Argghhhh !!!!

I can't call Jarvis right. I bot on CFD at 360, they fell to 328. I cut my loss and sold short, bah, now they're back up to 343.50.

Any feelings on their direction?

"UP" my friend.

The Shares mag gave them as a buy into any weakness several weeks ago at 3.37 with a view of 3.90 over 12 months. Another says they are worth 5.20.

Earnings forecast raised by 9% for 2004 and 6% for 2005. Free cash flow 26.7 for 2004 & 35.8 for 2005. Price target implies a prospective PER for 2004 of only 9.7times which is a 40% discount to Serco.

Not one to be short of I fear.

Regards

SAMPO

I think that any going short deals at the moment in a bull market are very risky indeed. Have you noticed some companies have been rising despite apalling performances - like British Airways to mention a well known one.

Hmmmmm,

Drifted around & down all day

& THEN 1,359,998 shares bought for 206p at 4:30pm Friday.


_________Time _Price _Quantity Type _ Bid Offer Buy/Sell Total Buy Total Sell Total Unknown
05/12/03 16:30 206.0 1,359,998 _ P __ 200.0 203.0 _Buy _ 1,610,940 463,611 ___ 149,837
05/12/03 16:29 203.65 238 _____ O ___ 202.75 203.0 Buy ___ 250,942 463,611 ___ 149,837

So ended with 3 times as many Buys.

Down another 5% on the day foloowing last weeks sluggish performance..150p anyone..

Why the surprise? Head office like Buckingham Palace - Board lie like troopers - Norris on board - Don't pay subcontractors when they're due - Shite company - Deserve to be bankrupted - No doubt they'll bounce from here ;-)

nice one brian. A very good summing up of JRVS. No doubt will be taken over shortly, but not before it hits 130-140p I hope.

I'm not a fan of his but hasn't Evil got a short with a target of 1 on this?

Going down.

Ground floor 50p

I sold out a long time ago.

At 50p I'll definitely buy again.

They are soooooo shite that they have got to go to 50p.

:-)

Seems to have disappointed a few people recently.......

When I see so many people trying to drive the price down then its time to buy!!! Target of 250 in short term!

....Concerns over the school contracts dispute returned to dog Jarvis, the construction group chaired by Steve "Shagger" Norris. Bear raider Evil Knievil is maintaining his short position in the stock because he likes neither the balance sheet nor the way the company presents its accounts.....

If there's one company that may one day shock the market with dodgy accounting my feel is it's Jarvis.

Apparently there is a protest by Kirklees staff tomorrow against the awarding of another contract to Jarvis. They say, based on the first schools contract, "..Jarvis's name has become a joke..unaccountable to anyone...delays..poor workmanship..poor health and saftey..escalating costs...slow payment to sub-contractors." it goes on and on.
No one, head-teachers, unions, workers or subbies apparently has a good word for them except the local politicians awarding them the second contract...Mmm what's that smell?

Seriously one has to wonder how they still get the contracts. Do they underprice? Or is there another reason?

The point is that they got the second contract.

But at what margin? If their own internal administration is as inefficient as their external working will they even know? And as a taxpayer do you actually want a company like this working for you? I know I don't - no wonder our infrastructure is so far behing the rest of Western Europe!

From the local news.
Big Deal Brian we all know the unions do not like PFI projects.And as the article states at the bottom and Orrill has stated they got the second contract.
The smell is probably that associated with someone looking at all the negatives and not positives of a 25 million contract win re trying to deramp price.


Unions to protest at second Jarvis deal Jan 20 2004
By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner
UNIONS will protest against a Kirklees Council decision to award another school refurbishment contract to Jarvis.

Members of the local government union Unison, supported by other local unions, will lobby councillors before a full council meeting at 1.30pm tomorrow at Huddersfield Town Hall.

In November it was announced that Jarvis will handle the 25m contract for the shake-up of special schools across Kirklees.

A new school will be built in Newsome to replace Highfields at Edgerton and Turnshaws at Kirkburton.

Jarvis, together with building firm Totty, will also be working on new schools for Fairfield, at Heckmondwike, and Longley School, Huddersfield, along with work to re-shape and extend Ravenshall at Dewsbury under the Government's Private Finance Initiative.

But Mike Forster, a spokesman for Unison, claimed Jarvis had had a very poor record, both as an employer and a building contractor over the last two years .

He said: "Our experience in Kirklees has been one of huge delays, poor workmanship, escalating costs and poor health and safety.

"Jarvis has been working in 20 of all mainstream schools and their name has almost become a joke. They do not appear to be accountable to anyone and therefore building deadlines do not appear to have been adhered to.

"Ultimately, as a recent head teachers' report confirmed, it is the pupils' education that has suffered.

"If this is the legacy of Jarvis, how can they have been awarded this second contract? It is clearly a disgrace that such a record of failure should be rewarded with yet another plum building contract.

He said the protest lobby had been called to mobilise the sense of anger at the council's decision and to demand decent public funding for services.

The contract will be the second major PFI project the council has undertaken with Jarvis.

The first, which began in summer 2001, involved refurbishing 20 schools as part of a 43m, 27-year project.

A Jarvis spokesman said: "We are disappointed that the local branch of Unison has chosen to overlook the benefits that the recent investment in Kirklees schools has made to the teaching and learning environment in them and has adopted a singularly negative approach.

