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My problem children

For discussion of the practicalities of setting up and operating income-portfolios which follow the HYP Group Guidelines. READ Guidelines before posting
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csearle
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My problem children

#419331

Postby csearle » June 13th, 2021, 8:14 pm

EPIC	My choice	Date	        Comment
BT-A.L Veto 13/05/2021 Restarting at 7.7p per share in 2021/22
CNA.L Veto 10/05/2021 The Company is due to release its 2021 Interim Results on 22 July 2021.
HSBA.L 29/04/2021 Paid a final
LLOY.L 25/05/2021 Paid a final
MARS.L Veto 19/05/2021 No dividends to be paid in respect of financial year 2021.
MRW.L 28/06/2021 Paid a final
MTO.L Veto 10/06/2021 The Board does not recommend the payment of a final dividend for FY21.
RMG.L 06/09/2021 Paid a final
SGC.L Veto 09/12/2020 We are not planning an interim dividend in respect of the six months ended 31 Oct. 2020.
SMDS.L 04/05/2021 Paid an interim

So these guys are on the naughty step.

All the ones marked Veto I am bypassing in the rankings when I do my top-ups.

BT will be un-veto'd if it comes good on its hint of a dividend. The remainder I'm not too sure about. I haven't been harsh because of the pandemic but I think maybe Mitie and Centrica may be stretching my goodwill a bit too far now. As a tinkerer they cannot rely on my not moving on¹.

Chris
¹ I bet they are very worried about this.

88V8
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Re: My problem children

#419639

Postby 88V8 » June 15th, 2021, 11:29 am

Mmmm,
BT - huge pensions gap
CNA - I'd dump them if they weren't so far underwater... they seemed a good idea, once
LLOY & HSBC - the glory days of banking are gone.
MARS - possible takeover target, SP will rise when restrictions are lifted, hang on
MRW - were a Luni 'sturdy' once, I hold, just about
SMDS - will continue to hold
No view on the others.

How to replace those you delete, that is the question.

V8

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Re: My problem children

#419734

Postby TUK020 » June 15th, 2021, 4:54 pm

I hold BT, HSBA, MARS, SMDS of this lot.
All of which I hope will recover further.

My list of problem children are all young adults now. :-)

Dod101
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Re: My problem children

#419741

Postby Dod101 » June 15th, 2021, 5:27 pm

Of the op's list I hold only HSBC (HSBA in the list) I think it will come good again as it is finally getting itself reorganised. I expect it to pay pay an interim dividend for this year. I have held Centrica and BT but long since got rid of them and have no intention of holding them again. I sold Lloyds rather later during the financial crisis in 2009 than I should have but again with its virtual 100% exposure to the UK I am not interested in it.

Time for a clear out I'd say.

Dod

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Re: My problem children

#419841

Postby idpickering » June 16th, 2021, 6:12 am

Dod101 wrote:Of the op's list I hold only HSBC (HSBA in the list) I think it will come good again as it is finally getting itself reorganised. I expect it to pay pay an interim dividend for this year. I have held Centrica and BT but long since got rid of them and have no intention of holding them again. I sold Lloyds rather later during the financial crisis in 2009 than I should have but again with its virtual 100% exposure to the UK I am not interested in it.

Time for a clear out I'd say.

Dod


I agree with your sentiments Dod, regarding the shares themselves, even HSBC, However, I don't hold any of those listed in the OP anymore. I agree with your later comment re a clear out too, but some hereabouts might drag you over the coals should you do so. But let's not digress.

Ian.

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Re: My problem children

#419869

Postby moorfield » June 16th, 2021, 9:04 am

csearle wrote:So these guys are on the naughty step.

All the ones marked Veto I am bypassing in the rankings when I do my top-ups.

BT will be un-veto'd if it comes good on its hint of a dividend. The remainder I'm not too sure about. I haven't been harsh because of the pandemic but I think maybe Mitie and Centrica may be stretching my goodwill a bit too far now. As a tinkerer they cannot rely on my not moving on¹.

Chris


Chris, have you forecast what your overall portfolio income is over the next twelve months (assuming holdings pay/don't pay the same again), and does that exceed what you are expecting or needing? If it does then I suggest you don't need to do anything, as counterintuitive as that may seem. If it doesn't then I agree time for a change.


88V8 wrote:
How to replace those you delete, that is the question.

