Rpc Share Discussion Threads

[spot1034] 24/1/2019 15:47

The price is dropping a bit - looks like the market is having doubts about this as well.

[phillis] 24/1/2019 15:33

Of course they dont

[billywhizz1] 24/1/2019 14:38

Phillips, Unilever manage it, so do She'll, .....etc, etc.

[billywhizz1] 24/1/2019 14:36

Apologies DR.SMITH,your right, I missed your post.

[phillis] 24/1/2019 13:05

Excuse
HTF can you run a worldwide business without decentralisation?

[bouleversee] 24/1/2019 13:03

So why the hurry to sell at this moment, then, at such a giveaway price?

Alister Osborne, who wrote The Times article, assures me they will be keeping on it. Hope others do likewise.

[dr_smith] 24/1/2019 12:23

billywhizz1.
Yes, "RPC Group's decentralised management structure".
it is in wording of the offer. See my post 2784. :-)

[billywhizz1] 24/1/2019 12:13

Just spoke with my Broker. Main reason for delays over the negotiation period was D/D.
Apollo were unable to satisfactorily complete the whole D/D exercise because of the fragmented nature of the accounts spread over the sprawling global accounts system they have. Not only did this cause long delays, it left a considerable element of doubt which directly translated into additional risk. I'm told that the final offer was made to factor in this additional risk. So there, in a nutshell, you have it.

[jeffian] 24/1/2019 10:38

The "general public" are investors (either directly or via funds)! It's not a question of "educating" the market, it's the market reacting to the (mis?)conceptions of the public. Plastics "bad"? Sell plastics! "Veganuary"? Sell meat producers! Brexit? Sell everything! The market isn't rational, it just reacts to the issue of the day.

Back at RPC, they needn't be on a hiding to nothing if they just focus on the issues that management can directly control - growing revenues, margins, profits and earnings per share, and the share price will eventually follow. Yes, they need to deal with the issues of 'sustainability', recycling etc because waste (not just plastic) is a genuine problem that has to be addressed, but they're not going to win the PR battle in the short term (who could, against St. David of Attenborough?!) so they have to win the long-term war by showing that they are dealing with it via deeds not words.

[bouleversee] 24/1/2019 10:16

jeffian -

We're on a hiding to nothing, then. I still think some good PR work might at least have educated those who write about stocks and influence the market. Not too worried about the general public who aren't investors.

I don't think we've heard anything from the outfit which was heavily shorting RPC recently, have we?

[sogoesit] 24/1/2019 09:36

My view is that it's the CEO Vervaat who has been pushing against large investors, right or wrong. The Chair has not stood-up to this in this recent non-competitive process.

{Using the press term "bid approaches" is disingenuous imv. These have been solicited not open.]

warik - Filtered ; same on GVC.

[dr_smith] 24/1/2019 09:35

I think the whole thing is analagous to selling a car.
Do you sell it for best price to private buyer who wants it for themselves, or "we buy any car" a middle agent who will pay at a time of your choosing but with a low ball figure, so they can make mega bucks when right buyer found.

IMO BOD likely reccomended offer as:
1) Personal motivation for financial gain
2) Having played the game for nearly half a year, presumably putting other initiatives on hold, they started the game and can't be seen to have wasted so much time, energy and loss of face with current s/h's. They burnt their bridge.

In eyes of apollo, RPC is a possible purchase. There are likely many other investment opportuities for them out there, so they will pick those with best ROCE. They are not in plastics business so not constrained in where they look for investment opportunity.

[bouleversee] 24/1/2019 09:30

Warik -

I haven't a clue what you are on about, nothing you say makes sense, and no, I don't want to hear about your other holdings. In fact, I've filtered you as I can't spare the time to read your posts. Might be a good idea if you did more reading and less writing, and probably less investing, till you understand a bit more about investing.
It's easier to lose money on the stockmarket than make it so be careful and good luck.

[jeffian] 24/1/2019 09:25

#2817,

I don't agree about Jamie Pike. I got to know him a bit when he was Chairman of Tyman (formerly Lupus Capital) and he has had some pretty high-profile Chairmanships. I always found him very approachable and amenable to shareholders' comments. However, he seems to have dropped the ball on this occasion. The trouble with these situations is that, as others have pointed out, if it goes pear-shaped there would have to be resignations from the Board (e.g. as the Kier rights issue fiasco resulted in the immediate ejection of the CEO). Other than this 'bid' debacle, I've been pretty happy with the RPC management team and it seems a pity that their hubris will likely result in wholesale changes if the offer is rejected, as I hope it will be.

[bouleversee] 24/1/2019 09:19

Jeffian - Quite a good article but Osborne seems unaware that RPC doesn't produce the sort of plastic that causes environmental problems and that they recycle other people's harmful products. He's not alone in that, however, and it strikes me that RPC would have done better to engage in some serious PR to get this widely known, including to investors, than to spend so much on buybacks. Do you think the latter achieved anything, Jeffian?

FWIW (probably not a lot) I actually sent an email to the City Editor of TT y'day asking them to do an in-depth article and draw attention to the conflicting interests of the board and shareholders and perhaps some investigative journalism as I get a bit of a whiff in my nostrils about all this. They probably would have done it anyway but it doesn't do any harm to let them know what ordinary shareholders think of the deal.

[whatsyourgame] 24/1/2019 09:16

Yes, helpful to our cause, but it's disappointing that we haven't seen more of the same from the likes of the FT, etc.
What is now needed is for SLA, as RPC's largest shareholder by some measure, to come out against the offer, which would really put its prospect of succeeding in serious doubt.

[jeffian] 24/1/2019 09:06

I'm pleased to see that those of us who think this bid is underwhelming are not alone. Besides Aviva coming out against it yesterday, some of the press comments are going our way. This from Alistair Osborne in The Times this morning -

"Plastic waste
Don’t blame Sir David Attenborough. His Blue Planet didn’t make the best investment case for plastic product engineer RPC. But the board only has itself to blame for agreeing a low-ball “final” £3.2 billion cash offer from Apollo — after four months of talks. As JP Morgan Cazenove put it, the bid “implies a sizeable discount to peer company valuations”.

At 782p a share, it lags the 806½p at which the shares closed in September when chairman Jamie Pike disclosed two bid approaches. And it was only in October 2017 that the shares were pushing £10. So no surprise 1.9 per cent shareholder Aviva is so cross — not least when chief executive Pim Vervaat can cash in £3.4 million of shares and then go to work for Apollo under new “incentivisation arrangements”: ones that may extend to finance chief Simon Kesterton.

As Aviva’s David Cumming put it, the offer “clearly underestimates future growth prospects that will now accrue to the buyer and the RPC management team”. Indeed, don’t the executive directors have some sort of conflict of interest in recommending the bid? Yes, RPC’s been up for sale for ages. But the board’s not obliged to accept a bid several drops short of the full ocean."

Quite!

[warik] 24/1/2019 08:58

Are you jeolous you got less than 1000 dont be man its okay lol

[gettingrichslow] 24/1/2019 08:13

warik, all over 1000 shares? Tell me this isn't your life savings here?

[warik] 24/1/2019 07:43

otherwise the premium nonsense is nothing but treating SH like babies showing them candies of 782 when actually it was 630.