In the South-East of England we are suffering from major transport disruptions. First from rail strikes affecting London commuters and second by the activities of Just Stop Oil on the road network.
The RMT union have announced further strikes on November 3, 5 and 7 and are balloting their members on pursuing them for another six months. I issued a tweet yesterday which suggested the way to stop these strikes was to give an ultimatum to employees to either work normally or get fired. The problem is that train drivers are so highly paid that a few days out is affordable.
Rather surprisingly I got a response from the RMT which said “In your haste to sound draconian you’ve not considered who would staff the railway or train the replacements if you’ve fired them all? Nothing would move for years!!”.
My response was “Well it worked when Ronald Reagan did it for air traffic controllers, did it not?”. This refers to the events in August 1981 in the USA. To quote from Wikipedia: “After PATCO workers’ refusal to return to work [over a pay dispute], the Reagan administration fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the difficult task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired. Under normal conditions, it took three years to train new controllers. Until replacements could be trained, the vacant positions were temporarily filled with a mix of non-participating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some non-rated personnel, military controllers, and controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities”.
The US airlines continued operations with minimal disruptions and the Reagan move had a significant impact on union activities in other organisations effectively resetting labour relationships in the USA. Strikes fell in subsequent years. From 370 major strikes in 1970 the number fell to 11 in 2010, and it had a positive effect in reducing inflation.
Just as Margaret Thatcher handled the coal miners in the UK, Reagan’s firm resolve on facing up to the unions created a new and better culture.
As regards the Just Stop Oil (JSO) campaign the closure of the Dartford Bridge created enormous traffic jams and delayed people for many hours. The whole of south-east London was affected as many people commute around the M25. The Metropolitan Police tweeted they had “made 404 arrests linked to JSO activity. We have needed nearly 5500 officer shifts diverted from local communities in London, to deal with the serious disruption caused by this activity”. The total cost including the delays to people must be many millions of pounds.
The Police seem to be totally ineffective in stopping the activities of JSO. People get arrested but then released. Fines, if any, are minimal. There is a Bill currently going through Parliament that might assist – The Public Order Bill – see https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/bills/2022-23/publicorder . It creates a number of new offences relating to “locking-on”, obstructing major transport works and interfering with the use or operation of key national infrastructure. It also confers preventative powers for the police to search for and seize articles related to protest-related offences and provides for a new preventative court order, the Serious Disruption Prevention Order, to disrupt the activities of repeat offenders”. But will it be applied vigorously?
The Police already have considerable powers that are not used and JSO could be proscribed as a “terrorist organisation” as they meet the criteria. Let us hope the Public Order Bill is passed quickly. But it’s really down to the Government to take a lead on this matter even if they may be distracted by financial matters at present.
Peaceful demonstrations are OK but disruption to normal life should not be permitted under any circumstances.
The national rail strikes this week have been incredibly inconvenient for those who rely on trains to get to work or for essential trips such as visits to hospitals. In London the strike has also extended to the London Underground. Commuters have been badly affected although the ability to work from home (WFH) has softened the blow and reduced the impact.
Why are RMT union members striking? It’s partly that they want a pay increase to offset the impact of inflation. But it’s also about whether rail management have the power to decide on jobs and working practices. For example, they wish to block any forced redundancies such as the closing of ticket offices. In London they are even intervening over the outsourcing of the contract for underground cleaning by TfL.
It should be a business decision as to whether ticket offices should be closed. There are now generally alternative ways to buy tickets although a few people might be inconvenienced. But if it saves money then management need to decide on a commercial basis whether to close offices.
National Rail Chief executive Andrew Haines said: “We cannot expect to take more than our fair share of public funds, and so we must modernise our industry to put it on a sound financial footing for the future. Failure to modernise will only lead to industry decline and more job losses in the long run.”
In reality the national railways have lost money for the last 100 years and have been massively subsidised by the Government (i.e. by you and me from our taxes). It’s exactly the same in London. With reduced passengers on all services due to the Covid epidemic and more WFH all rail services need to cut their costs to get revenue and costs more into balance.
The rail system is an enormously labour-intensive operation to maintain the track and signalling. Railways are also enormously expensive to build – just look at the cost of HS2 or Crossrail (about £100 billion and £19 billion respectively) – both projects are late and over budget.
