frog_in_a_tree
16 Dec 2019
Directors selling SRP - prepare for departure From the BBC business news: Two former executives at private security company Serco have been charged over an alleged scandal involving the electronic tagging of criminals. Nicholas Woods and Simon Marshall have been charged with fraud by false representation and false accounting. Earlier this year, Serco was fined £19.2m over its electronic tagging service for the Ministry of Justice. Serco lost its contract to tag criminals in the UK in late 2013. Mr Woods is the former finance director of Serco Home Affairs while Simon Marshall is a former operations director of field services within Serco. Cheers, Frog in a tree
Albi1
17 Sep 2019
A little warning I’d report that to the FSA, hopefully they’ll roll it out to everyone and get on the case.
frog_in_a_tree
16 Sep 2019
A littke warning I took a call earlier this evening from a far eastern man with a strong accent and a western first and second name always a dead giveaway) who said he was calling me from Brake Associates or Advisers in New York about my shareholding in Serco which was about to be taken over. He was quite difficult to understand so I didn’t get the whole speil but it was, it seemed, to offer me a better deal. Now it is true that I once held Serco paper shares in the noughties before transferring them to a nominee account but I sold them all a quite few years back before it all went pear shaped. He knew my name and telephone number as well as the fact that I was a shareholder even if he didn’t know that was no longer the case. He must have been working from an old share register. I told him that I could not find Brake associates on t’internet and then I told him that he appeared to be a scammer. At this point he politely thanked me and ended the conversation. You have been warned! Frog in a tree
frog_in_a_tree
04 Jul 2019
MoJ Contract I hear that Serco got fined £19 million over its prisoner tagging fraud. It looks as though I might have been over-generous in my view of SRP in my last post. Given the 142p sp today I have no regrets over selling out. This should be another nail in the coffin of privatisation. Frog in a tree
Boring_Bernie
19 Nov 2018
Directors selling SRP - prepare for departure They’ve both exercised nil-paid options and then sold a proportion to cover their tax bills, which, rather than them realising they’re flogging a dead horse ( which they might well be ), is just standard practice. You sound like a disgrunted employee, or ex-employee Ian, and, though I can understand why that might be the case, it means your analysis of the situation is massively biased. BB ( an ex-shareholder )
frog_in_a_tree
18 Nov 2018
Directors selling SRP - prepare for departure We shall have to wait and see. The outsourcing of government contracts has been a dodgy business of dubious efficacy. It was the product of neo-con philosophy that private is always best. But did we get anything that was better that the previously publically managed provision. Well all we have to do is to look at the railways, examine how the privatised utilities have ripped off their customers and how PFI continues to skin the public purse. It is still happening with academised schools. The research shows that they get results that are no better than local authority maintained schools and, in the worst cases, get involved in business dealings which are essentially corrupt. We shall hear more of this as time goes on. Basically, outsourcing is a skimming operation which doesn’t deliver better services but which does enrich the few at the top. We see that they erode workers’ pay and conditions to improve their own profitability and already we are seeing academy trusts do exactly the same. Seeing the way the wind was blowing I sold out of Serco just before the price fell in about 2014. Cheers, Frog in a tree
ian1mills
18 Nov 2018
Directors selling SRP - prepare for departure Soames has finally realised he flogging a dead horse: (Sharecast News) - Serco chief executive Rupert Soames sold 399,661 ordinary shares in the FTSE 250-listed outsourcing company on Tuesday. Register for Serco Group plc share research updates Soames, who took over the reins at Serco back in 2014, disposed of the shares at an average price of 95.70p, for a total value of £382,475.58. Serco’s chief financial officer Angus Cockburn also sold 209,895 for a total value of £200,869.5
algardish
08 Apr 2018
Leveraged gambling on future income flows Recent article in FT re Serco and other outsourcers:Generally have no tangible assets and borrow against intangibles (I say created by dodgy accounting!) Serco has negative forecast free cash flow, worse than Capita , G4S and Mitie who at least have positive future free cash flow." There is very limited intellectual property , they are offering essentially labour management skills with a little sauce on top . If the primary input in labour , there is no Margin, as you can't consistently pay the labour force lower than peers"The banks will be unwilling to lend , councils taking contracts back in house etcHow Soames thinks he can risk banks money, suppliers money, and shareholders money for this illusion of growth based on forecast new and existing contracts I dont know. He should go.
