Provident Financial Share Price (PFG)

Share Name	Share Symbol	Market	Type	Share ISIN	Share Description
Provident Financial Group	LSE:PFG	London	Ordinary Share	GB00B1Z4ST84	ORD 20 8/11P

	Price Change	% Change	Share Price	Bid Price	Offer Price	High Price	Low Price	Open Price	Shares Traded	Last Trade
	+14.50p	+1.65%	891.00p	889.00p	890.50p	890.50p	862.50p	878.00p	906,607	16:35:05

Industry Sector	Turnover (m)	Profit (m)	EPS - Basic	PE Ratio	Market Cap (m)
Nonequity Investment Instruments	1,183.2	343.9	181.8	4.9	1,316.69

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Provident Financial (PFG) Latest News

Provident Financial News

Date	Time	Source	Headline
18/10/2017	17:17	UKREG	Provident Financial PLC Director/PDMR Shareholding
18/10/2017	11:30	UKREG	Provident Financial PLC Holding(s) in Company
18/10/2017	08:11	ALNCF	Alliance News Flash Headline
16/10/2017	17:08	UKREG	Provident Financial PLC Holding(s) in Company
16/10/2017	15:38	ALNC	IN THE KNOW: Provident Financial Deserves Premium Rating - Numis
13/10/2017	10:43	ALNC	IN THE KNOW: Provident Rises But Analysts Mixed On Recovery Prospects
13/10/2017	10:27	UKREG	Provident Financial PLC Holding(s) in Company
13/10/2017	07:52	ALNC	TOP NEWS: Provident Develops Recovery Plan, No Dividend For 2017
13/10/2017	07:00	UKREG	Provident Financial PLC Trading Statement
11/10/2017	13:43	ALNC	IN THE KNOW: Provident FCA Investigation, Home Credit Concern Barclays

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Provident Financial Takeover Rumours

Provident Financial (PFG) Share Charts

1 Year Provident Financial Chart

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Provident Financial (PFG) Discussions and Chat

Provident Financial Forums and Chat

Date	Time	Title	Posts
19/10/2017	17:00	PFG	2,409
15/8/2017	13:25	good for a short on tonights PANORAMA?	7
06/1/2009	13:42	PROVIDENT FINANCIAL GROUP.	19
14/2/2006	17:18	TREAT THE KIDS AT EASTER WITH A PFG SHORT!	60
08/4/2005	10:24	An expanding company	13

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Provident Financial (PFG) Most Recent Trades

Trade Time	Trade Price	Trade Size	Trade Value	Trade Type
15:54:26	880.82	9,780	86,143.98	NT
15:48:55	881.37	5,764	50,802.44	NT
15:48:55	881.39	6,315	55,659.90	NT
15:47:00	891.00	2,972	26,480.52	NT
15:46:57	888.79	55,106	489,776.08	NT