The big problem is that railways use old technology and are operated using archaic working practices. The rail unions are trying to protect their pay, their jobs and working practices which is simply unjustifiable. They need to accept that passengers have alternatives and if they are unwilling to use the railways as much as they used to do then management has to retrench.
The unions need to face up to reality or they will go the way of the dinosaurs (like the coal miners did when faced with the Government being unwilling to subsidise perpetual losses).
But the core of the problem is a confrontational approach from both sides. There should be a consensus about how to run the railways profitably for the benefit of both the owners and the workers.
Both Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, and Andy Byford, London Transport Commissioner, have warned that unless they get more money from the Government then there are going to be savage cuts in public transport and on major infrastructure projects. The latter might include the required repairs to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, the A40 Westway and A12 Gallows Corner flyover leading to their closure.
Some 100 bus routes face the axe and frequencies may be cut on 200 other routes. Other proposals are no more electric buses, no more step-free stations, no more “Healthy Streets” cycling and walking schemes and no more 20mph zones or safer junctions.
Now some readers might welcome some of those things and clearly the Mayor is trying to scare the Government into providing more funding within weeks. But some of those suggestions like closure of the Rotherhithe Tunnel and the Westway would be disastrous for the functioning of the road network in both east and west London.
How did TfL get themselves into such a mess? It all stems from the policies adopted by Ken Livingstone which was for massive subsidies to buses and commitments for large expenditure on Crossrail and other underground projects. The bus network has certainly been greatly expanded but at a cost that was never justified and Crossrail has been a financial disaster. Over budget, over schedule, and never justified on a cost/benefit basis. The Mayor was relying on income from it to cover TfL’s future budgets which it never has.
Boris Johnson never tackled the problems created by Livingstone when he was Mayor while Sadiq Khan has actually made matters worse by spending enormous amounts of money on cycle lanes, LTNs, and other schemes that have damaged the road network. He has also encouraged the growth in the population of London while the infrastructure never kept up with it despite massive central Government funding.
A report in the Express shows that £515 more per person was spent on transport schemes in London than on the North of England. A new report from the IPPR North think tank has published an independent analysis of transport spending over the past decade. Between 2009/10-2019/20, the North received just £349 per person in transport spending. In comparison, the UK as a whole received £430 per person, while London received a staggering £864 per person. Where did it all go one might ask? On pointless and generally uneconomic schemes not justified by any cost/benefit analysis is the answer.
The daft transport schemes such as the Congestion Charge and the ULEZ have actually encouraged people to move out of London and the cuts to public transport that are proposed will expedite that trend. With falling income from bus and tube fares already caused by the pandemic, the outlook is certainly bleak. But failing to maintain the infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels and flyovers while the Major prefers to spend money on other things is surely a sign of gross incompetence.
London needs a new transport plan where expenditure is matched to income and needless subsidies removed. In other words, people should pay the cost of the trips they take on public transport and free riders should be stopped. But will a socialist Mayor ever take such steps? I doubt it. So London is likely to go into further decline and more people will move out.
But London is at the heart of the UK economy so there is some justification for central Government stepping in once again to reform London’s governance. We need less populism (which generally means hand-outs to win votes) and more financial acumen in the leadership. Certainly the current arrangement where you have a virtual dictator in the role of Mayor and a toothless London Assembly is not working.
The key to improving the London transport network is not to have it all (both public and private transport) under the control of one body (TfL) which leads to lack of competition and perverse incentives. For example, encouraging cycling to relieve pressure on public transport while causing more road traffic congestion and introducing schemes such as the ULEZ to help subsidise public transport while increasing the cost of private transport.
Perhaps we need a new Dr Beeching to put the London transport network back into a cost-effective structure as he did for British Rail. But at least the Government seems to have taken some rational decisions by cancelling the eastern link of HS2 to Leeds. Just like Crossrail in London, HS2 was never justified in terms of benefits achievable and the money would have been better spent on smaller projects. But politicians love grandiose schemes. Reality seems to be finally sinking in on the national scene even if not yet in London.
Roger Lawson
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An announcement from the Government yesterday spelled out the world’s first “greenprint” for decarbonising all modes of domestic transport by 2050.
Plans include a ban on the same of all new “polluting” road vehicles by 2040 and net zero aviation emissions by 2050. The former includes the phasing out of all petrol and diesel HGVs by 2040 – subject to consultation. Consultation will be very important because the practicality of HGVs that need to go long distances without repeated refuelling is important economically. LGVs can probably be electrified but HGVs need to use alternative fuels.
