Rtc Share Discussion Threads

[tiswas] 09/8/2021 13:37

Paid 46.5p for their share options a few weeks back, nearly 50% higher than the 32p to sell today.

You could not make it up!

[smithie6] 26/7/2021 13:32

I'm in favour of what Davidosh wrote in post 1602 in May.

that the dirs. & staff being able to exchange their options for cash looks , well, undesirable or dubious etc etc.

(I have no position, & happily so with a 25% fall today & doubts about whether the dirs. work to enrich the shareholders (with a cut for them)
or just for themselves)

======

"The idea behind share options is surely that the recipients continue to have a tangible interest in the company. If they all cash out and yet shareholders have no dividend as their reward then it is pretty clear that we are being treated as if we do not exist.

Once the directors and employees have shares they should be in the same position as the rest of the shareholders not given the privilege of a special deal to all cash out. Why does the chairman feel this is going to look right for shareholders?

Why do the recipients not want to continue holding their shares?"

[bozzy_s] 26/7/2021 12:26

This is on my list of 'horrible management' with BISI and LAS (TND almost off the list now).

Answering the above, it looks like the CEO and FD took more cash, instead of shares. 1603008 is the sum total of below:

"Andy Pendlebury, Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Sarah Dye, Group Finance Director of the Company who hold 933,749 options and 679,259 options respectively have indicated that they will accept the Cash Cancellation Offer in respect of their options"

So the CEO who owns fewer than 700k shares, worth about £220k - £280k, wouldn't even take 933k FREE shares. And he earns 2-3 times the value of his shares every year, regardless of share price performance or company performance. And doesn't even buy a token £50k or £100k per year of shares.

It's obvious that the company's management don't give a damn about the share price or shareholders - it doesn't affect them. Therefore it'd be overvalued at £1m market cap if this management remains in place.

[shanklin] 26/7/2021 11:27

Presumably that did not include any options held by directors?

[tiswas] 26/7/2021 08:56

Cancellation of employee share options

On 24 May 2021, the Group announced an offer to all employee with share options that had vested to cancel their options for a one-off cash consideration of 46.5p per option share, being the mid-market closing price on 21 May 2021, the last business day prior to the announcement. As a result 1,603,008 options were cancelled and the cash consideration was paid to the relevant employees as remuneration through the PAYE system. The total of the remuneration payments made was £0.7m plus employers NI of £0.1m.


40p to sell today!

No holding.

[boystown] 24/5/2021 19:21

"large turnover came with tiny margins " - yes - that's because it's a recruiter; they all have the same problem. They also all have "slow-paying clients" and often have really low P/Es, it's just the nature of the business.

The question is whether RTC deserve the tiny rating they have given the utilitarian nature of the staff they provide (and to whom). I would say "yes", but not to the extent the valuation reflects. They're comfortably worth more like £12m / 82pps IMO, which would still be cheap by all usual metrics.

[melton john] 24/5/2021 18:44

Always been for me a bit of a "smoke and mirrors" stock (down to my lack of experience) but I traded in and out generally at the wrong times and ended up with about £400 profit and about the same in divis so not a bad learning experience. Now, however, I read accounts and realise this large turnover came with tiny margins and no buffer for lean times as the divis distributed surplus cash. The last statement seemed like my younger days going through coat pockets and under seat cushions to fund a night out as the management increased cash by a one-off tightening up of cash flow from slow-paying clients. Sad to see women and children (shareholders) last as the lifeboats fill up.

[davidosh] 24/5/2021 15:46

The idea behind share options is surely that the recipients continue to have a tangible interest in the company. If they all cash out and yet shareholders have no dividend as their reward then it is pretty clear that we are being treated as if we do not exist.

Once the directors and employees have shares they should be in the same position as the rest of the shareholders not given the privilege of a special deal to all cash out. Why does the chairman feel this is going to look right for shareholders?

Why do the recipients not want to continue holding their shares?

[arthur_lame_stocks] 24/5/2021 11:39

I sold out of these as soon as I made a profit because of the greed of management.

[edmundshaw] 24/5/2021 10:37

So on the one hand RTC could not afford a 2.5p dividend (cost around £360k), and needed a "balance sheet improvement in preparation for the expected need to invest in business changes" (22nd Feb).

In the April trading statement it was "too early to quantify the revenues and operational profits for the full calendar year 2021".

On the other they can suddenly produce £1m for buybacks and another £1m to buy back options. Those CEO and FD options represent over 11% of the existing shares in issue (1.6million options versus 14.3 million shares).

This does not look pretty...

[mr hangman] 24/5/2021 09:14

Looks like a special dividend to long term holders is out the question

[boystown] 24/5/2021 09:06

Shanklin - are you suggesting that this is a bad idea - or a bit "iffy" - or a bit of both?

I hold.

[tresham] 24/5/2021 08:26

There won't be any shares bought back in the market because these are just options.

