Is Tesco a takeover target?

Thrugelmir

Minrich wrote: »

Out of town retailing here in Suffolk is thriving , its the town centres that are struggling ,

Town centres have been a question of debate for years. My observation in a sense was looking ahead. As the tide may be finally turning. As some towns have long term plans to regenerate their centres. With a return to mixed use, i.e. inclusion of lower cost residential units as well a commercial and retail.

bowlhead99

Generali wrote: »

Because he has a fiduciary duty to get the best price he can for the shares. He can't just dump the lot.

He may well have dumped the lot by now for all we know. He may have done that a week ago or a day ago. You only need to disclose when you go through certain thresholds - for Tesco it would be 3% and whole percentages above. In between, you don't disclose anything.

So, at some point since the last time he'd updated the market, he had sold a chunk to take him down to the cusp of 3%- we don't know when or in how many tranches. All he disclosed was that immediately before the transaction that took him under 3%, he had 245 million shares (3.02%), and immediately after that transaction, he had a non disclosable amount (i.e. all we know is that after the trade he ended up with less than 2.99999999%).

So the particular transaction he needed to disclose might just have be in relation to a couple of million or less of his 245 million shares, or might have been for most or all of them. We don't know because it's not disclosable. He did that transaction on Monday 13 October, formally notified the company that he'd crossed the threshold on Wednesday 15 October, and they told the market the facts on Thursday. By that point maybe he was already fully out, or held 1% or 2% or 2.9990%

So since that Thursday some people have been saying he has sold out entirely and others say he's sold down to about 3% and others speculate that the first tranche sale from 3.7% happened the previous week to the disclosure and others that it happened the previous month or quarter... But they could all be wrong as it's simply not disclosable.

Glen_Clark

sparkychris wrote: »

What would happen to share prices if they were taken over?

Share price would rise because anybody buying would have to offer a higher price to persuade enough shareholders to sell. But I can't see that happening.

Glen_Clark

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Town centres have been a question of debate for years.

Local Nimbys make me laugh when they say we don't want another supermarket. Customers vote with their feet and if they didn't vote for Tesco they wouldn't go there.
Its like saying we don't need another housing estate. If that were true nobody would live there when its built.

Minrich

sparkychris wrote: »

What would happen to share prices if they were taken over?

I cleverly bought a few shares a couple of weeks ago and have watched them tumble ever since... Have never bought shares before- was just taking a punt with a few quid I could afford (but obviously don't want to) lose...

They haven't changed hardly at all in a couple of weeks , so when did you actually buy them ?

Minrich

Do you not need a large car park to park your car in when going to any supermarket ? I don't know many towns that could create enough parking to bring the large supermarket shoppers back into the town centres . We live on the edge of our town and travel 3 miles further out to get to Tesco , it takes about 10 minutes . To go into town would take 30 mins for the same distance , no chance of the Tesco superstore we use running short of customers willing to shop there .
The car park quite often is full and people waiting for spaces .
What my wife has noticed at this large store (she works there and has done for 19 years) is that people that used to always have a trolley and do their shopping all in one go are now there 2/3 times a week rather than once and do their shopping in smaller quantities . I think this makes it easier to not waste anything .

Thrugelmir

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Local Nimbys make me laugh when they say we don't want another supermarket. Customers vote with their feet and if they didn't vote for Tesco they wouldn't go there.
Its like saying we don't need another housing estate. If that were true nobody would live there when its built.

With Aldi and Lidl still expanding. There's going to be over capacity in terms of store space.

Minrich

How much of Aldi and Lidls products are British ?
Do they support local farmers and growers ?
Where are their products from ?
Is the "Buy British" campaign still running or is it now " Buy cheapest " ?

bowlhead99

Minrich wrote: »

Many parts of the media have quoted a 92% drop in profits to £112m , so misquoting the figures too !

well, that is entirely factual and is taken direct from Tesco's own press release direct to the stock exchange. [url]Http://www.investegate.co.uk/tesco-plc--tsco-/rns/interim-results/201410230700200657V/[/url]

The nicer "underlying" figure of 780m ish is before a number of necessary accounting adjustments. Some of that is the £150m of mis-booked profit that related to previous years. Some of it is the non cash elements of some international accounting standards (e.g. the impact of annual uplifts in rents and rent-free periods, pension costs, and the marking to market of financial instruments); the amortisation charge on intangible assets arising on acquisition (Tesco Bank) and acquisition costs (again, non cash), the non-cash impact of IFRIC 13 (Customer Loyalty Programmes), and profits/losses arising on property-related items - they only made £7m on property profits/losses this year vs £45m last. It also excludes other misc. restructuring and other one-off items which are £135m bigger than last year.

At least the BBC News at 1pm has rectified the error a little saying their profit was £780m for the first half .

Well whether you prefer the £780m or the £112 depends on what you're trying to measure. When results are hot off the press, the BBC typically head for bottom line numbers rather than the company's view of what "normalised"figures would be. Then later they'll speak to some analyst who may give an insight into the key highlights and how comparable the figures are, or should be.

If you read the actual financial statements you can go further than the profit before tax of £122m... and find tax of 37m, (was 250m this time last year), £69m of losses from discontinued operations (was 317)... and the final bottom line profit is £6m after tax: reduction of 99.3% from last year's interims.

Of course, nobody assesses a company's worth purely off their profit after tax figures but if you're going to be an investor in a listed company you ought to decide for yourself what is and isn't relevant, rather than reading newspaper or online spin.

gentlepurr

Thanked your post bowlhead, but just wanted to add it was really helpful to read and understand in layman's terms, thanks muchly

gp xx