The 2050 commitment applies to aviation emissions and a consultation on that is also launched under the “Jet Zero” banner. It is clear that new technologies and aviation fuels need to be developed to achieve a major reduction in aviation emissions. Whether such changes to reach zero emissions are achievable is not at all clear and the cost, which might be very considerable, is not given.
Similarly, the costs of electrification of all rail transport is likely to be enormous as the UK lags far behind other European countries in that regard. Less than 50% of the UK rail network is currently electrified. For example the cost of electrifying the Great Western mainline to Cardiff was estimated at £2.8 billion.
The Daily Telegraph has speculated on a new system of road pricing to replace the £30 billion currently raised through taxes on petrol and diesel. But the latest Government announcement leaves out any mention of how that issue is to be tackled.
As with all good political missives, the Government document contains lots of fine words about how the environment will be improved while not inhibiting us from travelling when or where we want (for example, taking holiday flights). It’s a policy statement in essence that leaves out all the detail of how this nirvana is to be achieved and at what cost. It ignores a lot of the practical difficulties. But it’s worth reading to get an impression of what might happen in the next few years.
Where is the cost/benefit analysis that justifies this revolution in transport modes? It’s nowhere to be seen. It’s as if the Government has signed up to the global warming religion so as to save humanity while ignoring the fact that reductions in UK emissions, particularly those that are only transport related, will have very little impact on worldwide emissions. The UK generates about 1% of global emissions while transport related emissions are an even smaller proportion. The UK appears to aiming to be a saint among sinners which may make us feel good but may make us economically poor.
What are the implications for investors? It’s clear that many billions of pounds will be spent by the Government to achieve this new world. But there is one simple message to take on board. The UK will be impoverished in comparison with countries that have not become quite so committed to the new religion. So investment in China, India, even the USA, in fact anywhere except the UK and the rest of Europe, might make more sense.
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The Government has published the Williams Review of proposals for how Britain’s railways should be reformed. The existing franchise system for the train operating companies with a separate company managing the tracks which was introduced in the 1990s has proved to be a dismal failure.
Network Rail went bust and although the franchise services have been improved in some regards, the recent collapse in ridership due to the Covid epidemic has meant the Government had to step in to keep franchises afloat. The franchise system was also exceedingly complicated with horrendously complicated contracts to supposedly provide the right incentives to train operators. It did not stop arguments over who was to blame for delays to services. But the Government (i.e. you and me via taxation) ended up providing even bigger subsidies and in ways that were not that obvious.
Train delays are common. The report says that one third of trains were late in 2019/20 and this has barely improved in the past five years.
Now the Williams-Shapps Plan is now proposing a brave new world of Government control. Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said: “Great British Railways marks a new era in the history of our railways. It will become a single familiar brand with a bold new vision for passengers – of punctual services, simpler tickets, and a modern and green railway that meets the needs of the nation.”
That sounds remarkably like the ambitions of the old British Rail does it not?
New flexible season tickets are promised that will help those who are now only commuting into offices a few days per week and simpler and less confusing tickets are foretold. Paper tickets will disappear and there will be a new app to enable easy booking. This will compete with companies such as Trainline (TRN) on the web whose share price has dropped by 25% since the announcement. There were lots of people shorting the stock even before the news broke, probably because the company has never made a profit and looks financially to be somewhat unstable. Trainline issued some soothing comments including: “The Company believes the proposals will provide Trainline with new opportunities to innovate for the benefit of customers and further grow its business” but it’s clearly a major threat.
The Williams report says that train operating franchises will be replaced by “Passenger Service Contacts”. It is not clear how that is different though. More fine words from the report are: “Under single national leadership, our railways will be more agile: able to react quicker, spot opportunities, make common-sense choices, and use the kind of operational flexibilities normal in most organisations, but difficult or impossible in the current contractual spider’s web”. One claim is that Great British Railways will make the railways more efficient, long the complaint of those who have looked at the finances of the system.
Comment: There is certainly a desire for change as the existing franchise system and separate rail track maintenance system was clearly inefficient. Rail passengers still do not pay for the real costs of running the trains and building/maintaining the tracks except on heavily used commuter lines in the London area. But the essential problem is that the cost of operating trains is high when passenger usage is concentrated into a few hours per day while the public expects a service 18 hours per day or longer. Another problem is that the cost of building and maintaining the tracks and signalling is enormously expensive in comparison with roads.