nk1999
08 Mar 2018
Jefferies From Citywire:"Serco to reinstate divi next year, says JefferiesJefferies is relying on Serco’s (SRP) Americas business to restore growth and prompt a dividend reinstatement at the outsourcing group.Analyst Kean Marden retained his ‘buy’ recommendation but reduced the target price from 168p to 123p on the shares.‘After assessing Serco’s current bid pipeline and recent investments, we believe the Americas has the potential to offset lacklustre UK momentum and restore the group to modest organic revenue growth in full year 2019,’ he said.‘We are less concerned with the recent bid pipeline decline as US bid processes tend to be swift and investment in local management and acquisitions should assist replenishment.’Marden also predicted a return to positive free cashflow in 2019 that would enable the dividend to be restored.‘Serco will return to a modestly positive free cashflow position in full-year 2019, albeit partially assisted by a low cash tax rate as UK losses are utilised,’ he said.‘This is particularly important as positive free cahsflow is one of the necessary conditions for management to reinstate the dividend and we forecast a token 0.5p final payment in 2019.’ "
algardish
30 Jan 2018
Re: Presidents Club Disgrace I expect the analyst who wrote this in September 2017 went to the Presidents Club, paid for by Serco!:rom ADVFN:"Serco surged on Thursday after UBS upgraded its stance on the stock as it said it was turning positive on the UK outsourcing sector following a 50% underperformance since 2013.UBS said 2018 is likely to be "a major inflection point", with growing earnings momentum expected to drive a recovery."After companies spent five years on cultural transformation, 2018 could see the start of a multi-year structural, but disciplined, expansion in outsourcing. This recovery story is priced in to differing degrees and so we are selective: we upgrade Serco to buy as our key way to play this theme," it said.Serco was bumped up from 'neutral', with the price target lifted to 145p from 125p, as UBS downgraded G4S to 'neutral' from 'buy', cutting the price target to 300p from 355p.
Hyperproject
25 Jan 2018
Re: Presidents Club Disgrace Years ago when I was a young executive just employed with this new company and in my first week, I was away in Belgium with some of the top directors, who all indulged is a similar way, I was expected to follow the same. I made the comment that apart from my disagreeing with the situation, the vast amount that was being spent on expenses to support such behaviour exceeded the yearly pay of one of our shop floor production staff and I would go and leave them to it, the response to me was “if you walk away from here, you are finished with this company”. I walk and never looked back, eventually starting my own company that competed with them, it became an international company, I retired at 47 and sold it two years ago. I have never ever tolerated bullying ( it comes in many disguises), because that is exactly what that sort of behaviour is.
frog in a tree
24 Jan 2018
Presidents Club Disgrace Whilst we don't know if any Serco execs were at this event, it did remind me of an incident some years ago.I was an employee of an organisation that Serco had been brought in to manage. As part of their efforts to involve the new staff in the Serco culture they arranged a Burns Night party in the functions room of a local pub where the Serco takeover staff were lodged.At one point in the evening, one of the Serco managers wanted to liven things up a bit so he called a young woman employee onto the stage and after a bit of joking around he went behind her and cupped her b@@bs with his hands. Predictably the woman screamed and was clearly totally embarrassed. As new employees we all felt vulnerable and powerless. We couldn't have intervened as it happened too fast but still we did nothing and I don't think the woman did either. It was a classic example of an abuse of male power. The incident shocked and shamed us all.As we saw later, there were serious weaknesses in Serco's standards of corporate responsibility which brought the company's reputation and share price to a low from which it has still not recovered.Frog in a tree.
BuySel
29 Nov 2017
2nd day on the bounce 2nd day on the bounce after a heavy marked down on Monday, but today much stronger as it bounces from the drop from 120p last month. Good volume since yesterday
algardish
18 Sep 2017
Re: The wild west of investing- Support ... nk1999- I would also add Capita to the list of of collapses. My point is they (Support Services) are flogging a dead horse because where the government is involved as soon as they see a supplier making a good return they want some of it back. Soames says he makes wafer thin margins, that in basic double entry book keeping means a low net asset value increase over time and therefore a low valuation . He is never going to turn the margins around by choosing government contracts as a business model. Its a schoolboy error admitting to analysts that Margins are wafer thin. It means there will be no cash to pay dividends in future and a low net asset value. The whole business model does not work in my opinion. It works for him in that he gets a good salary for a few years but he is more ambitious than that I think. I see the share price remaining flat for years unless he starts pumping things up by lying about the future (as per list of support services companies) and creating intangibles by over declaring future revenue. I do note that Intangibles are growing in SRP and cash is declining so he may be dabbling in it?! I think his only option is to find a better horse to back. Analysts look at balance sheets now and can short companies - hence Carillion - and can see things that others can't and don't just look at profits which can be fiddled easily. Serco is one of them. So I don't think SRP will grow at all and investors may lose patience eventually.
nk1999
16 Sep 2017
Re: The wild west of investing- Support Serv... Algardish,"So we have had Interserve collapse by 50% , Carillion collapse by a lot, Mitie a rollercoaster and Serco stuck where it is....."Didn't Serco decline much before the other companies that you mention? Serco collapsed, and now seems to be stabilising.May show some gradual recovery eventually?
