Royal Mail privatisation... Would you?

2010

Mr_Benn wrote: »

I am looking at only applying for the minimum £750, and looking to sell straight away . Slight concern is will that be scaled back because of the over-subscription.

You`ll get the basic £750 worth but bigger amounts will be scaled back.
At least that`s what happened in previous sell offs.

Mr_Benn

Ive just read this on the Daily Mail website - amazing if true,
" The Government has not ruled out a first-come, first-served cut-off, which would probably see anyone applying from today miss out.

AdrianC

Mr_Benn wrote: »

Ive just read this on the Daily Mail website - amazing if true

As a general rule of thumb, I tend to be amazed if anything on the DailyWail website is true...

sebtomato

MrRee wrote: »

£750 is the minimum .... which is pathetic in all honesty, what figure do you think you will get your whole allocation? £20,000? £50,000?

Given that all the newspapers are talking about making a quick 30% or 40% profit, the ease to buy the shares direct, and given the very high expected dividends compared to saving account rates, I suspect it will be highly oversubscribed, and people will not get anything near £20,000

Yorksport

It will be fascinating to see how this pans out and what the allocation is. The posties' £2,000 worth won't be reduced and the institutions have got theirs' so it'll be the retail investors who are scaled back. Comments from the press, Mr Buick and Mr Ummuna have stimulated demand no end so I'm sure they'll open at a healthy premium to, presumably, a £3.30 nominal price. I wonder what bets they're taking on how they'll allocate - £1,000 each plus a tiny fraction of applications above that level?

Glen_Clark

Its all looking a bit silly to me now.
Is snail mail really such a good business to be in?
Committed to sending a postman to every address, every day, so fixed costs with declining letter volumes?
I realize parcels traffic is expanding, but there is fierce competition from carriers without Royal Mail's high staff costs.

IronWolf

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Its all looking a bit silly to me now.
Is snail mail really such a good business to be in?
Committed to sending a postman to every address, every day, so fixed costs with declining letter volumes?
I realize parcels traffic is expanding, but there is fierce competition from carriers without Royal Mail's high staff costs.

I think a lot of people are looking for a quick buck, and not really thinking about the underlying business.

latecomer

I think most people are in it for a quick profit and couldn't care less about the business itself. We will be selling all or most of the shares we get allocated with the intention of getting a quick return. If the share price drops then we will hold them until it recovers.

sebtomato

latecomer wrote: »

I think most people are in it for a quick profit and couldn't care less about the business itself.

If I am not mistaken, the government will retain 30% shares, and only 30% of the remaining available shares will be sold to individuals.

With dividends pretty much guaranteed in 6 months time to be 6 or 7%, I think the vast majority of professional investors/banks/institutions will keep the shares at least until then.

Maybe 50% of the private investors (general public) would sell straight away to make a quick profit, but that's quite a small number (50% of 30% of 70%, or 10% of the total number of shares)

coastline

Many will jump ship in early days with a few hundred pounds profit...thats always going to happen..
Apart from further streamlining of the business I can see Royal Mail going into other areas for future growth...
Mobile phones , broadband , insurance products , banking services...even a battle with the likes of Amazon..
This is just the start...Utilities haven't let investors down in general so I dont see the Royal Mail.