Greene King - SOLD!

[idpickering]

Bit concerned the price is still drifting the wrong way, thinking maybe I should get out now. What do others feel?

I feel that if current yield has dropped below half of FTSE100 (or a similar benchmark such as CTY), which GNK has, and some, then it's a sell - no ifs no buts Time to move on and find another yield.

I agree moorfield. According to HL the yield is 3.95%. https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-sear ... -ord-12.5p

Ian.

[Arborbridge]

Bit concerned the price is still drifting the wrong way, thinking maybe I should get out now. What do others feel?

I feel that if current yield has dropped below half of FTSE100 (or a similar benchmark such as CTY), which GNK has, and some, then it's a sell - no ifs no buts Time to move on and find another yield.

But it hasn't. I was considering selling part of my holding because it has now become an unjustifiably large part of my HYP from the capital perspective.

[moorfield]

Bit concerned the price is still drifting the wrong way, thinking maybe I should get out now. What do others feel?

I feel that if current yield has dropped below half of FTSE100 (or a similar benchmark such as CTY), which GNK has, and some, then it's a sell - no ifs no buts Time to move on and find another yield.

But it hasn't. I was considering selling part of my holding because it has now become an unjustifiably large part of my HYP from the capital perspective.

You're quite right, thanks for pointing out. I blame a typographical error on my own spreadsheet (on which GNK has featured on a watchlist).

[Wizard]

Do you think we’ll get next year’s discount vouchers before the deal closes?

Well, to answer my own question, yes. I emailed the GNK Company Secretary dept. and asked the question, they confirmed the vouchers are gojng out in the next week or so. I presume that as you needed to hold around the end of July even those that have sold them since the deal was announced should still get them. But I will hold on to my shares until I see the colour of my last year of vouchers

[m06een00]

Any thoughts as to why the price dropped today and is sitting about 8p below the offer price? Does this suggest there is concern the deal won't go through? I'm temped to sell, for the sake of 8p per share I do not want to risk the deal falling over while I still hold the shares!

That often happens, sp dropping 1-2% below offer price until everything is finalised. As far as I understand it's a done deal, unless GNK shareholders are daft enough to reject it. Both BoDs have already agreed the deal subject to shareholder's consent.

[scrumpyjack]

Not surprising the price is 1% below the offer price. Any buyer is going to pay 4.2p stamp duty and then have their money tied up for up to 3 months without interest.

It suggests the market thinks it extremely unlikely there will be another bidder, and that this bid will go through.

[biffinsbridge]

First bought @ 742.80p in Nov.2016. Then topped up to full holding @ 492.01p Oct.2018. 8 purchased via divi reinvestment. Will wait for deal to complete. Reasonabley happy with performance so far. Holding 1363 @ 517.5561p. in ISA with iWeb have never had vouchers, but not bothered as no gk pubs in south west.Foolish regards Dick.

[Gengulphus]

Just a quick note about the vouchers: I received mine (for the 12 months from September 2019 to August 2020) in the post this morning - so the takeover definitely hasn't prevented them being sent out. Whether the possibility of using them will be withdrawn when (and if) the takeover goes through is still a bit uncertain in my mind - the covering letter doesn't mention the takeover at all. They could be, since one of the conditions is that "This voucher is for Greene King shareholders only, to be redeemed only in Greene King pubs and restaurants listed on http://www.greeneking.co.uk unless otherwise indicated.", and either or both of the phrases I've emboldened could be used to make use invalid after the takeover goes through. I'd be a bit surprised if it were, because the pubs tend to offer various quite good discounts anyway, which tend to make the vouchers redundant (due to their "This voucher cannot be redeemed in conjunction with any other discount." condition). So the value to the company of withdrawing them doesn't seem likely to be all that great, and it would be offset to at least some extent by the loss of customer goodwill caused by turning up at the pub and then discovering that the voucher they were counting on had been made unusable... It would IMHO be simpler (and better customer relations) to just let the vouchers be used from whenever the takeover goes through until next August and then let the scheme die naturally, due to no-one owning the 100 shares needed to qualify for vouchers next July 31st. But I'm not going to rely on the new owners seeing it the same way as I do!