V8


Just as you would if starting a new HYP today: buy the fifteen highest yielding shares from the FTSE100, or top up those you already hold, to one fifteenth of current portfolio value including cash just realised from any sales.

FWIW this is the First XV I would buy today, going "back to basics" and selecting from the FTSE100, an overall yield of ~5.3%. No need for anything else, is there?

IMB
MNG
PHNX
VOD
GSK
POLY
RIO
NG.
SSE
BP.
BA.
UU.
SBRY
ADM
ULVR

Gengulphus
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Re: My problem children

#419879

Postby Gengulphus » June 16th, 2021, 10:01 am

csearle wrote:
EPIC	My choice	Date	        Comment
BT-A.L Veto 13/05/2021 Restarting at 7.7p per share in 2021/22
CNA.L Veto 10/05/2021 The Company is due to release its 2021 Interim Results on 22 July 2021.
HSBA.L 29/04/2021 Paid a final
LLOY.L 25/05/2021 Paid a final
MARS.L Veto 19/05/2021 No dividends to be paid in respect of financial year 2021.
MRW.L 28/06/2021 Paid a final
MTO.L Veto 10/06/2021 The Board does not recommend the payment of a final dividend for FY21.
RMG.L 06/09/2021 Paid a final
SGC.L Veto 09/12/2020 We are not planning an interim dividend in respect of the six months ended 31 Oct. 2020.
SMDS.L 04/05/2021 Paid an interim

I'm a bit surprised about the inclusion of two of those companies as 'problem children':

* Morrisons has been behaving itself well since 2016, including paying significant specials in the last four years. Admittedly it threw a bad tantrum between 2015 and 2016, but (assuming you've had it that long) you clearly gave it another chance back then, and IMHO it's shown itself to be one of the ones that deserved another chance with a dividend CAGR in the 5 years since 2016 of 7.4% (or 17.4% if you include the special). I know its capital performance has been lacklustre, and its dividend yield is OK but nothing special at 4.0% (historical, excluding the special), but it would seem rather odd to have given it another chance back then and not continue to do so now.

* DS Smith's problems seem quite mild to me: eyeballing a share price chart, its share price was about the same at the end of 2020 as it was at the start, and it's skipped a year's dividends, but resumed with an interim that's cut from the pre-pandemic level but a considerably smaller cut (-23%) than many HYP companies' cuts. Its most recent trading statement says:

Trading overview

Trading in the second half of the year has, through all parts of the business in the UK, Europe and the US, continued to build positively on the trends and momentum which we reported on 3 March this year. Higher sales volumes, initial price recovery and an enhanced performance from our US business have been better than expected and, whilst input costs have increased materially in the second half, our financial performance for the full year ended 30 April 2021 is anticipated to be line with our expectations.
...
Cash flow and input costs

Cash generation continues to be a key area of focus, and we expect a continued strong free cashflow performance, driven by a significant working capital inflow, with cash conversion of over 100 per cent and a continued reduction in our net debt.

Input costs, including OCC, have increased significantly during the second half of the financial year. This is due to a combination of high levels of demand and lower availability of raw materials due to the Covid-19 impact on the market, which has also resulted in substantially higher paper prices. However, we are making good progress in recovering these higher costs through increased packaging prices, with the usual lag, as we move into our next financial year.

The company has clearly suffered shocks from the pandemic, some of them timing-related rather than intrinsic to the business (the mention of the "usual lag" seems from earlier RNSes to be that their contracts allow/require them to adjust their sale prices in line with their paper costs, but there's a delay - so they temporarily make smaller profits when paper prices rise, and temporarily make larger profits when paper prices fall). But the comments generally seem positive to me - especially the free cashflow performance and reduction in net debt, at a time that there seems to be more talk in the news about inflation rising and interest rates eventually rising in consequence. I am however very uncertain about how fast net debt is falling, as the company's interim results said "The Group's net debt position decreased by £14 million to £2,087 million (30 April 2020: £2,101 million; 31 October 2019: £2,444 million), due to the increased free cash flow for the period, offset by payments made for the 10% settlement of the Interstate put option of £82 million, £19 million of adjusting items and foreign exchange, fair value and other non-cash movements of £80 million." A fall of £343m in one half year followed by a fall of £14m in the next half year leaves me very uncertain whether the fall is significant or not!

