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WTB Whitbread Plc

3,314.00
31.00 (0.94%)
28 Mar 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Type Share ISIN Share Description
Whitbread Plc LSE:WTB London Ordinary Share GB00B1KJJ408 ORD 76 122/153P
  Price Change % Change Share Price Bid Price Offer Price High Price Low Price Open Price Shares Traded Last Trade
  31.00 0.94% 3,314.00 3,333.00 3,335.00 3,357.00 3,277.00 3,292.00 652,160 16:35:11
Industry Sector Turnover Profit EPS - Basic PE Ratio Market Cap
Hotels And Motels 2.64B 278.8M 1.4465 23.04 6.42B
Whitbread Plc is listed in the Hotels And Motels sector of the London Stock Exchange with ticker WTB. The last closing price for Whitbread was 3,283p. Over the last year, Whitbread shares have traded in a share price range of 2,817.00p to 3,714.00p.

Whitbread currently has 192,736,972 shares in issue. The market capitalisation of Whitbread is £6.42 billion. Whitbread has a price to earnings ratio (PE ratio) of 23.04.

Whitbread Share Discussion Threads

Showing 1201 to 1219 of 2425 messages
Chat Pages: Latest  49  48  47  46  45  44  43  42  41  40  39  38  Older
DateSubjectAuthorDiscuss
21/5/2020
12:56
More chance of sub £22 than over £25 next week IMO. Who knows, they might do both...or neither!
typo56
21/5/2020
12:00
Typo56,
More chance of rising back to 25 quid next week I'd have thought. I've been buying WTB all morning.

miti 1000
21/5/2020
11:47
Quoting Peel Hunt?? This will be the broker that had Aston Martin at 20 quid a share a year ago??!! (now about .40p) A debt ridden private equity dog obvious to all with a pulse. I was shorting them all the way from 18 quid. Just do the opposite of brokers suggestions and you will do just fine.
porsche1945
21/5/2020
11:34
Sadly lots of cash on the balance sheet isn't cool.

It attracts private equity bidders who will promptly walk off with the cash, load it up with debt and float it off again.

It also doesn't help some of the metrics investors push you to achieve.

Using cash for buybacks raises the EPS and yield (and/or allows you to reduce dividend costs), and it provides some support for the share price, all for very little effort on the part of management.

On another matter, the FTSE annual review is on 3rd June. I think FTSE will regard this as a highly dilutive rights issue and include the value of the nil paid rights. If they don't, and WTB fall below about £22 (which they could next week), they could be out of the FTSE 100.

typo56
21/5/2020
11:32
Peel Hunt:

It doesn’t seem so long ago that Whitbread’s management team was being questioned about whether it should sell and lease back assets to release capital. Having ignored those suggestions, the group went into the Covid-19 situation with a suitably relaxed capital structure.

Whitbread, as the operator of all its sites, has been able to act decisively during the Covid-19 situation to control costs and capital spending across its network of hotels and to access available government employment cost support and financing. It has control of its whole value chain, in contrast to asset-lite hotel companies that, in some cases, have a more complex job of trying to help multiple hotel owners to optimise their positions.

Today’s raise means that Whitbread will be able to plan for the long term (ie, after Covid-19). As sites reopen it will be able to make operational decisions based on maximising market share (and the pain for competitors). In terms of expansion it will be able to acquire freehold sites (perhaps newly shaken loose) and it will be one of the few quality credits around to lease sites into which to expand. Given the shift in the real estate market it will also be well placed to negotiate lease costs down on renewal.

Whitbread (founded 1742) has credible plans to expand to 110k rooms in the UK (from 79k) and a plausible (but largely unproven) plan to expand to 60k rooms in Germany (from 3k). The scale of this growth opportunity is key to understanding the options unlocked by the rights issue. It is not about plugging a balance sheet hole and surviving, it is about enabling a leap ahead along a strategic road already mapped out by management.

Whitbread is tapping the market for equity capital in a way its smaller, fragmented and sometimes overleveraged competitors can only dream of. It is already the leading hotel company in the UK and we expect today’s raise to help it consolidate that position and to accelerate growth in Germany. We would take up rights.

----------------------------------------
Barclays View:

We believe there was already some expectation in the market of an issue and the reasons provided make sense, albeit the size is larger than we might have thought. At first glance, the guided cost and cash burn indications appear consistent with our prior expectations. We remain cautious on the hotel recovery in the near term but in the long-run we believe Whitbread should indeed be able to capitalise on the opportunities to take share from competitors.

philanderer
21/5/2020
11:05
Porsche1945

Could not agree with you more, biting incisive comments which unfortunately expose poor, no ,dire management decisions.

