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So to date, apart from trivial amounts, it seems to me we have 3 holders declaring selling (2 selling down significantly) and 1 M&A Arb specialist declaring buying. About 20% of shares accounted for by 8.3 declarations. Still no declaration from Octopus or Thames River.
With the declaration of Octopus today things are a bit clearer, but still only around 29% of shares accounted for by the 8.3 declarations so far, according to my tally. Thames River still to declare, as are CBRE and Telford Homes.
The big declared seller so far is Bank of Montreal, which has managed to sell virtually its entire roughly 3m share position over 3 days. Intriguingly it managed to get 355p for the last and biggest chunk of 1.4m shares yesterday. Schroders sold 0.7m shares on 4th July.
The only big declared buyer to date, as far as I have seen, remains the M&A arb specialist, Cigogne, buying around 0.8m I think over 2 days.
So the big imbalance between sells and buys, while the price stays above 350p and indeed with Bank of Montreal getting such a good price for its last and biggest sale suggests to me that someone else is acquiring in big chunks. Shareholders have 10 days to declare their opening position so there are still a few days left.
I have been a holder in a number of situations where I have thought a counter-bidder might emerge, but ultimately no-one came forward. Once again though, I can see reasons to stay invested here for a bit longer, hoping that this proves the exception.
At the end of week 2 this remains intriguing.
12 shareholders have declared.
2 appear to have sold out (Bank of Montreal from 3.7%, Wise Funds from 1.0%)
1 appears to be on the way out (Schroders from 2.8% to 1.0% as of 11th July)
Only 1 has been buying significantly (M&A arb player Cicogne) & not since 5th July
The net result is that the sum of declared positions has fallen from 31% on 5th July to 27% as of today (with Wise funds declaring selling out today, other 8.3's for today probably on Monday).
So even more of an imbalance towards declared sells now, with Bank of Montreal selling 1.4m on 8th July, Schroders selling 848k on 11th, Wise Funds 770k on 12th. Graham Harris has also been selling steadily but on a smaller scale.
So I think there must be some serious buying going on for the shareprice to remain above 350p. I can't believe this can possibly be balanced by retail investors hoping to get lucky with a counter-bid, and in fact anecdotally we know from this board that there is a weighting towards declared sells rather than buys.
It could still, just about, be rationalised as other M&A arb players below the 1% declaration threshold, as I think they do have a tendency to hunt in packs (or perhaps use similar models). But a UK AIM housebuilder is not the obvious place to look for a lot of M&A arb activity, so I still think it is credible that someone else is building a position. The 10 business days to reveal opening positions will run out soon, so we should know more sometime next week.
I have to say I thought seriously today about taking the small profit on the swap into Crest and building my position back up here in the hope of a counterbid. But my personal experience remains that counterbids tend not to emerge in these "scheme of arrangement" deals so in the end I sat on my hands for today.
As usual, this is offered in good faith, but it is possible I have missed some declarations or made an error of analysis.
So we got the Tef OPD today, CBRE's still to come, presumably tomorrow. With the Wisemans, the Trims and Robert Stokes we're up to around 34% declared by my calculations (plus a bit more for the other PDMRs' various holdings), which still feels to me like a surprisingly low % at this stage of the game.
And still no sign of who has been mopping up the big sells to keep the shareprice above the offer price.
In theory I think we should have all the opening position declarations by now, although I haven't noticed one from CBRE (presume they would have a nil declaration) or Thames River.
My tally is around 40% (plus some shares in share schemes on the Telford OPD that I haven't tried to add up).
Still not really any wiser as to who was buying the big chunks sold by Bank of Montreal, Schroders and Wise Funds, other than perhaps Cicogne buying most of the 4th July Schroders sale. Possibly Tavira, who went over the 1% threshold yesterday by increasing a CFD long, might have picked some up earlier.
But no sign of someone aggressively building a material position, so just have to wait and hope for an announcement by a potential counter-bidder sometime before 6th August.