For example, according to articles in the Guardian (a keen supporter of railways), the cost per mile of building a motorway is £30 million per mile. Does that sound high? But the cost of a new railway such as HS2 is £307 million per mile!
Railways are old technology that intrinsically require expensive track and expensive signalling systems to maintain safety. If a train breaks down or signals fail the whole network is disrupted while this rarely causes a problem on roads. The breakdown of one vehicle on a road makes little impact and traffic actually flows through broken traffic lights quite easily while they are easier to repair.
There is a very amusing section in the report on the “blame culture” that operates at present, and how arguments thus generated are resolved. That’s very worth reading alone.
Changing a rail timetable normally takes 9 months apparently and there have been some big problems as a result in the past. For example in 2019 Northern Rail missed more than a quarter of million stops allegedly after a botched timetable change and generated thousands of customer complaints. You don’t hear of such problems with bus services which are intrinsically more flexible.
How will Great British Railways affect services in London, where commuter surface rail lines are operated by separate companies at present. This is what the Williams report says: “In London and the South East, a new strategic partnership will be established to support housing, economic growth and the environment across the highly interconnected transport network in that part of the country. This will bring together Great British Railways, TfL and local authorities and businesses to coordinate timetabling and investments and to provide a consistent passenger experience in areas such as accessibility, ticketing and communications”. Sounds wonderful does it not, but the devil is surely in the detail.
Ultimately the Government will still be in control of the railways under this plan, so it’s effectively a renationalisation under a different name. That may please some but no nationalised industry has ever been an economic success or pleased their customers. I foretell disappointment.
You can read the full Williams report, which is a panegyric to the future of rail travel in the country here: https://tinyurl.com/3rhcd8e5
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After writing a review of my portfolio performance for last year (see https://roliscon.blog/2021/01/04/year-end-review-better-than-expected/ ), which I only considered as “satisfactory” being well ahead of my FTSE-AllShare benchmark, I have noticed quite a number of investors on Twitter claiming to achieve 40%, 50% or even higher returns. How did they achieve that? Or was it a case of only those who achieved good returns reporting them?
First it’s worth bearing in mind that my portfolio is very diversified across FTSE-100, FTSE-250 and smaller company (e.g. AIM) shares listed in the UK. I also hold a number of UK investment trusts which gives me exposure to overseas markets, and some Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs). Although I have some emphasis on AIM shares, they are not the very speculative ones.
It’s interesting to look at the Annual Reports of two VCTs which were recently issued – Unicorn AIM VCT (UAV) and Baronsmead Second Venture Trust (BMD) and which I hold. Unicorn reported a total return of plus 20.3% to the end of September when historically they have been somewhat pedestrian and seem to buy any AIM shares on offer with the result that they have a very large portfolio and probably track the AIM index.
The FTSE AIM 100 Index total return was 20.6% over last year, massively outperforming the FTSE 100. It is very clear that unlike in most years, when AIM VCTs tended to be outperformed by private equity VCTs, last year was very different. AIM market shares, which often have a focus on technology, clearly benefited greatly in comparison with FTSE shares which includes many retailers, property companies, banks and oil companies.
BMD own a mixed portfolio of unlisted and AIM shares and this is what the Chairperson had to say on their performance: “The recovery of the public portfolio emphasises the benefits of having a mixture of private and publicly listed companies in the portfolio. Over the long-term, the return profiles of the quoted and unquoted portfolios have proved to be complementary with both asset classes delivering robust performance”.
It is very clear that the way to achieve great portfolio performance in the last year was to run a very concentrated portfolio of a few AIM shares and ignore the FTSE-250 companies (down about 5 % over the last year at the time of writing) and the FTSE-100 companies (down about 12%). But such a portfolio would be very risky of course and require very active monitoring and trading. It might also be great in any one year but perhaps not so consistently good over several.
This is the time of year when tip sheets publish their reviews of last year’s recommendations and their tips of the new year. Techinvest have a good track record in that regard but their 2020 tips only delivered an average gain of 9.8% so I am not feeling too unhappy about my own portfolio performance. Am glad to see I already own a number of their 2021 tips.
What are my expectations for the coming year? I rather expected the stock market to fall in the new year after the “Santa Rally” and some stocks have but it still seems to be remarkably buoyant. Is this because all those wealthy octogenarians who own shares have booked their Covid-19 vaccinations and so are in a positive frame of mind? Perhaps so and it has certainly improved my morale having just got a date booked for one despite me being only 75.
