Subject: Re: Unite Group (UTG), UK, falling knife.
Closed at 503p. What a strange day...

My screen says close was 495.40 : )
Lowest close since 2015-02-02, just over 11 years ago.


I guess you have to step way back to get a sense of scale of the situation.

One could possibly sum it up: maybe the UK education market was a little overbuilt and bubbly, and maybe it became a little too dependent on the slightly fickle pipeline of foreign students. Some retrenchment seems in the cards. It might be a bit harder to fill all those seats, and beds, than it was. The entire broad UK "education industry" might have a dip or a long flat spot.

But it's not going away, and retrenchment will be concentrated in the 3rd-tier and 2nd-tier institutions. And any service providers that are over-leveraged. It doesn't seem as if Unite falls much in either of those two categories, and a long flat spot, maybe a dividend cut for a while, is not the same as a wipeout. Especially if that counts as the near-worst-case.

For the greed case, which is always much more fun though less important, if they ever eventually returned to prior highs (just pre pandemic), what's the CAGR from today based on the number of years that takes? Even if it takes 13 years, it's still 8.0%/year compounded price return, PLUS the dividends : )

Jim