456 days ago
A long call with Lucian Miers has just ended. As you may know he has moved from leafy Hampshire to the grim North of Yorkshire and has blundered out for a walk only to find himself in the middle of a snowstorm. Let us pray that he makes it back safely to his new home, without the need for the local Moors rescue team to unleash the whippets. We talked of ITM Power (ITM) where the great bear has increased his short position after today’s dire warning. But is that right?
1361 days ago
I end with a view from my office photo just to annoy Graham Neary. I also comment on the latest bonkers ideas from Boris about how to cripple the economy. Those are relevant as I discuss the assumptions made by Metro Bank (MTRO) and its Godawful results. Who is it trying to kid? It has certainly not thrown in the kitchen sink in terms of provisioning. There is far worse to come when the banking crisis really gets going. I discuss gold and ask those with a knowledge of cocaine to help Lucian out with a new valuation metric. I look at Centamin (CEY) and am not persuaded there is a new normal to justify a sub 4% prospective yield.
3422 days ago
I am asked by a reader to speculate on what the PWC Report into Quindell (QPP) will say? I guess that the bean counters are almost done by now so IMHO here is what to expect.
First up PWC will look at accruals, largely for industrial deafness. That income is not coming in as expected – hence the statement about Q4 cashflows. At the H1 stage accruals were in at £308 million and that number would have risen in Q3 and I suspect that in a kitchen sink job as this will be it will all be written off. So let’s call that a £350 million write-down.
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