The other very good news was an article in the Daily Telegraph today that reported that the UK population is “in the biggest fall since the Second World War”. The over-population of our crowded island, particularly in London and the South-East, has been one of my major concerns for some years. This has led to congested transport systems and a major shortage of homes.
The population reduction is not because of deaths from Covid-19 which have only risen slightly above the normal levels but an “unprecedented exodus of foreign-born workers” resulting in a fall of 1.3 million in 2020. The largest fall was in London where it may have been 700,000. The article also suggests there is likely to be a “baby bust” as couples delay starting a family which might push the birth rate to its lowest on record according to estimates from PWC.
Such a reduction in the population will have negative consequences for the economy in general and particularly for the finances of Transport for London which are already in a dire state after people have been avoiding public transport.
The euphoria over the fact we might survive the epidemic surely needs to be tempered by the gloomy prognostications for the UK economy.
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After being preceded by numerous leaks, the Government has finally announced that it is bringing forward the date when sales of new petrol and diesel powered cars are banned to 2030 (see Reference 1 for details). The only exception is that sales of hybrid vehicles will be permitted until 2035. In practice such vehicles will go the same way as the dinosaurs, facing extinction in a few years’ time.
That will not stop such vehicles already purchased from being used after those dates but they may be discouraged in other ways of course (such as by the ULEZ in London).
This is what Allistair Heath (who described himself as “a convert” to electric cars) said in the Daily Telegraph: “The green agenda has triumphed, in the sense that cultural, political, educational and corporate elites, in the US, UK and every European country, are all in favour of decarbonisation. Opponents have been routed, with almost no chance of a way back”. He’s definitely right in that regard. There has been no cost/benefit analysis of these proposals or rational justification given. It’s all about cutting air pollution and saving the planet regardless of the negative consequences of these moves.
To start with the Government is spending £1.8 billion to support the charging infrastructure and other measures required by electrification of all vehicles. That will come out of your taxes. This is far from a trivial matter. In London and other major UK cities one big problem is that many households do not have off-street parking so there will need to be kerbside charging points installed in many streets.
The car industry, one of the major UK exporters, will have to adapt to only producing electric vehicles and much faster than they expected. They may be able to cope with that but will it damage their export capability? Nobody seems to have looked at that issue. The Government says it will create 40,000 extra jobs by 2030, particularly in our manufacturing heartlands of the North East and across the Midlands, but that seems to be very unlikely to be the case. These will not be new jobs surely, just replacing existing ones.
This is what Lord Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to say about the new “Green revolution”: “If the Government were trying to damage the economy, they couldn’t be doing it better. Moreover, the job creation mantra is economically illiterate. A programme to erect statues of Boris in every town and village in the land would also ‘create jobs’ but that doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.”
Does the public demand cuts in air pollution? It was interesting to read some of the response to a recent survey of Lewisham residents where 13% said they suffered from medical conditions as a result of air pollution in their local street. Some of them might be suffering from more pollution because of the closed roads in Lewisham though where a Low Traffic Neighbourhood has been installed and it’s worth pointing out that the majority of air pollution in the borough comes from other sources than transport. In reality diesel and petrol cars contribute only 12% and 6% respectively of all emissions in London and they are falling rapidly.
But a survey by London Councils reported that “The vast majority of Londoners (82%) are concerned about climate change with half of concerned respondents going further saying they are very concerned (40%). Over half of respondents (52%) feel their day-to-day life in London had been impacted by climate change”. Many years of scaremongering over climate change has clearly brainwashed the general public into believing it’s a major threat to their life. The metropolitan elites who can afford to buy electric vehicles (which currently cost a lot more than diesel/petrol ones) can salve their consciences by buying electric vehicles despite the fact that they will have minimal impact on overall levels of air pollution while UK emissions from all sources contribute only 1% to global CO2 emissions and hence cannot have any significant impact.
Will the public accept the ban on the sale of new diesel/electric vehicles and cope with it? Based on public opinion, they are likely to accept it and in reality, with a few exceptions they should be able to cope.
By 2035, electric vehicles are likely to be cheaper and also have longer range, and older vehicles will still be able to be used. If charging points are much more common as they should be in a few years, that will lessen the problems. But there are two problem areas:
Those vehicle owners with no off-street parking might find charging their vehicles problematic. And those who wish to own motorhomes or tow caravans will find electric vehicles have very short ranges.