View all Provident Financial trades in real-time

Provident Financial (PFG) Top Chat Posts

Date	Subject
19/10/2017 09:20	Provident Financial Daily Update: Provident Financial Group is listed in the Nonequity Investment Instruments sector of the London Stock Exchange with ticker PFG. The last closing price for Provident Financial was 876.50p. Provident Financial Group has a 4 week average price of 739p and a 12 week average price of 426.60p. The 1 year high share price is 3,284p while the 1 year low share price is currently 426.60p. There are currently 147,776,911 shares in issue and the average daily traded volume is 4,495,110 shares. The market capitalisation of Provident Financial Group is £1,316,692,277.01. Read Full Thread Reply
16/10/2017 14:57	5chipper: That was Neil Woodford's analysis after speaking to management. Albeit at a slightly lower share price... anyway will have to wait a while to find out. Wouldn't bet against a full year 2019 divi of over £1 Read Full Thread Follow Reply
13/10/2017 11:00	walbrock82: WOW! A ridiculous and stunning admission in their trading statement all at the same time (mostly their CCD division). Here are my final thoughts: Overall this looks like a tempting recovery play after “self-inflicting” their business model and causing grief and reputational damage for the firm. 2017 will be a washout, but markets are forward-thinking and I get the vibe it might recover in 2018 as the problem is fixable. So, at £8 per share, this is a stonking buy. Provident Financial won’t suffer a deposit outflow because of FCR deposit guarantee of £85k (I think). And with customer deposits surpassing £1.2bn, this protects them from short-term market borrowings. The suspension of dividend helps to conserve cash. I can see a minimum 100% upside in a years’ time if the recovery remain on course. My downside is the uncertainty of ROP fines, inconsistent improvements in CCD division (though this is unlikely) and the UK or world economy start suffering their second financial crisis. Other than that, it looks like a Buy to me. And peeking at the share price investors got the same vibe as I have. If you want to read the full analysis and other companies’ analysis, those who have released updates and results today, then click http://bit.ly/2ylr9FU Read Full Thread Follow Reply
12/10/2017 07:39	umitw: Seems like every media is releasing bad news about PFG everyday, which creates volatility in share price!2019 is far away, anything can happen from now and then! Read Full Thread Follow Reply
11/10/2017 12:25	umitw: Barclays only reduced the share price by 16p,reality is that sHare price dropped by 84p ....! Read Full Thread Follow Reply
11/10/2017 08:35	fhealey: Re my previous post. When this share price was on the way up there were very little in the way of postings on this board. Strange that now the share price is falling the posters come back (mostly full of doom and gloom). I wonder what their motives are or do I need to ask? Do not sell (or buy for that matter) on what you read on these boards! Read Full Thread Follow Reply
31/8/2017 08:44	russell250: interesting mcl - mores appoints panmure gorden as main advisor - also trading update - progressing ahead of expectations - helps that the have over 400 ex pfg loan agents - share price mcl moving up this morning - this is a medium/long hold for me Read Full Thread Follow Reply
29/8/2017 08:15	tidy 2: Share price forecastThe 10 analysts offering 12 month price targets for Provident Financial plc have a median target of 1,650.00, with a high estimate of 3,478.00 and a low estimate of 600.00. The median estimate represents a 80.13% increase from the last price of 916.00.https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/forecasts?s=PFG:LSE Read Full Thread Follow Reply
28/8/2017 08:02	glenkaz: Rns out! We at pfg are very sorry! We have sacked fat b/stard! And totally blame him for the fall in share price! His office has been professionally deep cleaned and now the board can work together with clear heads as we can concentrate one more! The smell of b o kebabs 🍔 Hotdogs rancid farts! 🗣💩 bad breath 😷 has now been totally eradicated!! We except business as normal and share prices to rise very quickly! Special thanks 🙏 has to be said to "Glenkaz" for all his hardwork fighting off short sellers! He will be awarded options of being able to sell at £14 should he wish! Many thanks mr provident. Read Full Thread Follow Reply
25/8/2017 14:21	jpjohn1: Nice to see the share price go up for you chaps, loosing over 2/3 of its share price is horrible if you have a lot of money in them. I said when it went down I thought it was oversold and by the end of the week it will get it back a bit, I have never held them but well done you chaps who bought when it was at the £4.26p Read Full Thread Follow Reply
