Wincanton Share Discussion Threads

[s34icknote] 12/6/2020 20:40

Thanks mike 33/34p eps little debt ,We're heading back over three pound before covid !Tightly run no debt !Low pe Expect div reinstated by end of year ,Sicknote

[mikedon1946] 12/6/2020 14:45

Welcome Sicknote, I am in again, but have a backstop in case they drop again before they start moving, I think they will move and soon recover to at lease £2.25 in the shorter term where they plateaued last year

[s34icknote] 12/6/2020 13:45

In at 175 p !Happy to join you net !Sicknote

[netcurtains] 12/6/2020 08:21

Have to remember recovery starts for Transport on 15th June (shops begin to reopen) and more construction.

So one has to assume the bottom has to be around about today or sometime next week.
From 15th of June, I will expect to see "growth" figures for the economy to slowly climb back up ....
So come July (in next months economic figures we might see some small light at the end of the tunnel as freight begins to move again.

[netcurtains] 09/6/2020 09:43

...so shops reopen on MONDAY....

Will next week be a bit of a boom time for the high street...
Will WIN be able to keep pace with the pent up demand...

Lots of questions....

But sentiment must be turning towards us now..

Come on! High street opening up! 50% off (or higher) sales.
Stuff flying off shelves -... Will need to get extra stock from warehouses.
high street transport companies are potentially going to have a sort of "christmas"
boom period as the pent up demand is released.

[mikedon1946] 09/6/2020 09:31

Wincaton are so diverse Food, Ikea, Construction, I see them with bricks as all the others seem to be branded to the customer, Screwfix, M&S, Wickes, B&Q, the jobs list of vacancies shows they don,t rely on any one part of the economy.

Amazing no broker/Anayist has not got on this one, but they are relatively small and low profile.

This morning still sinking in price very slowly, but it has started as a down day, when they do become a buy for some they will go up about 10% very quickly, and the clime could be 50% looking at where the share were.

[netcurtains] 09/6/2020 08:02

Come on this looks so over sold... Got to be reasonable chance for a bounce at least (within couple of weeks). Stuff still needs to be delivered. the last time it was this low was in 2016 (four years ago)...
From that position over the next four years it 'exploded' north ....

[netcurtains] 08/6/2020 13:26

Mike: They are actively expanding. If you look at their careers page there are numerous people they are looking for. They are going for it big time!

[mikedon1946] 08/6/2020 12:39

netcurtains you are right and so cheap by recent standards

With ESL on the ropes this is one company that will benefit later this year, they made all the right moves in crisis, and the new contracts will come in addition to the renewals, 2020 will be good, 2021 may be brilliant, if you are thinking of buying get in before the AGM as I expect after that they will move.

2019 KPI's
REVENUE£1,141.5 m -2.6% (Turnover is not profit)
UNDERLYING OPERATING PROFIT £55.3 m +4.5%
UNDERLYING OPERATING PROFIT MARGIN 4.8 % +30bps
OPERATING PROFIT MARGIN, 4.8 % +100bps
NET DEBT £19.3 m -34.6%
OPERATING PROFIT £54.6 m +23.0%
UNDERLYING EARNINGS PER SHARE 33.5 p +8.8%
BASIC EARNINGS PER SHARE 34.5 p +36.9%
DIVIDEND PER SHARE 10.89 p +10.0%
PE up to about 5.37

[netcurtains] 08/6/2020 09:08

mikedon1946: Agreed.
(I know figures out of date but will be same ball park soon:)
Profit £48.60M
PE Ratio 5.23
Market cap £225M

Oversold (RSI and price)? Check
Small spread? Check
Actively traded? Check
Ripe for reasonable rise? Check

[mikedon1946] 05/6/2020 12:35

I've followed these since they were 30p a share, then they had expanded to fast and did catch a cold. Luckily they sorted out the management, that management has got rid of loss making contracts, they are now in a position to benefit from the fall out, they have lots of a grade clients. The first time I bought in they were 60p I have been in and out several times and they owe me nothing.
They are working and have taken prudent steps, the sigh of a well managed company @180 to 185 or more, they must be a buy. A lot of there work is in client branded trucks or the logistics of storage, look at last years contact most were renewal of very long term contacts. I expect that as we move to the new normal they are in a position to capitalise on others vulnerabilities, look at the most high profile business ESL and you will see why I hold my opinion.

[edmundshaw] 05/6/2020 12:00

THAT is the $50,000 question!

[lefrene] 05/6/2020 09:35

Perhaps it has more to do with 'financial engineering', ie borrowing lots at low rates to rapidly expand by leasing more vehicles and depots, and then turnover only has to drop by two or three percent and you're swiftly in trouble? It does illustrate just how little an economy has to contract to cause significant grief to the transport industry. Right now in the UK it's thought that 50% of hauliers are on the point of bankruptcy, which of course is good news for the stronger survivors to mop up cheap assets and raise their rates due to less competition. Is Wincanton one of those stronger players able to take advantage?

[edmundshaw] 05/6/2020 08:57

Is the UK logistics market comparable? Very different geographies...