In summary, the Government’s announcement will impose major costs on people, and on the economy while having little real impact in reality on air pollution or global warming. However, the encouragement of electric vehicles does make sense in some ways but that is already being done by taxation, by subsidies and by measures such as zero emission streets in problem areas in London.
Putting a sharp deadline on sales of some vehicles, particularly hybrid ones in 2035, just seems somewhat irrational when the dangers of air pollution have been grossly exaggerated and there will be significant problems in making the change for some people. More attention needs to be paid to other sources of air pollution and one of the major factors that has caused increases in that is the growth of the population, an issue few politicians seem to want to tackle. Air pollution directly relates to population numbers and density and London is a good example of the negative consequences of allowing unlimited population growth.
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The Daily Telegraph ran an interesting article today on the amount of client cash held by stockbrokers and what they earn from it. Most brokers pay no interest on cash held in broking accounts, but get significant interest on it that they retain for themselves. They singled out Hargreaves Lansdown who apparently received £91 million in the last 12 months (to June) for some criticism. They obtained a margin of 0.75% on the cash held.
Many investors moved out of the stock market during the March epidemic rout but left the cash in their broking accounts rather than move it out, mainly because it’s takes effort and can be tricky to do so with ISAs and even more so with SIPPs.
But you can take cash out of an ISA and put it back in later, just so long as you put it back in within the same tax year. In fact I took quite a lot of cash out of our ISAs and with the market recovering strongly I am moving some back in. I did not expect the recovery to take place until much later in the calendar year. It’s quite difficult to understand why the market is recovering so quickly. Perhaps investors are looking further ahead than the short term poor economic numbers, or are betting on a vaccine working and soon (the FT reported on Russia going into production with one). But I never try to figure out the rationality of the market – I just follow the market trend but selectively about which shares I am buying and selling.
There is a great deal of irrationality in the world at present. A good example was a webinar I attended this morning run by Landor Links on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). These are being promoted by the Government and frequently consist of road closures using the euphemistically named “modal filters” Several of the speakers promoted the wonders of such schemes typically using slides showing the joy of cycling in sunny weather. They failed to cover how the residents of boroughs such as Waltham Forest got to vote on the proposals, before or after implementation. I know there is a very large amount of opposition in Waltham Forest, in Lewisham in the Oval area, in Islington and several other parts of London. But the Covid-19 epidemic is being used to justify emergency measures without any public consultation.
It’s all quite disgraceful as democracy is being undermined and the road network is being destroyed. Traffic congestion in Lewisham for example has been made a lot worse to my personal knowledge and that’s even before the schools return. Labour controlled Councils are frequently a particular problem as they tend to like to decide what is good for you rather than listening to their electorate or taking into account any rational arguments.
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The bad news this morning for holders of retailer Ted Baker (TED) is that the company has announced an independent review of its inventory. It says it has identified that the value of inventory held on its balance sheet has been overstated. It estimates that the figure is up to £25 million and that it relates to prior years. This looks like yet another audit failure (the auditors are KPMG).
The share price is down 10% today at the time of writing but it’s been falling for a long time so it’s now down well over 80% from its peak at the start of the year. Warnings about its stock holding are not new. This is what the Investors Chronicle had to say in October: “Ted Baker’s stock levels have been a cause for concern. Inventories have grown consistently in recent years, reaching a peak of 37 per cent of revenues at the full year”. For a clothing retailer to hold that much stock seems simply unreasonable. That report came after an unexpected half year loss. I suspect that even worse news may come out in due course.
On Friday an article by Simon Thompson in Investors Chronicle contained a puff for SRT Marine Systems (SRT). This made for interesting reading as I used to hold the stock – sold at 25p in 2012, price now 52p. I sold because of repeated lack of progress and overoptimistic forecasts of big deals in the pipeline. The CEO (he’s still there) seemed to be a perennial optimist and even analysts started to become wary. Revenue and profits jumped around from year to year (big profits in 2019 after losses in 2018) and the share price jumped around similarly. Simply not the kind of company I like to hold.
