Don’t stand on your dignity, just die

Don’t stand on your dignity, just die: Dignity (LON:DTY) needs your death since others are not obliging sufficiently quickly. Or if they are those who arrange these funerals are choosing other funeral directors.

At 1,800p, DTY is capitalised at £900 million and has tnav of minus £350 million or thereabouts. There is of course a stack of debt – c. £500 million.


Apparently, woodland burials are the coming thing. These do not have to be on established cemetery lands and, costing much less, are eating into DTY’s margins. There is no sign or, I suppose, possibility of this trend being reversed.

Can DTY go into losses? I see no reason why not. All that is now required is a bit of patience to join the downward party since DTY has been hammered elsewhere already in recent days.

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Rather more than two years ago I shorted Victoria (LON:VCP) and for my pains faced legal action from two directions. There were the lawyers for VCP and the lawyers for the source of my bearish information. Since then of course VCP has more than doubled and my source has turned very quiet. Such is the dilemma faced by those who ceaselessly search for shorts.

VCP have just reported and the price is now 800p. This is surely elevation through acquisition accounting. I hesitate to claim that the top has been seen but I would not be surprised if it were.

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Pets At Home (LON:PETS) reported yesterday and declined 10%. This will not be the end of it. This is a debt-fuelled creation where, for instance, KKR got out one on Day One.

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When the history of this phase of the capitalist system is written people will scratch their heads as to who lent the money to these corporates and why. After all, they are regulated are they not? (Just joking: investment is about judgement not form-filling. This is a point which is not understood by regulators.)