Overall, DS Smith strikes me more as a child to be kept under observation than a problem child. And on the subject of observing it, it's due to release its final results Tuesday next week (22nd June), and I think we'll get a much better picture of where the company is then, especially with regard to debt reduction and what it's doing with its dividend. In particular, the 23% cut to the interim compared with pre-pandemic levels might indicate that it thinks it needs a similar-sized cut to dividends going forward, or might indicate that the directors were still being cautious with cash in view of Covid uncertainties (remember that the interim was declared in early December, when there were far more uncertainties about the extent of vaccination success than there are now). The level of final dividend declared on Tuesday should hopefully make it clearer which of those indications is the right one.

Gengulphus

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Re: My problem children

#419925

Postby Gengulphus » June 16th, 2021, 11:52 am

moorfield wrote:FWIW this is the First XV I would buy today, going "back to basics" and selecting from the FTSE100, an overall yield of ~5.3%. No need for anything else, is there?

IMB
MNG
PHNX
VOD
GSK
POLY
RIO
NG.
SSE
BP.
BA.
UU.
SBRY
ADM
ULVR

My sector classification of those:

Tobacco: IMB
Asset Manager: MNG
Insurance: PHNX, ADM
Telecoms: VOD
Pharmaceuticals: GSK
Miners: POLY, RIO
Utilities: NG., SSE, UU.
Oil & Gas Producer: BP.
Defence & Aerospace: BA.
Supermarket: SBRY
Food Producer: ULVR

The exact sector division of MNG, PHNX and ADM is open to question in that, but insurance and asset management are too closely related to each other for me to regard it as OK for them to count as more than two sectors in a 15-share HYP. And while the three utilities might reasonably be divided among two sectors (e.g. NG. and SSE as Energy Utilities and UU. as a Water Utility), they are another quite big concentration of risk - especially political/regulatory risk.

Going back to "basics" as expressed in https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210 ... 01106c.htm and https://web.archive.org/web/20140528041 ... 01113c.htm, the former said "Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors. I would do it by ranking the shares in the index by descending yield, then work down the list choosing one from each sector, but doing a bit of research on each potential candidate." and the latter promptly stretched the "choosing one from each sector" part of that by choosing two insurers, two banks and two miners. It came up with an IMHO semi-convincing story for regarding the two insurers as being in two different sectors, an IMHO rather contrived story for regarding the two banks as being in two different sectors, and didn't even bother trying to come up with a story about regarding the two miners as being in two different sectors... About the most charitable explanation of that that I can see is that the "choosing one from each sector" part is an ideal, with some sector duplication being acceptable as a recognition that life isn't ideal.

Personally, I regard HYP1's level of sector duplication as stretching the limits of what ought to be regarded as acceptable in a 15-share HYP and possibly breaking them - certainly the ~37% reduction in dividend income produced by HYP1 in 2009, back to ~92% of its starting level in 2001, is a cautionary tale for anyone who is looking to rely on a HYP's income, and the risk concentration in banks and insurers was a major factor in that. And since then, pyad has shifted from suggesting equal capital investment per company to equal capital investment per sector (so that if you duplicate a sector, you only put half as much into each of the two companies), e.g. in the HYP he selected on Stockopedia and that IanTHughes started tracking in viewtopic.php?p=214586#p214586 (link chosen to point to the final portfolio listing in that long thread - details can be verified from the rest of the thread, but don't try it unless you have a good deal of spare time!).

Your "back to basics" HYP seems to me to have about as much sector duplication as HYP1 did, or if anything a bit more... I'd recommend trying to make it rather more diversified, even if that involves accepting a slightly lower yield.

Gengulphus

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Re: My problem children

#419938

Postby moorfield » June 16th, 2021, 12:25 pm

Gengulphus wrote:My sector classification of those:

Tobacco: IMB
Asset Manager: MNG
Insurance: PHNX, ADM
Telecoms: VOD
Pharmaceuticals: GSK
Miners: POLY, RIO
Utilities: NG., SSE, UU.
Oil & Gas Producer: BP.
Defence & Aerospace: BA.
Supermarket: SBRY
Food Producer: ULVR

Your "back to basics" HYP seems to me to have about as much sector duplication as HYP1 did, or if anything a bit more... I'd recommend trying to make it rather more diversified, even if that involves accepting a slightly lower yield.