They got an exceptional price for Costa but then with a rush of blood to the head , squandered it in ludicrous buy-backs at an artificially high price.

Maybe a special divvy, but unless you have shares in an ISA,they have huge tax implications. They save paying out on future dividends,( what dividends?) but never work and is just to show management is ‘doing something constructive.’

You would think their brokers would have given them sound financial advice, alas no, blinded by the success of the sale just agree to everything suggested.

Lord Weinstock used to be derided for a huge balance of cash with his company GEC. On retirement clowns came in, renamed , Marconi and was bust in three years. One executive was named Dr Death for his disastrous business dealings.
Imagine if they had the cash on the balance sheet now.
You couldn’t make it up!

retsius
21/5/2020
10:31
Premier Inns are a solid,sound operation and a good value hotel option.Whether the "you can't open the windows" policy is to stop people skipping it and doing a runner who knows.Probably just cheaper to install non opening windows.Frankly,i don't think we'll stay at a Premier Inn again but that's not to fault the hotels themselves.https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4098670.html
steeplejack
21/5/2020
10:30
And I think Elliott did a good job, they got the share price up, and got half dead management moving, I wish they would take an activist stake in the whole of utterly hopeless U.K. plc.
porsche1945
21/5/2020
10:28
I disagree, it kept building more hotels when it was struggling to fill those it already had, I had 50k invested in this a year ago and one of the reasons I sold out was the over extending. That fat lump Alison Brittan ex LLoyds tells you all you need to know. Cant think why anyone would still be invested in an empty hotel chain raising capital during a pandemic in the worst hit country in Europe?? Invest elsewhere, 18 quid a share coming up.
porsche1945
21/5/2020
10:23
Porsche - On the contrary the company is very well managed - it successfully transformed from brewing to build two excellent brands. But the company is a terrible investor (buying shares back at stupid price) and was weak in caving in to activist investors - whose interests are never aligned with the company.
shieldbug
21/5/2020
09:50
I think people are itching to get back into Premier Inn. Seriously, things will come right. Because in my opinion they do a brilliant job and know their market very well.
lookagain
21/5/2020
09:48
Alliance News

Shore Capital commented: "We struggle with the magnitude of the equity raise and its dilution given the low starting debt position, liquidity and the resultant dilution. Even so, Whitbread appears well positioned to drive further market share gains in the UK."

"While no shareholder likes to have to put their hands in their pockets there is a certain logic to be had with the raising of this extra cash," said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.

philanderer
21/5/2020
09:48
Should have kept the coffee and dumped the hotels. The buyback was originally executed at an insane price, buybacks a waste of time anyway, money should have been returned to shareholders, would have at least softened the blow of covid altho most smart investors would have jumped ship before now. With the capital raise, dilution, the coke money basically gone, this has to be one of the worst managed companies in the ftse 350 and that is saying something as it’s a dire index that reflects basket case U.K. far too well, it’s no S&P.
porsche1945
21/5/2020
09:05
I think it was coincidental.I suspect the market was reacting to those rather shockingly high cash outflow figures.How those Premier Inns fare in the new environment remains to be seen.I’ve only stayed in a premier inn once.You couldn’t open the windows which was pretty irritating given we were on the coast but I guess the self-check in and check-out will be the thing going forward.Whitbread must be thanking its lucky stars that it sold Costa when it did.
steeplejack
21/5/2020
09:05
"...Each Director who is a Shareholder and is who is able to participate in the Rights Issue has confirmed his or her intention to take up in full or in part "


This motley crew are not getting another penny from me.

philanderer
21/5/2020
08:58
The dip this morning is interesting, as if market thought ex-rights?

Closing at 2,843 last night would make theoretical ex-rights 2,395. Just a coincidence I think.

typo56
21/5/2020
08:41
Yes steeplejack, it's a very common confusion because of the 'Record date'.

My understanding is this is intended to ensure holders of certificated shares receive 'provisional' allotment notices in time, before the shares go ex. If they've sold the shares between the record date and the ex date, then they should forward these allotment notices on to the buyer, so they can exercise the rights if they wish to.

typo56
21/5/2020
08:28
I notice that the Annual Report (on the whitbread website) now has a large entry for covid 19 pandemic risks, pages 57/212.

A few years ago there was a BBC tv programme called contagion which stated that the governments considered a global pandemic to be the largest risk, however I can't remember ever reading this as a risk in any uk company annual report until this year.

Seems it was all too big to see.

spacecake
21/5/2020
08:16
I am not commenting on the competence of the management, just the irony of the situation.
pimsim
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