Rentokil Initial Share Discussion Threads

[smcni1968] 01/12/2023 11:27

Replacing management of US pest control

[smcni1968] 20/11/2023 10:40

Crawling back up

[smcni1968] 10/11/2023 14:42

Another director buy, 370 shares

[smcni1968] 06/11/2023 09:41

HSBC upgrades to BUY target 495p (was 665p)

[smcni1968] 04/11/2023 18:18

CEO £200k buyChairman £100kCFO's wife £100kAnd a couple of smaller ones recently

[forethought] 03/11/2023 17:10

Director purchases. Over £400k worth. And an insti reaching 3% threshold.Who can blame them.

[forethought] 03/11/2023 15:07

Hindsight will tell. I believe the fall to 400 had an air of capitulation about it and therefore overdone. Change of direction in the market coincided with interest rate decisions this week.

[eggbaconandbubble] 03/11/2023 11:45

Is this just a dead cat bounce or is the drop overdone?

[kash_] 26/10/2023 16:03

Would be worrying if people bought in. It's on my watch list.

[mortal1ty] 26/10/2023 12:35

Tried to warn you guys. I will let you know when the valuation is reasonable for a bond proxy with slowing organic growth.

[forethought] 26/10/2023 11:41

Circa a 1/3rd down in a week. Over reaction.

[forethought] 26/10/2023 09:27

Fallen through a support level today. Where's the floor here?

[simon666] 23/10/2023 10:50

price is still dropping after the over reaction (in my view) of the update last week.
Although there's been a couple of downgrades to target prices around 6.50, the recommendations are still a 'buy'. This must be starting to be a good entry point.

[liam1om] 20/10/2023 15:50

I guess no one listened in on the conference call then and is just blindly buying the dip.

[time_traveller] 20/10/2023 14:57

Doubled up at 448. Back in takeover/buyout territory, hopefully bounce off some support. Gross overreaction in share price IMO.

[essentialinvestor] 20/10/2023 14:50

Fenners, if you look at organic growth in the US, from the recent update,
it's currently trending below inflation. So not much growth, but still a growth rating.

[liam1om] 20/10/2023 14:38

Anyone listen in on the conference call. Looks like it didnt go down too well.

[essentialinvestor] 20/10/2023 13:58

Where they got caught out in the GFC was more on the office maintenance side.

RTO, had at one time, significant contracts for maintaining office toilets, taking care of other aspects of the office environment. That would usually involve once a
week visits.

Strong case they may have significantly overpaid for Terminix.

[fenners66] 20/10/2023 13:56

As for buying Terminix - I looked at their published accounts at the time and without explanation that I could find, their accounts were awful and the transaction looked way over priced.

I posted on another thread I believe where RTO was being discussed that there did not seem a justification for the price and I expected it would take 3 years from then for the share price to regain the same as it was prior to announcing the transaction.

I am surprised it has recovered so well up to now - but if it goes back to my 3 year (or longer) timescale for the synergies to be reflected in the share price that would be what I expected then anyway.

[fenners66] 20/10/2023 13:52

>mortal1ty

You were describing RTO as a "bond proxy"
I chose to give some relevant examples from that days RNS to show its not.

I challenged your definition of RTO the whole company being a "bond proxy " because it is not and has not been at least in the last decade or more.

Other companies ,like CSN or PHNX or IMB are more akin to bond proxies. They have models that left to their own devices will generate lots of cash and pay high dividends but the business will decline over time.

RTO is nothing like them.

Choosing instead to focus on the short term organic growth (which is still growing !) is trying to move the goalposts after I challenged you.
As for organic growth we already know that post covid bed bugs will contribute.
The Welch govt banning glue traps for rats will likely result in growth of more expensive remedies.
Population growth / density and climate change world wide will most likely add even more pests to be controlled.

So in principal any idea that RTO should move to ex-growth without acquisitions is imo completely flawed.

As predicted you tried to defend your "bond-proxy" comment ...

[netcurtains] 20/10/2023 12:09

Should be an interesting call.

[smcni1968] 20/10/2023 12:01

The company has a conference call with analysts at 1:30pm today to expand on yesterday's update

[essentialinvestor] 20/10/2023 11:50

Mortal, good post and get the point you are making.

Pest control is predominantly seen as non cyclical so that explains some
of the recent strength. Longer term they should prosper,
but RTO paid a sky high price on the very large Terminix acquisition, a deal they
did not need to do.

[smcni1968] 20/10/2023 11:37

They expect total synergies of "at least 200mm" by 2025, 60mm of which are this year only

[mortal1ty] 20/10/2023 10:21

Bonds yields directly influence valuation of stocks.

You are right you can ignore them. The market probably won't though, and will compress the valuation of Rentokil.

My point was many companies (with similar characteristics, i.e. "good companies doing well") have suffered from higher bond yields. Rentokil has not.

So relatively to other "good companies doing well", Rentokil has a much worse risk reward profile. You can see this, in its high sensitivity to slight bits of bad news. Nothing remotely bad is priced in.