[lefrene] 05/6/2020 08:54

Things in the USA trucking industry have been dire since 2018 with record bankruptcies in 2019, I wonder if the UK is mirroring this?




"In 2019, as a result of the sharp downturn in the freight business, declining mileage rates, and pressures from debt, hundreds of smaller trucking companies filed for bankruptcy. But Celadon’s chaotic collapse and bankruptcy in December that left some of its 3,000 drivers and 2,700 tractors stranded in North America marked the largest truckload-carrier bankruptcy in US history."

~

[tole] 05/6/2020 08:41

Hoping for a test of the c160 low and gap fill on the chart.

[petewy] 04/6/2020 18:14

yes I sold after the update and waiting to get back in.

[tole] 04/6/2020 13:26

Anybody watching this one?

[northernhills] 29/5/2020 13:47

Interesting to follow this for now

[petewy] 14/5/2020 10:41

Serious update. But deserving 10% dro?

[nw99] 30/3/2020 13:40

Biz doing very well here

[jeff h] 16/1/2020 17:05

Interesting to compare the last 2 Christmas activity statements:-





2019 Processed over 250,000 pallets of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products

2018 Delivered over 130,000 pallets of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) goods

2019 Delivered 110 million litres of fuel to forecourts across the country

2018 Delivered 75 million litres of fuel to forecourts around the UK

2019 Collected 14 million litres of milk from UK dairies

2018 Collected more than 15 million litres of milk

2019 Completed 4,207 shipping container journeys

2018 Delivered 3,200 shipping containers

Additional work with Wickes announced today also:-



...leaves the impression trading is going well for Wincanton.

[lefrene] 26/11/2019 14:34

The famous Mr Buffet honed his skills in the insurance industry, thank you for that insight, I hadn't considered the mind set of pension liability investors.

With scheduling one has to be flexible and recognise that as much as anything it's the time of day, day of the week, and time of year, and that's before one looks at the speed/acceleration capabilities of the vehicle.

The mighty Royal Mail use a running sheet known as a 418, which is a typical civil service type instrument designed to assist managers rather than drivers. However once you make sense of it, it becomes apparent that they expect the vehicle to proceed at maximum legal speeds at all times, and base their operations around this piece of fiction! Due to the culture of the organisation no one has challenged this obvious folly, they are perhaps waiting for AI to come along and 'discover' the stark staring obvious?

I created and trade marked the 'Ahlog', an idiot proof all hours log so that I could monitor working and rest hours of the drivers, it would give early warnings as parameters were approached. it also did the gross wages and invoices. I tried to sell it into the industry but could get no takers, even though it was a safeguard against breaching working/rest hours legislation, and also an accurate measure of employee costs on a minute by minute basis. To some extent the electronic (card type) tachographs have superceded the work/rest hours function, although it gives no early warning to assist driver utilage planning.

[edmundshaw] 26/11/2019 14:06

Good story.

I did some work in the past on cumputer programs that tried to work out good scheduling (e.g. for a big supermarket, where the destinations and routes were predictable). The algorithms were useful but not groundbreakingly optimised, just better than humans. Nowadays it should be possible to reach near-perfection theoretically. But of course, as you say, that is not really on the "critical path".

In other industries I have seen that quality is often not appreciated; quick and dirty short term target meeting usually seems to get more approval from upper management than thoughtful optimisation and long term thinking. From the investment perspective I am always wary of this.

One reason I quite like insurance & closed pension fund management as investments is that long term thinking is essential (meeting long term liabilities with long term investments, and also some good (if imperfect) constraints from regulators.

[lefrene] 26/11/2019 12:59

I once built up an employment agency of circa 200 drivers and 50 warehouse workers. I went out incognito and did all the jobs myself, I withdrew my drivers from a number of places wherever I found arrogance and dangerous stupidity in the traffic management.

Given the average intelligence and attitude of traffic clerks/managers I don't hold out much hope of AI improving things! My classic example was a faulty destination map that was highly misleading due to a missing set of traffic lights. I had pointed this out to the client and altered the map, the haughty manager made a great show of ripping up my altered map and replacing it with the misleading one. A few weeks later a truck got stuck due to the driver faithfully following the map, ie not the drivers fault. It took two days, two large cranes and £48k to extract the artic, they solved the problem by sacking the driver! and continued to issue the same map!

I could rack on, but from my copious experience AI won't do anything for haulage if there's not a change in the culture, but as it's always down to the lowest possible price, and widespread attitude that drivers are disposable, I can't see AI changing much in the real world. It will tell you things that the drivers already know, but no one listens to them.

Oddly enough Wincantons (a positive culture better than most) caused me t throw in the towel, I realised that the industry simply wasn't interested in a perfect service. Not a single accident (simple psychology training) not a single missed booking, but Wincantons lost some tacho's, blamed me for it and wouldn't pay the £68k they owed me. I did in due course get the money after breaking into their traffic office at 2am, waking up the traffic clerk and making him search behind some cabinets, and then getting a letter from him to prove where they were found.

I sold the business a few weeks after that, as I realised that the quality of my service was simply not valued, pearls before the proverbial.