Has anything changed to cause Simon to tip the share? The basis is a big deal (a “game changing contract worth £31.8 million”) to sell AIS systems for marine surveillance in the Philippines. There are also other similar deals in the pipeline. This is what is says in the recently published Interim Report in which they also reported a major loss: “Most of our system discussions are confidential in nature and usually have a long gestation period due to the nature of a government turning a general idea into a real system with all the necessary regulations, budgets and approvals. Over the last few years, we have followed a very steep learning curve in respect of understanding the realities of the intricacies and complexities of the processes that each of these large contracts must complete prior to SRT being contracted. Whilst predicting timescales remains imperfect, this knowledge now enables us to more accurately characterise system opportunities with regards to their status within a customer’s process and better understand the real time window within which we would expect to be contracted and start implementing an SRT-MDA system. We hope this will reflect in an improving ability to provide market updates on the status of future system contract opportunities”.
Big projects also create big risks though, and soak up working capital. Will they be completed on time and within budget? Will the customers be satisfied and pay on time? I won’t be jumping in to follow Simon Thompson’s tip just yet. I’ll wait to see if the leopard can change its spots.
Another interesting article over the weekend was one by David Miles (Professor of Economics at Imperial College). It was headlined: “Why our rising population will bring with it a decreasing standard of living”. The article argues that with a rising population the country needs to invest more simply not just to maintain the capital asset stock but to cover the demands of the extra population – for housing and transport for example. But the higher the population growth, the less your ability to maintain assets per person unless you raise savings. But that means lower consumption, hence we become individually poorer.
Population growth is certainly a concern of mine, and likewise for many other people who live in the London area. What follows is a article I recently wrote on that subject for another organisation:
London Congestion – It’s Only Going to Get Worse
As anyone who has lived in London for more than a few years probably knows, the population of the metropolis has been rapidly rising. This has resulted in ever worse congestion not just on the roads but on public transport also. The roads are busier, rush hours have extended and London Underground cannot handle the numbers who wish to travel on some lines during peak hours. Even bus ridership has been declining as the service has declined in reliability and speed due to traffic jams.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) has published some projections of future population numbers for the capital and the conclusion can only be that life is going to get worse for Londoners over the next few years.
The current population is about 8.8 million but is forecast to grow to 10.4 million by 2041, i.e. an 18% increase. This increase is driven primarily by the number of births and declining death rates. The relatively high numbers of births in comparison with what one might expect is because London has a relatively youthful population. One can guess this is the case because of the high numbers of migration from overseas which results in a net positive international migration figure while domestic migration to/from the rest of the UK is a net negative, i.e. Londoners are being replaced by immigrants.
But population increase in London does not have to be so. The chart below shows you the trend over the last 100 years and as you can see London has only recently reached the last peak set in 1939. During the 1960s to 1990s the population fell. What changed? In that period there was a policy to reduce overcrowding in London and associated poor housing conditions by encouraging relocation of people and businesses to “new towns”. But when Ken Livingstone took power he adopted policies of encouraging more growth. His successors have continued with those policies and have promoted immigration, e.g. with Sadiq Khan’s “London is Open” policy.
Many Londoners complain about the air pollution in the London conurbation without understanding that the growth in businesses and population have directly contributed to that problem. More people means more home and office heating, more transport (mainly by HGVs and LGVs) to supply the goods they require, more emissions from cooking, and many other sources. The Mayor thinks he can solve the air pollution issues by attacking private car use and ensuring goods vehicles have lower emissions but he is grossly mistaken in that regard. The problem is simply too many people.
Building work also contributes to more emissions substantially so home and office building does not help. But the demand for new homes does not keep pace with the population growth resulting in many complaints that people have to live in cramped apartments or cannot find anywhere suitable to live at all. Likewise new public transport capacity does not keep pace with the increased demand. There is some more capacity on the Underground but only on some lines and not much while Crossrail which might have helped has been repeatedly delayed.
The economy of London is still buoyant. But all the disadvantages of overcrowding in London mean that Londoners are poorer in many ways. Indeed if Professor Miles is right, they will be cash poorer as well. Those who can move out by using long-distance commuting or relocating permanently thus leaving London to be occupied by young immigrants.
Any Mayor who had any sense would develop a new policy to discourage immigration, encourage birth control and encourage emigration to elsewhere in the UK or the Rest of the World. But I doubt Sadiq Khan will do so because a poorer population actually helps him to get elected. It’s a form of gerrymandering.
If Sadiq Khan wanted Londoners to live in a greener, pleasanter city with a better quality of life then he would change direction. But I fear only intervention by central Government will result in any change.
