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My Royal Mail shares

graystoke4

graystoke4

pfm Member
Hi, some of you might remember me going on about buying some royal mail shares, this was about 5 month's ago, i have been waiting for them to hit £2 a share or lower, well two weeks ago, they came down from £2.68, down to £2.05, after the figures for 22-23, came out, and we have lost a Billion pounds, yes quite staggering, £1000,000,000. these are actually, International Distributions Services PLC, shares,

So i bought £10,000, worth at £2,05, a share, since then they have dropped to £1,96,
But since then we have got rid of the CEO, Simon Thompson, who is a lair, as said by MPs, at a parliamentary hearing, and a tyrant, with no credible track record, royal mail are giving him £700,000, to go and paying him until the end of his contract,

so a new CEO, we vote on the pay and conditions, soon, keeps getting put back, as a NO vote is possible, I'm voting NO, so as far as i can see they can only go up in the few years, :eek::oops::rolleyes:,

Do not buy any shares, off this post,
 
At the end of the current Tory nightmare you can pretty much guarantee that RM, Energy supply, the railways and possibly water supply are all going to get re-nationalised in the wake of the total disaster their privatisation has been and the failure of the artificial "market" the Tories tied to create.

The share prices will likely as not fall through the floor in the run up to that.
 
graystoke4 said:
i have had recent talks, with the head of finance, in Turkey, :D:eek:
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I’m sure you believed you were talking to the head of finance but what is the likelihood that the head of finance for Royal Mail also has a sideline in hawking 100% genuine hand loomed carpets to unsuspecting tourists?.
 
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I’ve still got my original allocation, bought in anger at Cameron selling off something I already owned. Not my best investment. By saying that they were doing really well a couple of years ago.
 
What the Tories touch, they destroy. In my city last collection from post boxes is….wait for it, 09:00AM. That effectively means next day collection even with a 1st class stamp where previously you had a good chance your letter would be delivered the next day hundreds of miles away after posting it.
 
graystoke4 said:
so a new CEO, we vote on the pay and conditions, soon, keeps getting put back, as a NO vote is possible, I'm voting NO
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Except the ballot on the pay and conditions deal has been called off by the CWU, as of last Thursday, because of continued unacceptable management behaviours such as bullying and intimidation, and because over 200 CWU reps remain sacked or suspended pending dismissal because of alleged trumped up misconduct charges…

I reckon our next ballot will be for more strike action, and it will almost definitely go the way of industrial action again.

You, @graystoke4 , have some big cohones to make that investment and I wish you the best of luck, but there’s no way in this galaxy that I’m following your investment advice.
 
graystoke4 said:
Hi, some of you might remember me going on about buying some royal mail shares, this was about 5 month's ago, i have been waiting for them to hit £2 a share or lower, well two weeks ago, they came down from £2.68, down to £2.05, after the figures for 22-23, came out, and we have lost a Billion pounds, yes quite staggering, £1000,000,000. these are actually, International Distributions Services PLC, shares,

So i bought £10,000, worth at £2,05, a share, since then they have dropped to £1,96,
But since then we have got rid of the CEO, Simon Thompson, who is a lair, as said by MPs, at a parliamentary hearing, and a tyrant, with no credible track record, royal mail are giving him £700,000, to go and paying him until the end of his contract,

so a new CEO, we vote on the pay and conditions, soon, keeps getting put back, as a NO vote is possible, I'm voting NO, so as far as i can see they can only go up in the few years, :eek::oops::rolleyes:,

Do not buy any shares, off this post,
Click to expand...
So you have gambled your money rather than invested it.

You need to set a stop-loss figure and then sell and take the hit. Maybe next time invest the dosh? To be fair we are in turbulent times and my own portfolio goes up and down like a scary roller coaster. You do need nerves of steel!

DV
 
Tony L said:
I’ve still got my original allocation, bought in anger at Cameron selling off something I already owned. Not my best investment. By saying that they were doing really well a couple of years ago.
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Me too, for the same reason.

Then about 6 yrs ago, I bought about 1K more, when the price seemed low to me; sold them for rather more, and that modest gamble bought my Quads. So I am ahead even if the original allocation, which I keep, goes pop. Being a blatant exploitative capitalist, I now recuse myself... / not moving to Henley tho/
 
The Tories never wanted to privatise the Post Office, even Thatcher said it was a Privatisation too far. Blair appointed Peter Mandelson to head the privatisation and he moved the £10.6 billion RM Pension deficit into the Treasury as a way of bribing the unions and managers to stop protesting. This secured their pensions and also a gift of shares to the employees smoothed the opposition somewhat. The Tories won the 2010 election and had no option but to proceed with the privatisation as they had to fund the cost of the pension fund.

Cameron appointed a popular LibDem (Vince Cable) to finally push the privatisation through in 2013 with a share price of 330pence and the opening price closed at 445pence. These figures are engraved in my brain because Cable sold his soul on this by underpricing the launch price at the tax payers expense. But he did have a nice Ministerial limo to be chauffeured around in for a while along with Nick Clegg until they got kicked out of office in 2015.

The major problem for the people who bought these shares is that the number of addresses / letterboxes fluctuates between 26.5 and 27million so there is limited chance of expansion. Also the Postal system cannot sustain 2 or more players with the limitation of 26.5/27 million addresses so it will be under permanent threat of being nibbled off at the edges. To put it bluntly, the RM will just very slowly decline and the share price will follow suite and edge slowly downwards.

The privatisation was a total farce in that it was unique that the Tories were forced to enact it against their will, Mandelson was enthusiastic and drove it through, the unions were against it as were the Managers. It was the daftest privatisation ever.

No one came out of this with any credit and I am glad I was well out of it when it happened.

Simple advice to anyone who is a shareholder is to sell because the long term trend is going to be down.
 
Whilst my recollection differs slightly to Mick’s, and to be fair he was far more senior in RM than I ever was in the civil service or RM, but I do recall some Tory propaganda that they had no choice but to privatise RM because of decisions made by the previous administration. Whatever, whoever made the call pretty much signed RMs death warrant.

What Mick is right about is that there is only a limited supply of households to deliver to. Letter mail is undoubtedly in a death spiral, and if another player decides to give it a go like TNT tried to do a few years ago, but actually gets their act together, RM is going to be in a bad place.

Most letter mail is what’s called Downstream Access. It’s basically all your bank/credit card/utility bills which are printed and stuffed into envelopes by some third party companies. They then do a basic sort into geographic areas andvdeliver that stuff to the appropriate Mail Centre for final sorting into the last mile delivery.

Some years ago one of the print & stuff companies, TNT/Whstle , tried to have a go at delivering their mail rather than giving it to RM and it went, erm, badly. They cherry picked what they thought were the most profitable areas (cities and densely populated big towns) and ignored rural areas and suburbs.

Naturally, they underestimated the amount of work involved and they understaffed and underpaid. They couldn’t make it work at the time. However RM had a scary few months in certain areas and barely avoided redundancies in the affected areas.

Now, though, if they were to give it another go in the current climate, I doubt they’d screw up, and RM would be in a very precarious position.

The only way to grow the business in the face of falling letter volumes and potential competition in that area is through packets and parcels, and there’s just an amazing amount of alternative options out there, all eating away at RMs pie of dominance.

TLDR: think very carefully about putting your money in to RM shares.
 
A major issue for TNT was that they had to charge VAT. The RM do not. ISTR the TNT went to court on this and lost.
 
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