"We refute all the allegations made and, in regard to our bid to work with the Council on a second partnering contract, can only state that they have chosen us as their preferred bidder based on the bid that we submitted in competition with others and in full knowledge of the facts regarding our previous performance."

A touch ironic that the very places where our children are supposed to learn about quality and honesty are being built and maintained by a company who's own values fall very far short.
However, I don't believe recent falls are down to the lousy contracting they do but more to doubts about the 'quality' of their accounts.

did evil not lose a packet on regus

Down 10% on nothing more than a report of a dozen complaints of late payment by contractors - Either oversold or the City thinks the accounts aren't as honest as they could be.

Buys 4.6m Sells 4.1m. Price now down 13.70%.

Jarvis has been a serial disapointer, just look at the graphs over the years - wasn't this share above 5 within living memory?
The Potters Bar crash did them no good although they deny any fault, but what matters is "perception" and I think the perceptiion - taking all in all - is not good. The drop today is significant on only one small piece of news - so Posters here may be right there is unease in the City over the Accounts ( Let's face there's unease over most accounts-n'est pas?)
As a continuing holder in a small way I'm waiting for the notice of an AGM.

Maybe the top management needs to jump into their Political Arena and stop trying to do two jobs, where there would be "some" conflict of interest.

I'm watching, but not buying until Management actually does something to address Public concerns and those in the City maybe too. Indeed I'd like the top man to leave, without collecting - take his salary in shares as of the date when he joined. Ie a fixed niumber of shares - that is the only way a company executive and shareholder interests can be aligned.
I'd vote for that.

Hasen't Evil tipped these as a short and they are up more than 11% today? Perhaps he is not so god like

woody, Evil shorted JRVS at 209p before Xmas and several times over the years from it's highs of 4-5 (See ADVFN threads for his most recent webcast). Whilst the shares have bounced today this could be just short covering after substantial profits made by the bears are locked in.

JRVS - I was in as they bounced on Wed long @119.75 @ 50 p/p closed @ 130. In again at the bell long @125 @ 25 p/p closed Thurs @ 138.5. Peanuts for some of you but I was very pleased - 2 weeks wage in 24 hrs!:o) Working 4 on 4 off gives me plenty of time trade.( Not all good news took a hit on S&P that wiped 1/2 my profit!)
Long ARM/SPT @ the mo down 2 points...

This post from the fool is worth a read -

Over the last three years I've written several posts about Jarvis, all quite negative, and all based on what I've actually seen on the ground in terms of their performance, or been told by a couple of senior people within their sub contractors, with the addition of a dash of scepticism that what was a third rate contractor 10 years ago had suddenly become a top notch company in a new and extremely fashionable field.
Recently I wrote just such a post in a thread with an enormous number of contributions here. Although some responses "subbie bashing is great for the business, etc" indicated to me a complete lack of understanding of the business, there were many fools who had clearly looked carefully at Jarvis, so I decided to plough through the recent reports and RNSs in case I was missing something.
The first thing that struck me was the similarity with Amey in terms of their business. This was not just a matter of the two companies working in the same fields, but they both seemed to have an enormous diversity of businesses within the business. In theory, this is in keeping with their construction industry roots, where effectively each new major project is almost a stand alone business, but in the construction industry a painful job lasts say two years as opposed to 25 in PFI /PPP so it is even more imperative that the job is properly bid. If bids are seriously underpriced it would almost certainly be possible to turn a blind eye to the loss for much longer with PFI, but presumably it would show in cashflow.
Both were trumpeting wonderful new management "bullshit" type companies, although Ameys went from wonderfully optimistic mentions in the AR to having to pay somone to take Vectra (I think their version was called) away over about 3 years.
I bought into Amey at about 30p a few months before they were taken over, having read, very carefully, ARs etc similar to the last few days of reading JRVS. I have to say that I found the Amey stuff more understandable and credible than Jarvis'.
Both Jarvis & Amey suffered from lousy publicity and consequent reputations, although again my sympathy is with Amey on this one. The reputational problems Jarvis have are for shoddy contract performance in just about every aspect of their business, and underpayment of creditors. None of the other big PFI providers come near them in terms of performance dissatisfaction in any single business element as far as I can see. Amey had a far better reputation in terms of contract performance, with their problem being basically the city's sudden realisation of the implications of UITF34 (I think its called), which Amey adopted about six months before they had to, but later than many. This had allowed them to capitalise tender costs as "investments", and I believe they had been including those costs before achieving "preferred bidder" status. This effectively made their capital base look bigger - handy if you are borrowing lots of money in a frantic push to grab contracts. But again, this showed up in the cash flow - sound familiar?
Although the notes to JRVS accounts complies with ..34, the lack of information within the accounts on progress through the contract stages was, IMHO, annoying to say the least. I could not find clear definition of contracts where Jarvis had been shortlisted or awarded preferred bidder status during the period, or those which had progressed to commercial close, or financial close. Nor was there any clear indication of the extent, cost, cause or financial recoverability of delays in progressing from one status to the next, which was actually the first thing I was seeking in the reports.
In this respect it is worth remembering that the sort of projects Jarvis tend to win are not the exceptional ones - they are the type which are reasonably common now, and should therefore be progressing more quickly through the various stages.