] 15/2/2017 10:29

Falling wage growth doesn't make sense if there is a labour shortage and a big drop in Claimant Count. Odd.

[aleman] 15/2/2017 10:23

Can anyone else access this report? It says "This release is not yet published." for me yet others are clearly accessing it.




mel bartley ‏@melb4886 8m8 minutes ago

Including self employed in #employment stats but not in #income stats is cheating

[aleman] 15/2/2017 09:44

.Sudden large 40K+ drop in Claimant count but only 7k drop in larger ILO LFS unemployment? Weird numbers and I can't access the report . It's in the published list but says it's unpublished when I follow the link.

[mrphil] 15/2/2017 08:39

Aleman, there is this one

[aleman] 15/2/2017 08:09

No bad UK news spotted this morning. Plenty overnight in US, including disappointments from AIG, Lending Club and World Fuel. Bad news from financials seems to be becoming a theme.

Bantams seem to be slowly throwing away their play-off chances. It seems to be a repeat of McCalls last tenure where they started strongly and faded - just missing promotion and then slipping fown the division until he resigned. I don't understand why he doesn't go back to the team that started the season so strongly. The players signed since don't seem to have added anything (yet). Maybe it will improve when the cold weather abates.

A mild start to the day after a 5.2C low.

[blueliner] 15/2/2017 07:36

Morning

I was +0.18% yesterday.

A mild 7C this morning, with little variation overnight.

Two injury time goals allowed us to salvage a home draw last night. Many supporters had already left their seats so missed the fun.

[aleman] 14/2/2017 18:39

Lots of sunshine, today, if a bit watery, but pleasant nonetheless. 7.3C. Everything is starting to grow and I'm having to pick weeds and grass from the drives and paths. Lawn getting patchy growth so might need a trim soon to tidy. Crocuses and daffs forming heads so should start to see some color soon.


+0.3%.


Lots more weak US numbers today. I note Molsen Coors has US sales down 2.3% for the year and down 4.2% for the quarter. It seems consistent with a weaker Q4 and Q1 being seen in so many updates. Slowing economy or weather? There has been a lot of takover speculation in several companies recently, which might account for part of the disconnect of late between share prices and earnings.

[deanforester] 14/2/2017 18:04

I'm barely changed today, down 0.059% on the day (FTSE100 -0.142%).

Worst falls: RB. -2.1%, BA. -1.7% and CPG -1.3%.

Best rises: S32 +1.6% then LLOY and PSON, both +1.0%.

No idea why RB. fell so much. No obvious news. Suggestion that BA. fell in sympathy with Rolls Royce. Cross-contagion perhaps? Copper price having an effect.

I went to the FCI AGM this morning. Very good report from the Fund Manager, Julian Cane, who has now been in post almost 20 years, over which time the IT has kept ahead of the FTAS and the RPI most of the time. Had a good chat with two of the directors before I headed for my train back home.

+1°C first thing, +8°C when I got home. There was a layer of broken cloud.

DF

[mrphil] 14/2/2017 17:52

You have to find some way to pay the marina fees!

Been dull all day here today and I'm not sure it exceeded 8°C which felt more like 5°C with nil sunshine.

Funny day today in as much as both were down exactly the same percentage SIPP -0.05% BRCI, SSE & SCLP and the pot -0.05% RR. & SGC

The Moorside concludes this evening, Sheridan Smith is good! Also Secrets of the National Trust was interesting last week which featured Knole Park.

[shadowside] 14/2/2017 17:23

Trump and the Russian connection seems to be coming into focus. I'm surprised its taken so long given most of his NY construction was funded with Russian mafia money.

This is from a few years ago



I used to have business dealings with Mr Arifov. Picture is pretty accurate. I see he has now de-Russianed his name to Arif. Should be enough to throw the CIA off the scent!

[freddie ferret] 14/2/2017 17:18

Very warm here today for Feb, only one thin pullover on, bright strong sunshine.

On the Dow, Trumps changes to banking regulation have set a fire under US banking stocks and this may be a large part of the Dows recent rise.

For me, today was quite a good day, unlike yesterday.

DX. seems to be marking time waiting for figures or more news.

I wait with interest to see if Nuttall wins the Stoke byelection.

[shadowside] 14/2/2017 17:16

A beautiful sunny day in the garden which makes a pleasant change after the last couple of weeks. Signs of life everywhere. Lots of stuff potted on so they won't run out of space whilst I'm away.

Was puzzled by the low RPI number so had a dig round in the stats. They have a new RPI called RPIJ which they say is more comparable with other countries and just happens to be lower. The 1.8 is RPIJ. On the old basis RPI was 2.8 which is more what I expected. Hopefully my pension and index linked certs will still be linked to the old RPI although presumably there will be pressure to change.

A tad down today but still at +3.5% YTD. I think I also started last year very well and then lost ground later on. Hare and Tortoise and all that.