My industry classification of those:

Consumer Staples (20%): IMB, SBRY, ULVR
Financials (20%): MNG, PHNX, ADM
Telecommunications (7%): VOD
Health Care (7%): GSK
Basic Materials (13%): POLY, RIO
Utilities (20%): NG., SSE, UU.
Energy (7%): BP.
Industrials (7%): BA.

Here I follow the advice of Philip Carret ...
http://www.investingbythebooks.com/colu ... lip-carret

Never hold fewer than ten different securities covering five different fields of business.


... where I've interpreted "fields of business" to mean "ICB industry classification", so all things being equal I should never be holding more than 20% in one industry. Personally I'm comfortable not sweating the small stuff of sector classifications, I'm not convinced obsessing about this makes a big difference. I do pay some attention to maximum weight by industry - actually my own portfolio is 26% Financials currently, I'm not even too worried about that, but it does mean however that I won't be topping up any more for a long time whilst overweight.

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Re: My problem children

#419970

Postby Gengulphus » June 16th, 2021, 2:07 pm

moorfield wrote:My industry classification of those:

Consumer Staples (20%): IMB, SBRY, ULVR
Financials (20%): MNG, PHNX, ADM
Telecommunications (7%): VOD
Health Care (7%): GSK
Basic Materials (13%): POLY, RIO
Utilities (20%): NG., SSE, UU.
Energy (7%): BP.
Industrials (7%): BA.

Here I follow the advice of Philip Carret ...
http://www.investingbythebooks.com/colu ... lip-carret

Never hold fewer than ten different securities covering five different fields of business.

... where I've interpreted "fields of business" to mean "ICB industry classification", so all things being equal I should never be holding more than 20% in one industry. Personally I'm comfortable not sweating the small stuff of sector classifications, I'm not convinced obsessing about this makes a big difference. I do pay some attention to maximum weight by industry - actually my own portfolio is 26% Financials currently, I'm not even too worried about that, but it does mean however that I won't be topping up any more for a long time whilst overweight.

Fair enough - except that by choosing to use Philip Caret's advice, you're following your own preferences (as you made clear back in viewtopic.php?p=88151#p88151), rather than producing a '"back to basics" HYP' as one would expect that phrase to be understood in this thread.

Gengulphus

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Re: My problem children

#419990

Postby moorfield » June 16th, 2021, 3:23 pm

Gengulphus wrote:Going back to "basics" as expressed in https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210 ... 01106c.htm and https://web.archive.org/web/20140528041 ... 01113c.htm, the former said "Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors. I would do it by ranking the shares in the index by descending yield, then work down the list choosing one from each sector, but doing a bit of research on each potential candidate."

viewtopic.php?p=88151#p88151), rather than producing a '"back to basics" HYP' as one would expect that phrase to be understood in this thread.



Other than writing "Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors" SB isn't explicit on sector diversification or classification in those articles (and has left it to us to debate), so I do think that selection can claim to be "back to basics". For sake of argument I could have replaced BA. for HSBA, ie. four Financials (27%) - Asset Manager, Life Insurer, Non Life Insurer and Bank - strictly speaking still "spreading the holdings around sectors" but perhaps not quite what SB had in mind in a portfolio of fifteen.

I've appropriated Carret's quote because (I feel) it is more helpful on diversification by suggesting a broader weight limit. Actually it is rather difficult in practice to come up with more than 3 selections/industry from the FTSE100 so is arguably superfluous anyway, but it can be useful as portfolios evolve in suggesting where not to top up.

csearle
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Re: My problem children

#420033

Postby csearle » June 16th, 2021, 7:12 pm

Just home from work. Catching up on all this. I'll replace this post with my responses in due course. Thanks already though. C.

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Re: My problem children

#420039

Postby tjh290633 » June 16th, 2021, 7:29 pm

For interest I just looked at one share for each of my 16 sectors (my interpretation), and the top 15 ranked by yield:

Epic   Sector          Yield   Alt       
IMB Tobacco 8.63% BATS
RIO Mining 6.78% BHP, S32
LGEN Insurance 6.25% AV., ADM
VOD Telecom 6.04% BT.A
GSK Pharma 5.57% AZN
NG. Utilities 5.28% SSE, UU.
IGG Leisure 4.99% DGE, MARS
TW. Housebuilding 4.93%
BP. Oil 4.69% RDSB
BA. Engineering 4.37% IMI
TATE Food 3.98% ULVR, RKT
TSCO Retail 3.98% KGF, MKS
PHP Property 3.93% BLND, SGRO
SMDS Service 2.73% CPG
PSON Media 2.26%
LLOY Finance 1.20%

