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APH up another 8%
Results out
This should follow it up
APH up 8%
Good info eviking, I literaly had no idea who this guy is. Impressive CV.
On that basis do you think he sees a longer term potentially large upside to LDG? It would seem so. Doesn't sound like dumping for a decent profit is what he's about.
Seems more likely he is putting great faith in DBay to turn it into a cash machine and grow their and his investment significantly from where it is now, maybe even increase his holding in time?
Only time will tell.
Richard Griffiths was appointed chairman of Sarossa on 1 December 2017. He has had a long career founding, running, investing in and advising growth companies. Previously, Richard was founder and executive chairman of the Evolution Group PLC, a diversified financial group, taking it from start up to FTSE 250 membership within 5 years. Richard subsequently went on to become founder and chairman of ORA Capital Partners Plc in 2006 and later distributed the company's profits and assets back to shareholders in 2013, before setting up ORA Limited in Jersey in 2014 and at which he remains chairman. In addition, Richard has been a venture or strategic investor in many successful UK companies including IP Group Plc, Nanoco Group Plc, Tissue Regenix Group Plc, GVC Holdings Plc, Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited and Plectrum Petroleum Limited (sold to Cairn Energy Plc).
Hi guys, certainly looking more interesting here these days, still not invested (again) though as having disasters everywhere else!!
I would just add a word of caution though FWIW (what do I know, see above?!), be careful this Richard Griffiths fellow doesn't dump the whole 15.3% holding for a decent profit and crash the SP.
Still watching.....
MAYBE EVEN 17
Nice
IC article yesterday has helped.
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/ideas/2024/05/28/welsh-wizard-sees-value-in-this-stock-and-so-do-we/
My interpretation of events. DYOR.
Stobart group had 12% of the shares here (64M), then they changed their name to Esken. Then they went in to administration against their largest bond holder Cyrus Capital Partners.
Cyrus Capital Partners, L.P. were as of last week 0.61 short. Knowing that the administrators would have to sell off the 64M shares at a low price. Have probably been forward selling for a while. This is also the reason that LDG stopped the buy backs IMO. Enter Richard Griffiths who bough most of it. Well done to anyone else who got some at nearly 40% discount to NAV here. Griffiths is usually an activist, so further events could unfold.
Stobart Group Limited holding 64,149,500
Griffiths ( increase 15.28% - Existing 3.76) = 11.52% * total shares = 525,912,191 * .1152 = 60,585,084
Cyrus Capital Partners, L.P. 0.61 short = 0.0061 * 525,912,191 = 3,208,064
Price is recovering now, as the overhang is gone. APH is looking brighter too. I got a few last week, but wish I had bought more now. Dare we say the low is in now. A break of 12p would end the down trend.
Is it agreed that Richard Griffiths thinks the shares are good value at present levels? He surely wouldn't have increased his holding so much unless he thought that was the case? ALgent.
Afternoon PatShare. Thanks for coming back. Good luck to you too. Bought a few more this afternoon. Some large transactions going through. An interesting share for sure. I think the upside exceeds the downside. Famous last words maybe! ALgent.
Welcome to the board ALiverpoolgent, and good luck with your investment.
What you are saying is probably right, sub-10p could be a good entry point here but no one is really sure why it is sub-10p, the picture is far from clear. Sure there investments may not be performing as they would like, but the share buyback was meant to reduce the discount to NAV and didn't seem to work at all.
As you say, likely to be a long-term investment case from here, and no panic required. At least hey don't have to fundraise like some, plenty of cash in the bank for further deals to be done.
Good afternoon PatShare and all. It's not a clear picture that's for sure. However, I bought a few today. Buying is essentially saying that you think they're good value and have confidence in DBAY's abilities to make themselves, and ourselves therefore, some money. The present situation will take a while to unravel and information is woefully short and what there is not all good. DBAY will make mistakes and investors must expect that. However, I do not doubt they get more things right than wrong. I suppose it's all about probabilities. I think they'll probably make me money though I may have to wait awhile. I see no cause for panic at all. ALgent.
Hey Leedsman, still here then?
I'm probably less of an expert than anyone (on any BB!) and I have even less of a clue as to what is going on with this? Can't help thinking there is much smoke and mirrors and DBay are doing very nicely out of it, thank you!
Under 10p though? Interesting for sure.
Still watching....
Totally agree Leedsman. I'm baffled too. At worst I expected the share price to be stable and didn't expect this drop.
So.... Where does it go from here? I am far from an expert on this but have a very basic understanding and the performance of this share has baffled me more than any other.
This from IC mag in January: (this was not including TMG group)
The bottom line is that although LDG’s pro-forma NAV per share of 19.36p is 8 per cent below the 21p level recorded when I included the shares in my 2023 Bargain Shares Portfolio, its share price has fallen 18 per cent per cent to 12.13p even though LDG retains net cash of around £43.1mn (8.1p). It means that the four shareholdings, which have a combined value of £59.2mn (11.1p), are in the price for £21mn (4p), or almost two-thirds below their carrying valuations.
Good spot re Esken's holding Dartron. I originally misread your message and thought you were saying LDG owned some Esken (which would be v bad) and not vice versa! 11% of such an illiquid company will be difficult to shift so could be an overhang on the stock for a while unless they work out a deal...