23/8/2017 17:36	spob: Paul Scott Small Cap Value Report from yesterday Tuesday, Aug 22 2017 Good Evening, it's Paul here. Sorry my report is late today. Provident Financial (LON:PFG) Share price: 589.5p (down 66.2% today) No. shares: 148.2m Market cap: £873.6m Trading statement - this is such an interesting announcement that I feel obliged to mention it. This company is a UK sub-prime consumer lender. Its divisions include Vanquis Bank, the Consumer Credit Division (comprising Provident and Satsuma), and Moneybarn. Looking back to its 2016 results, the group made an adjusted profit of £334.1m, and paid 134.6p in dividends to shareholders. The share price was riding high, at about 3000p in late 2016. Compare that with today, at just 589.5p - that's a share price fall of about 80% this year. Its interesting how, when a share really collapses, there are often clear warning signs in previous announcements. That seems the case here. The most recent interim results were poor. They also contained worrying comments about several FCA reviews affecting the company. Also, disruption was reported from a change in the business model at the CCD - moving from self-employed, to employed operational staff. This was supposed to be a compelling change in business model. EDIT - a couple of brokers have flagged up that competitors are saying that large numbers of the best sales agents are jumping ship from PFG, to join competitors such as Morses, and NSF. This sounds ominous to me, and could mean that profits may not necessarily recover at PFG. Today's announcement has to be one of the worst profit warnings I've seen. The wheels seem to have completely come off at the CCD. This bit from today's announcement sounds awful; The rate of progress being made is too weak and the business is now falling a long way short of achieving these objectives. Collections performance and sales are both showing substantial underperformance against the comparable period in 2016. The routing and scheduling software deployed to direct the daily activities of CEMs has presented some early issues, primarily relating to the integrity of data, and the prescriptive nature of the new operating model has not allowed sufficient local autonomy to prioritise resource allocation during this period of recovery. Things don't get a lot worse than that. It sounds as if the new business model has been an unmitigated disaster. Unsurprisingly, the CEO has now gone. As a result of these problems, debtor collections have fallen a long way short; Collections performance is currently running at 57% versus 90% in 2016 and sales at some £9m per week lower than the comparative weeks in 2016. The extent of this underperformance and the elongated period of time required to return the performance of the business to acceptable levels invalidates previous guidance. The pre-exceptional loss of the business is now likely to be in a range of between £80m and £120m. It looks as if the customers are possibly taking advantage of the lender being in a shambles, to decline to repay their borrowings? This raises a big question mark over whether bad debt provisions are adequate? That's the inherent weakness with sub-prime lenders. They can report big profits for a while, then often it becomes clear that many debts have gone bad, and won't ever be collected. So a huge write-off then has to be done. That's the main reason why I would never invest in any sub-prime lender. Divisional profits - to get my head round the numbers, I've looked back at the 2016 results, and this shows the group's profitability as follows; Vanquis Bank £204.5m CCD £115.2m Moneybarn £31.1m Central costs -£16.7m As you can see, Vanquis was the biggest profit earner within the group. Interestingly, today's statement says that Vanquis is still trading alright; The trading performance of Vanquis Bank, Moneybarn and Satsuma remain in line with internal plans. Therefore I'm wondering if the problems are confined to the CCD part of the business, there could possibly be a value opportunity here? FCA investigation into ROP - this is the product from Vanquis Bank called Repayment Option Plan. New sales of this were suspended in Apr 2016. However, Vanquis is currently generating £70m in revenues from this product, which seems to have been sold between 1 April 2014 to 19 April 2016. EDIT - one broker suggests that the ROP product generates 20-25% of Vanquis's profits, this issue is of considerable significance. It's not clear what the outcome of this investigation will be. However, it sounds like there could be a risk of some kind of customer compensation liabilities, if the FCA decides that the product was flawed. Dividends - are off the table for the time being; In view of the substantial deterioration in the trading performance of the home credit business, together with the uncertainty created by the FCA's investigation at Vanquis Bank, the Board has determined that the group must protect its capital base and financial flexibility by withdrawing the interim dividend declared on 25 July 2017 and indicate that a full-year dividend is unlikely. Sounds sensible, in the circumstances. Will it go bust? That's the key question. I've looked back to the latest balance sheet, and it's actually not bad. You would expect this type of business to be groaning with bank debt. Its business model is to borrow cheaply, on a large scale, then lend very expensively, on a small scale, to people who are desperate, hence can be ripped off. The high customer default rate should in theory be more than covered by the huge profits made from customers who do repay their borrowings. In an economic downturn, customers often default en masse, and this type of business therefore often goes bust in a recession. We're not actually in a