Rpc Share Discussion Threads

[phillis] 23/7/2018 12:54

Anyway if the story has any legs then RPC management would have to buck up their ideas re cash generation!

[beckers2008] 23/7/2018 11:42

Go careful guys, Kintbury Capital and Blackrock both increased their short positions on the 18th July, total amount of stock controlled by the shorts now increased to 8.59%

[beckers2008] 23/7/2018 11:25

Hi Jeffian,

I wish I could have as much exposure and ramp my stocks as Guy Douthwaite of Standard has done, us poor PI's take our winners and losers, with no back up if things go wrong. Legalised ramping using his press friends, disgraceful.

Good luck here to all holders.

[jeffian] 23/7/2018 10:58

Well it hasn't done any harm!

[jeffian] 22/7/2018 19:23

There's a front-page story in today's Sunday Telegraph Business Section saying that RPC may now be 'in play'.



I don't know if non-subscribers can read it but it basically says that in a fast-consolidating industry, the current share price weakness will draw the attention of bidders and particularly Private Equity. They also say that the Chairman's rather Delphic remarks ("However, pressure on the company's market valuation and differing investor views on the appropriate level of leverage is constraining the Group's ability to pursue some attractive opportunities for growth and your Board is working to resolve this.") could be interpreted as inviting such interest.

It will be interesting to see if there is any share price reaction tomorrow.

[bouleversee] 20/7/2018 12:25

Thanks, Nocton. I'll give it a go. Please excuse a not very computer literate 81yr old lady.

I take it nobody on this board attended the AGM.

[nocton] 20/7/2018 08:33

"I should also have liked to read the Annual Report and study the directors remunerations and LTIPs but found the print of the photocopied version printed on their website impossible to read."
bouleversee, it's not a 'photocopy'. You can blow it up on screen to any size you want - Ctrl and + to make larger, Ctrl and - to make smaller, or you can download as pdf and again enlarge on screen or print out whichever pages are of interest to you.

[mauricemonkey] 19/7/2018 20:26

I respect your view Beckers :) well put bear case.

Good luck all

[beckers2008] 19/7/2018 19:16

MM,

Wrong choice of word, thing is, to make any acquisitions would be expensive given the current share price So best we can expect is 2% organic growth for this year, down from 2.8% last year. 2020 might be tricky.
Cash flow and core sales are now priority, not to mention the 70%+ gearing.
According to 2018 year end accounts;
Only £186m in securities & cash and only £10m Cash.
£167.7m in debt must be paid back within 12 months and then a bumper £668.6m debt must be paid back within 2 years!
So it will take a while for any benefits handed out to long suffering shareholders, RPC spent £100m on share buybacks and the share price went down!
Sentiment is order of the day here and with 11 fund managers shorting RPC with 8.45% of the stock, the public's hatred of plastic waste and more Blue Planet programmes to come, I can't see sentiment changing anytime soon.

[bouleversee] 19/7/2018 19:01

I should have liked to go to the AGM and asked some awkward questions but not possible for me. I should also have liked to read the Annual Report and study the directors remunerations and LTIPs but found the print of the photocopied version printed on their website impossible to read. I have asked for a printed copy but too late in the day. It annoys me that it now requires such an effort to get information and vote.

I now have 2880 shares, which for me is a large holding, and with so much shorting and financial journalists saying "sell" and the recovery in the share price not being sustained, I am starting to worry that my confidence might possibly be misplaced. Why are they not making bigger profits and why is the market so down on them?

[mauricemonkey] 19/7/2018 18:31

How are the board admitting defeat?
Slight increase in organic sales, reduced cost base, a decent divi and a low multiple all look good to me. Just a bit out of fashion at the moment.
The share price volatility is presumably affecting acquisitions as I believe they usually offer shares in lieu of cash which was probably attractive to sellers when the price was rising, with the recent fall I should imagine potential targets will be wanting hard cash rather than shares.
I’m keeping hold for now.

[beckers2008] 19/7/2018 12:01

With this stock being shorted to the tune of over 8%, time to move on, the BOD are admitting defeat, woeful performance.

[bouleversee] 19/7/2018 09:56

As has Tempus in The Times but I shall also continue to hold.

[jeffian] 19/7/2018 08:19

Daily Telegraph's 'Questor' has put a sell on this today. Personally, I think the fundamentals are all good and I shall be holding.

[phillis] 18/7/2018 09:21

Cant see a pause from acquisitions doing any harm
nor indeed the possibility of cash being returned to shareholders

[dr_smith] 18/7/2018 09:14

Some investors happy with continued expansion via acquisition, with finance costs/leverage offset by higher returns from acquisitions, but others want to see period of consolidation to evidence core business is expanding with organic growth, not merely a poor core masked by the endless exceptional costs for acquissitions.
Between frying pan and fire they have to find a middle ground, hence the short term strategy. IMO.

[phillis] 18/7/2018 09:01

reluctantly

[peter27] 18/7/2018 08:53

Surely he means they will reduce leverage.

[prokartace] 18/7/2018 08:30

Indeed, very cryptic

[phillis] 18/7/2018 07:59

Chairman's last para a bit strange

[prokartace] 17/7/2018 10:13

Good rally and now filled the gap since the results. As you can see from the chart this might trigger a change in the direction of the share price.

free stock charts from uk.advfn.com

[useless23] 06/7/2018 18:32

Look at the volume in the last 30 mins of trading

[jeffian] 27/6/2018 15:55

It was't mentioned on here but there was quite a long piece on RPC in Ian Cowie's 'Personal Account' column in the Money section of last week's Sunday Times.



You may not be able to read the whole thing if you're not a subscriber. Nothing that we don't already know but Cowie concludes that the anti-plastic mood should not impact RPC in the short term, as it does not produce any of the proscribed products, and may be to its long-term advantage due to its research and development into sustainable/biodegradable plastics. He's bought it as it is cheap (PER and dividend) compared to its peer group.

One thing of which I was not aware was that the 'accounting practices' which Northern Trust so disliked are being considered by the accounting standards regulator ("there are worries about the way this is presented, and confirmation that RPC is corresponding with the accounting standards regulator knocked a further 6% off the shares on Tuesday"). Cowie concludes that having Standard Life, AXA and Black Rock at the head of the shareholder register should reassure that there is nothing 'dodgy' going on.

[bouleversee] 27/6/2018 15:32

On the other hand, I understand RPC are now over 8% shorted, though I can't understand why. I also have quite a large holding, by my standards.