[shanklin] 24/5/2021 07:48

If RTC directors are as clueless about current trading as stated at the AGM in April, how are they able to state that this decision in in the best interest of shareholders?

"questionable" is IMHO an extremely charitable word to describe an ongoing pattern of behaviour. All IMHO of course.

[rivaldo] 24/5/2021 07:41

A rather confident move this morning - RTC intend commencing a buyback of up to almost 2.2m shares.

And it will additionally offer to buy back and cancel almost £1m share options at 46.5p each (mostly consisting of around 1.6m options held by the CEO and FD).

The former is certainly ambitious - perhaps there will be a larger holder or two who are sellers and can be taken out this way since day to day liquidity won't provide this level of buyback. The latter is much more questionable and is a mechanism for "providing remuneration" to management.

At the end of the day these moves will lead to much less dilution, and if the shares are currently cheap then the upside for holders has just been potentially materially increased:

[shanklin] 21/4/2021 08:10

Yes, could easily get back to 80p

[rivaldo] 21/4/2021 08:02

RTC were making 8p-9p EPS historically pre-pandemic, were paying 4p per share dividends, and haven't had to raise any money to get through the pandemic.

A sniff of that coming through again and....that's the gamble.

[shanklin] 21/4/2021 07:40

Potentially interested here but have been bitten in the past by almost all the upside, when it happens, being snaffled by the directors.

Is there any evidence that this time will be different?

[rivaldo] 21/4/2021 07:34

Today's AGM statement is somewhat optimistic and augurs well, though hardly enough to send the shares spiralling upwards :o))

The main business of provision of contract staff to the infrastructure and railway transportation sectors and internationally is doing pretty well, whilst recruitment and smart-meter installation has now picked up. The hotel and conference centre will also start to recover now lockdown is easing. There's no guidance for this year yet.

Last year RTC made 4.7p EPS, whilst pre-pandemic forecasts for 2021 were 11.9p EPS. If RTC can show decent progress from last year's 4.7p EPS - especially with decent net cash against the £4.2m m/cap - then there should be reasonable upside at some point. It's just a question of patience until then:

[3800] 14/4/2021 08:08

I wonder if we will get a trading update this April? We usually do

[davidosh] 13/4/2021 23:10

This delay means the support services needed and provided by RTC are going to be required for another six months at least...

[rivaldo] 16/3/2021 08:32

A 10k buy this morning and another move up. Bouncing nicely now.

[davidosh] 08/3/2021 16:23

As you say....Upward movement at last.

[rivaldo] 08/3/2021 15:18

Nice move up :o))

I wonder if it's anything to do with this good news for RTC's Ganymede today. The comments about the boom in provision of rail worker demand are perhaps even more important than the contract win itself:



Extract:

"Coleg y Cymoedd on track to deliver next generation of rail engineers
By Rhys Gregory 7 hours ago

One of the largest further education colleges in South Wales has teamed up with leading rail industry names to train the next generation of skilled railway workers and create hundreds of apprenticeships.

Coleg y Cymoedd has partnered up with Protech Rail Engineering – a Treforest-based firm which provides engineering and construction expertise to the UK industry – to create the ‘Protech Training Academy’. The programme is designed to equip the country’s future workforce with the skills and experience needed to meet future demand.

The collaboration will also see Protech Training Academy team up with industry partner Ganymede, a national supplier of rail industry personnel, who will be the first employer to engage with the partnership, providing apprenticeships to learners on the programme. The company has recruited an initial 11 apprentices and is expecting to take on up to 100 over the next two years with opportunities for full time employment following their apprenticeships.

Demand for skilled workers in the rail industry is set to soar following the announcement of multiple major rail infrastructure projects across the UK, as well as concerns over the loss of skills faced by the industry over the next few years due to its aging workforce. Estimates suggests that 28% of current rail industry employees are aged over 50 and City & Guilds predicts that an additional 120,000 people will be required in the sector over the next five to ten years to fulfil the requirements of upcoming schemes.

In Wales alone, Transport for Wales has revealed a ten-year programme of major investments to improve the country’s transport network including three quarters of a billion pounds to electrify the core valley lines as part of the South Wales metro project, £800m to develop new faster, greener trains as well as £194m to improve existing stations and create five brand new stations.

etc"

[edmundshaw] 22/2/2021 08:33

rivaldo, quoting, " It is unlikely that we will be recommending a return to payments in the near future."

Sensible to maintain maximum cash flexibility until conditions are clarified, I am not expecting an interim at this stage, as there are still unknowns with the government pandemic exit strategy and possible (IMO probably not serious) unknowns with the impact of COVID variants, and the company seems concerned about the effects of wider economic changes (it has specific exposures to the oil sector for example).

More importantly, the group now has no term debt and has enhanced total equity for investors in difficult trading conditions.

I am rather positive about the flexible strategy and operations that RTC has evidenced, which IMO augurs well for the future here.