Gengulphus

[kempiejon]

I'm going to keep hold of the balance of my shares for now though I sold all in an un-sheltered account. Those in another account I will let the takeover run.
I'd like to hope the vouchers will be valid post takeover but this will be the last year.

This voucher cannot be redeemed in conjunction with any other discount.

I have successfully redeemed the vouchers on the total bill of 4 us eating out and making use of their deals.

[Wizard]

I'm going to keep hold of the balance of my shares for now though I sold all in an un-sheltered account. Those in another account I will let the takeover run.
I'd like to hope the vouchers will be valid post takeover but this will be the last year.

This voucher cannot be redeemed in conjunction with any other discount.

I have successfully redeemed the vouchers on the total bill of 4 us eating out and making use of their deals.

Same.

[Arborbridge]

My mood today:

Sell down my holding, either by half or to median. From here the price will either collapse back to where it was or increase to the take over price, so I'll just be hedging my bets between those two. Of course, if there's a rival bid, I will be kicking myself!

Arb.

[Arborbridge]

Job done - sold part of GNK to leave a median weight holding.

Now, look for something else.....

[Gengulphus]

I've just realised that the publication of the Scheme Document on September 16th wasn't remarked on at all here... It's obtainable from https://www.greeneking.co.uk/investor-c ... ash-offer/ - you'll need to accept a disclaimer and then scroll down some 25-30 entries in the list of documents to locate it.

Not saying that anyone necessarily has to want to look at it - like all such documents, it's pretty long (though at 123 pages, it's probably one of the shorter ones I've encountered!) and it contains lots of detail an ordinary individual share definitely doesn't need, while what they might need is quite often said repeatedly in slightly different contexts... But such documents do usually have a "Taxation" section that can be very useful for anyone who needs to know the normal tax treatment of a corporate action, so can be usefully downloaded and a copy saved for future reference (note that when it's a takeover, there is no guarantee how long after the takeover goes through the Scheme Document will continue to be easily available from the company website). In this case, that section confirms that the normal UK tax treatment is just the standard CGT treatment (and also that no stamp duty is due, but that is of course only of interest to the acquirer as the effective buyer of the shares).

The other point people might want to note about this is that it contains details of the company and Court meetings to get shareholder approval for the takeover. Anyone who holds the shares as a certificate or in a CREST account has hopefully already been told about the Scheme Document and the meetings by the company, including being sent proxy voting forms, but nominee account providers are under no legal obligation to inform the accountholders about such matters (other than any their own terms & conditions might impose). Nominee account providers do vary significantly with regard to what they do in practice - some say nothing between the time the takeover offer is announced (which can be up to 4 weeks before the Scheme Document becomes available) and the time it is definitely going through (which is after the shareholder meetings have happened), others have an online system to collect votes for all shareholder meetings, and there are others who handle them in intermediate ways between those two...

Anyway, the company deadline for proxy votes is on the morning of Monday October 7th. Nominee broker deadlines will probably be a few trading days earlier - so if anyone holds Greene King shares in a nominee account, wants to vote them and hasn't done so yet, there's still time but not much...

Note I am not saying that people ought to want to vote - that's their decision, not mine! I'm just saying this to alert any who does want to but is in danger of letting the chance slip by to the situation... Nor am I saying that nominee brokers will necessarily be willing to pass their accountholders' votes on to the company, nor that they won't charge for the service - AFAIAA, those are matters for the individual broker's policy and terms & conditions (except that IIRC, they have to be willing to pass the votes on in the case of ISA accounts).

Gengulphus

[PinkDalek]

Further update here (at Company Share News):

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