recession, although there's little doubt that household incomes are feeling the pinch somewhat right now. Interestingly, PFG had (relative to its receivables book) fairly low bank debt - a £450m syndicated bank facility. It seems to be mainly financed through taking retail deposits into Vanquis Bank - which was a larger figure of £941.2m at end Dec 2016. So Vanquis Bank looks a fairly ordinary savings & loans type of bank. Therefore, to my mind, the main risk to this group is if depositors are scared off, and withdraw their deposits. As we saw with Northern Rock, once such a bank run starts, it can't usually be stopped without a Government bailout. PFG looks much too small for a bailout (if needed), so who knows? EDIT - this risk may not be as bad as I feared. Apparently Vanquis takes term deposits (e.g. 1 -5 years). So that should limit the damage from depositors withdrawing funds. I think the key question is whether depositors can withdraw funds before the term has expired. Often that is possible, but carries an interest penalty. Therefore I think the ability of depositors to withdraw funds is an absolutely key question mark here. My opinion - this is one I'll be watching from now on. What interests me, is that the key value in the share seems to be Vanquis Bank. That doesn't seem to be affected by the problems in the CCD part of the business. Although if the FCA review goes badly, then more, potentially serious bad news could be on the way. I loathe this type of business. The way I see it, they prey on financially weak people, by offering loans to people who really shouldn't be borrowing at all - because they are poor. I have friends who have (stupidly) borrowed from Vanquis, and I ended up bailing them out, because the high interest charges compounded so rapidly, that my friends soon ended up being overwhelmed by what was initially only a small debt. So personally I have zero sympathy for shareholders here. As far as I am concerned, the losses that PFG shareholders have suffered here are a well-deserved punishment for trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the poorest people in society. I know some readers disagree with me on this, as we've discussed it here in previous reports. There are some good lessons from this situation; 1) Selling on the first profit warning is usually the best course of action, when it looks as if something serious, and structural is going wrong. Looking back, there were clear signs in Jun 2017 that something was going badly wrong at PFG, with the reorganisation of the CCD. 2) Management were clearly foolish to tamper with a previously highly profitable business model. So I'll certainly be wary in future, of any company where a big change in business model is being implemented. Do management have the skills to control, and change a business? Clearly in this case, no they didn't. 3) Regulatory risks - the FCA seem to be looking much more closely at businesses like this, which essentially rip-off the poorest consumers. So to my mind, sensible investors really should avoid any business which is over-charging the poorest part of society. The regulatory risks could blow up at any time. Who knows where & when the next mis-selling scandal will blow up? 4) Big dividend yields are often a signal from the market that something is going wrong - and those big divis may not be sustainable. So I would look very carefully indeed at any share where the divi yield is above say 6% - that seems to be roughly the cut-off point where we have to tread much more carefully. Stockopedia is showing an 8.16% forecast dividend yield as of last night, just before the profit warning. Such a figure is well into danger territory. Overall though, I think this share is probably too risky to have a punt on now, without doing a lot more research. Although I think the value in Vanquis could now be more than the entire group market cap, maybe? That depends on how much profit is derived from the ROP product, which is not disclosed in today's announcement. Also, would I really want to hold shares in an exploitative business like this? No. I see that Woodford funds own 19.9% of PFG. Another disaster for them. I do wonder how much real due diligence they're doing? If it's just a scatter-gun approach, with little original research, then investors can do that themselves, without needing a fund manager. 599c7b84d613aPFG_chart.PNG EDIT - my thanks to Clouds, who kindly flagged up Neil Woodford's blog, with his response to the PFG profit warning. He reckons it's ridiculously cheap now, and should recover. Hmmm... we all say that, don't we. Interesting to see that a top fund manager is suffering from the same behavioural biases that novice private investors are often criticised for - averaging down on losing positions. The trouble is, big funds with big positions, often can't sell, even if they want to. Plus, the moment an RNS comes out, showing a big fund manager selling, then confidence in the share slips further. It will be interesting to see whether Woodford recoups his client funds on this one, or not. It will also be interesting to see how long his blog will continue to allow comments, given how critical a lot of them are (understandably)! Read Full Thread Follow Reply

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