Hi all, been looking at this (have a slither), mainly because I'm bullish APH and this seems a decent (if overcomplicated) way to play a recover in APH stock. But they don't make it easy to work out a mark to market NAV. And I'm disappointed that the buy back seemingly has been halted (despite getting authorisation at AGM) well short of their 20% target - think they bought back 37m shares total vs a target of more than 110m...
From what I can work out from the AR they had at end November 2023:
1. 55m shares in APH worth about £22m then (39p), and about £19m at todays SP (34p)
2. 11.1% of SQLI held indirectly via DBay vehicles worth (I think) about £18m, if you value vs current mcap of €195m I believe. But DBay effectively acquired SQLI at €31 a share back in 2021 (vs current SP of €42 a share), so maybe this should be valued more conservatively eg £14m, although we are 2.5 years down the line from the transaction now...
3. 10.6m shares The Mission Group worth about £2m then, and about £2.5m now
4. They had £2.8m worth of Trifast, which they subsequently sold for £3.1m
5. A private holding in the recently acquired (by DBay) Finsbury Foods. They held 12.4% at point of completion and deal was worth £143m, so reasonable to say this is worth £18m. But they say they now own 27.5% although I wonder if some of this is debt funded - the structure and value is unclear.
Putting the above together, I get to about £63m at end Nov, versus their accounts which state investments (all held via Fixtaia subsidiary, which is annoyingly Jersey listed and so opaque) are valued at £55m. So a £7m delta I can't quite square... Add net cash of £42.5m to this and NAV is around £92.5m.
Marked to market today, I get to £67.5m for the assets above excl Trifast (diposed), incl. £10m loan they've written to Nash Squared. If I keep the same delta above, this becomes £60.5m. Add my estimate of cash today (after Trifast proceeds £3.1m, spend on buyback since Nov of £1.1m, less £10m loan to Nash Square, less £1m estimate of opex) of £33.5m. So total NAV of £94m.
Versus current mcap of £51.5m. Ie a discount of about 45%! What am I missing?!
Effectively this is 3 equity investments (APH, Finsbury Food, SQLI) which all seem decent businesses, although I don't know SQLI well it doesn't seem to be valued stupidly on the books. The latter two of these are private businesses, both of which seem to have been bought at reasonable valuations (eg two investors in Finsbury publicly said the price was too low at the time of the deal). Plus a £10m loan at 15% pa to Nash Square (which companies house suggests is profitable and solvent). Plus £33m cash...
I had forgot / didnt know that we had a bit of TMG.
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/TMG/notification-of-major-holdings/16199909
It has received an offer, looks like LDG doubled their money. (going by share price on 13th Nov). Brave bison is another good stock to own, and has large owners already - lord Ashcroft.
unsolicited conditional proposal regarding a possible offer by Brave Bison for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of MISSION. Such offer comprised an all-share offer at an exchange ratio of 11.5 Brave Bison shares for each ordinary share in MISSION (the "Possible Offer"). Based on the terms of the Possible Offer and the closing market prices of MISSION and Brave Bison shares on 29 April 2024, being the last trading day prior to receipt of the Possible Offer, the Possible Offer valued each MISSION share at approximately 29 pence
you are right pat. im on a paper loss for sure. it sounded great in the investors chronicle just before the buy backs! i dont know if you read the other board, but mentioned over there, i think the current issue is that esken (former stobart) went in to administration, they own a chunk of these shares. so ldg has cancelled the buy back, hoping that the administrators are forced to sell the shares back to ldg really cheap. this would be good for the nav discount here, and im sure simon thompson could tell us again how the discount is going to narrow, whether it then would or not i dont know. i guess there is nothing stopping esken just using a broker and doing a book build to sell the shares? either way, these shares could be very cheap soon, i think that explains the selling. then of co****, largest holding alliance pharma, complete s**t show. my only comment there is that blackrock had 1% short, it looked like they really hurried to cover it, driving the price up about 30% in a few days. did they have competition for the shares from dbay? or why are dbay not buying? doesnt say much about the aph holding.
i took 10000 on friday just to lower my average a little, in the hope that one of the events mentioned above does give me an exit. because if you compare this with a small cap investment trust, that pays a dividend and is better regulated, and is rising share price (most are), then this is a terrible investment. what ever st says.
in february he said this:
estimated net cash backs up 67 per cent of share price
holdings worth £59mn in the price for £21mn
37 per cent share price discount to spot nav
.... but it isn't pretty.
I seem to recall a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away?) that DBay were going to turn this into the proverbial golden goose?
It may have made DBay plenty of money but nothing yet for most shareholders; I got out with a reasonable profit 2 years ago but guessing plenty didn't, still waiting for the share buybacks to give them 'fair value to exit' but now nursing big paper losses?
Note to LDG - the buyback isn't working, not achieving it's intended outcome of raising the SP. Why continue with it?
It's a strange one for sure.
I think a huge rise in s.p coming. Starting today .
Just as a very rough calculation, we had (from memory) around £130m in cash. Ldg has bought shares in various companies , but still retained a large cash holding. All the investments are fine apart from the APH investment. This has fallen and its this decline solely responsible for the £12m loss this year.
So my very rough calc is £130m minus £12m loss = £118m. Divided by shares in issue 525m and you get around 22p per share.
Interesting.... they said in 2023 they could buyback up to 20% of the shares in issue but so far, after 12 months, have only bought back about 6.6%....
Still watching....