Ave. Yield 4.73%

Epic Sector Yield
IMB Tobacco 8.63%
BATS Tobacco 7.63% Duplicate
RIO Mining 6.78%
LGEN Insurance 6.25%
VOD Telecom 6.04%
GSK Pharma 5.57%
BHP Mining 5.41% Duplicate
NG. Utilities 5.28%
SSE Utilities 5.13% Duplicate
IGG Leisure 4.99%
AV. Insurance 4.97% Duplicate
TW. Housebuilding 4.93%
ADM Insurance 4.83% Duplicate
BP. Oil 4.69%
BA. Engineering 4.37%

Ave. Yield 5.70%

As you can see, two tobaccos, two miners, two utilities and three insurers, in 11 sectors. That is the top 15 from a 36 share portfolio. I always argue that the utilities and insurers are in different sectors of their classifications.

TJH

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Re: My problem children

#420085

Postby TUK020 » June 17th, 2021, 7:28 am

If I may play devil's advocate:

Having multiple insurance plays, but nothing in semiconductor manufacturing, software engineering, social networking, online delivery feels like having diversity of deckchairs on a single liner, but not having diversity across multiple liners.

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Re: My problem children

#420088

Postby csearle » June 17th, 2021, 7:58 am

TUK020 wrote:If I may play devil's advocate:

Having multiple insurance plays, but nothing in semiconductor manufacturing, software engineering, social networking, online delivery feels like having diversity of deckchairs on a single liner, but not having diversity across multiple liners.
I think that if the dividend yield and size of deckchair manufacturers were to put them in the frame for selection then they would be a welcome diversification; as it is diversification is a secondary concern.

Chris

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Re: My problem children

#421382

Postby Gengulphus » June 22nd, 2021, 12:31 pm

Gengulphus wrote:* DS Smith's problems seem quite mild to me: eyeballing a share price chart, its share price was about the same at the end of 2020 as it was at the start, and it's skipped a year's dividends, but resumed with an interim that's cut from the pre-pandemic level but a considerably smaller cut (-23%) than many HYP companies' cuts. Its most recent trading statement says:

Trading overview

Trading in the second half of the year has, through all parts of the business in the UK, Europe and the US, continued to build positively on the trends and momentum which we reported on 3 March this year. Higher sales volumes, initial price recovery and an enhanced performance from our US business have been better than expected and, whilst input costs have increased materially in the second half, our financial performance for the full year ended 30 April 2021 is anticipated to be line with our expectations.
...
Cash flow and input costs

Cash generation continues to be a key area of focus, and we expect a continued strong free cashflow performance, driven by a significant working capital inflow, with cash conversion of over 100 per cent and a continued reduction in our net debt.

Input costs, including OCC, have increased significantly during the second half of the financial year. This is due to a combination of high levels of demand and lower availability of raw materials due to the Covid-19 impact on the market, which has also resulted in substantially higher paper prices. However, we are making good progress in recovering these higher costs through increased packaging prices, with the usual lag, as we move into our next financial year.

The company has clearly suffered shocks from the pandemic, some of them timing-related rather than intrinsic to the business (the mention of the "usual lag" seems from earlier RNSes to be that their contracts allow/require them to adjust their sale prices in line with their paper costs, but there's a delay - so they temporarily make smaller profits when paper prices rise, and temporarily make larger profits when paper prices fall). But the comments generally seem positive to me - especially the free cashflow performance and reduction in net debt, at a time that there seems to be more talk in the news about inflation rising and interest rates eventually rising in consequence. I am however very uncertain about how fast net debt is falling, as the company's interim results said "The Group's net debt position decreased by £14 million to £2,087 million (30 April 2020: £2,101 million; 31 October 2019: £2,444 million), due to the increased free cash flow for the period, offset by payments made for the 10% settlement of the Interstate put option of £82 million, £19 million of adjusting items and foreign exchange, fair value and other non-cash movements of £80 million." A fall of £343m in one half year followed by a fall of £14m in the next half year leaves me very uncertain whether the fall is significant or not!