Replacing the directors of companies by shareholders can be enormously difficult. Although I have been instrumental in the past in helping that process in several companies, it takes enormous effort and a lengthy timescale to achieve it. ShareSoc director Cliff Weight has published a very perceptive article on the problems of doing so at the Ventus VCTs.
Problems faced by shareholders who are unhappy with the directors of a company are a) communicating with all other shareholders now that many are in nominee accounts and the costly process of writing to shareholders on the register via post (and processing the register into usable format for mailing); b) the existing directors of a company using the resources of the company (i.e. shareholders funds) to campaign actively against any change including the use of expensive proxy advisors to contact shareholders via telephone; c) the role of IFAs who advise their clients or who manage their portfolios and who can influence the shareholder voting; and d) the inertia of institutional investors (or to quote someone from the FT today: about 60% of company investors are passive shareholders and ‘don’t care’).
In the case of the Ventus VCTs, some shareholders are unhappy with the management fees as no new investments are being made by the company and are unhappy with the actions of the directors. They have tabled requisitions for the Annual General Meetings at Ventus VCT and Ventus 2 VCT on the 8th August to remove all the directors and appoint new ones. Of particular concern is the current two-year termination notice on the management agreement which is now being proposed to extend further. It is never a good idea for investment trusts to have long termination periods in contracts with the manager.
You can read Cliff Weight’s blog article here: https://tinyurl.com/y2de9vaa . There is also an article covering this topic in this weeks Investor’s Chronicle under the title “Limits of Influence”. It’s well worth reading.
How to solve these problems? I suggest the following: a) a reform to put all shareholders (including beneficial owners) on the register of companies; b) put shareholders email addresses on the register so that communicating with them can be done at reasonable cost – it’s surely unreasonable in the modern age to only have postal addresses which adds to costs enormously; c) limit how much can be spent on proxy advisors to oppose shareholder requisitions; and d) exclude passive institutional investors who have no interest as owners from voting.
Rent Controls
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is intending to develop proposals for rent controls in London so as to “stabilise” or reduce property rents in London (or make them “more affordable” as he puts it). That’s despite the fact that he has no legal powers to do so and a Conservative government would likely block such proposals. But Jeremy Corbyn supports the idea. The Mayor clearly sees this as a vote winner for his re-election campaign next year as he claims 68% of Londoner’s support rent controls!
Some of my readers probably invest in buy-to-let properties so such proposals will worry them considerably. On the other hand, those who rent houses or flats in London are undoubtedly concerned about the cost of renting and the rapid rise in rents in London. Some are being forced out of London or have to move to smaller properties.
But rent controls never work and create all kinds of negative side-effects, or unintended consequences. When I moved to London in the 1960s, rent controls were in place and had been since 1945 in various forms (there is good coverage of the history of rent controls in London on Wikipedia). In the 1960s, unfurnished properties were almost impossible to find or were horribly expensive as landlords had withdrawn from the market. Rachmanism to force tenants out of rent controlled properties was also rife and what property there was available for rent on the market was often in very poor condition because landlords simply could not justify spending money on maintenance. We definitely do not want to return to the 1960s despite Jeremy Corbyn’s desire to put us there!
Rent controls are not the answer, as many studies of such schemes has shown. The Mayor needs to do more to tackle the housing problem in London by ensuring more home are built, encouraging movement of people out of London, and discouraging new immigration into the capital from elsewhere. But you can read the Mayor’s press release here if you wish to learn more about his plans: https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/to-tackle-affordability-crisis
HS2 and Brexit
The latest report that HS2 may cost an extra £30bn, meaning it could cost as much as £85bn in total, surely makes it even less justifiable. Enabling a very few people to save a few minutes on the train journey time from London to Birmingham at that cost makes no sense, although there might be more justification for expanding capacity and speed on routes in the North of England. However, it would surely be much better to spend that kind of money on an improved road network where the benefits are much greater. The Alliance of British Drivers has just published an analysis of road expenditure versus taxation which includes a comparison of road versus rail expenditure. It’s well worth reading – see here: https://www.abd.org.uk/road-investment-and-road-user-taxation-the-truth/ .
Now the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) have recently suggested that a “no-deal” Brexit would blow a £30bn hole in the public finances. Even if you accept that is true, and many do not, there appears to be a simple solution therefore. Cancel HS2 just to be on the safe side.