Overall, DS Smith strikes me more as a child to be kept under observation than a problem child. And on the subject of observing it, it's due to release its final results Tuesday next week (22nd June), and I think we'll get a much better picture of where the company is then, especially with regard to debt reduction and what it's doing with its dividend. In particular, the 23% cut to the interim compared with pre-pandemic levels might indicate that it thinks it needs a similar-sized cut to dividends going forward, or might indicate that the directors were still being cautious with cash in view of Covid uncertainties (remember that the interim was declared in early December, when there were far more uncertainties about the extent of vaccination success than there are now). The level of final dividend declared on Tuesday should hopefully make it clearer which of those indications is the right one.

To update those comments following this morning's final results, on net debt they say:

Net debt as at 30 April 2021 was £1,795 million (30 April 2020: £2,101 million), with the reduction principally due to excellent cash management resulting in free cash flow of £486 million. Working capital performance was extremely good with both a strong focus in the business and the benefit of rising input costs such as paper and OCC on our payables. Some of this commodity related payables benefit may reverse in 2021/22. Cash generated from operations before adjusting cash items of £943 million was used to invest in net capex of £323 million, an 11 per cent reduction on the prior year reflecting capex constraints put in place at the start of the year and eased later in the year. Net debt/EBITDA (calculated in accordance with our banking covenant requirements) is 2.2 times (2019/20: 2.1 times), substantially below our banking covenant of 3.75 times. The Group remains fully committed to its investment grade credit rating.

So my concern about debt reduction being pretty insignificant in the first half has turned out to be a temporary effect. Or possibly a seasonal one - but an interview I heard on Radio 4 this morning suggests to me that a temporary effect due to the pandemic is more likely. The impression I got from that it was that cardboard box sales for deliveries to consumers rose as a result of the pandemic, but cardboard box sales to industrial users fell off a cliff as factories shut down and so overall sales dropped - which does sound like a plausible contributing factor to the poor interim results back in December, and for instance provides at least a partial resolution of Arborbridge's comment in viewtopic.php?p=364659#p364659 that it was "Difficult to understand why a company in this particular industry isn't profiting quite well from the Covid situation."

That seems to be generally confirmed by the following:

In the year 2020/21, we saw a reduction in our overall box volumes during the first quarter principally due to weakness in the industrial customer categories, together with increased volatility of input costs, when the crisis was at its peak. The greater impact however has been from the cost of paper for recycling (PfR) and old corrugated cases (OCC). Here, we were impacted by an initial, short increase in prices in May and June 2020, due to sudden and extreme supply constraints caused by national lockdowns. These initial short spikes were not recovered in paper prices; however, the subsequent rises which occurred in H2 coupled with strong demand for paper have been reflected in higher paper prices which are being passed through to packaging prices along with other inflationary costs.

and that plus "The strong demand for packaging was accompanied by an increase in input costs, particularly in the fourth quarter of the financial year. Given the strong demand, and good levels of customer service, these costs are starting to be recovered with good initial progress. seem to me to provide an explanation for the comment that "Some of this commodity related payables benefit may reverse in 2021/22." - as I said in my quoted comments, the "usual lag" can be expected to produce temporarily lower profitability when paper prices are rising.

Overall, what I've seen so far from these results about how the company is trading seems to me to be mildly good news. On the dividend, though, it's mildly bad news: the final is down 26.4% compared with two years ago, a bit worse than the interim being 23.1% down on two years ago. If they'd matched that cut to the cut in the interim, the final would have been 8.46p.

They do however seem to have plenty in reserve for possible future dividend rises: the total amount of the interim dividend already paid and the final to be paid is £166m, which compares with their free cash flow figure of £486m and reduction in net debt from a year ago of £306m. So basically, I get the impression that they're prioritising debt reduction over divided increases, and although disappointing to a HYPer, that may well be the prudent course of action amidst talk of increasing inflation and possible interest rate rises.

Anyway, overall these results look to me to be pretty neutral from a HYPer's point of view, as a result of the combination of mildly good trading news and mildly bad dividend news. Its current yield of 12.1p/423.6p = 2.86% is quite a bit too low to qualify it as a new HYP purchase IMHO, but equally nowhere near low enough to make me seriously consider tinkering it away. So basically a HYP 'hold' - which is of course quite a common state of affairs in a Long Term Buy & Hold strategy!

Gengulphus


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