Vpc Specialty Share Price (VSL)

Lets look @ BKKT... Q3 loss = $28.8m/ Q4 loss of $153M, and revenue of just $13.7m. The executive founder departed in December 2021.
Heavy shorting, and bad market sentiment.. and down she goes.
Add in regulation for Crypto on the way, it could be a very long time, if at all for $30+ to show its head.

I see that Bakkt is having a shocker now and is trading at just $4.59 having been over $42 on 29th October 2021! Damn that close period of VSL not being able to offload the shares?
Does anyone know what has happened? I'm assuming there's not been a right issue or anything (but I don't know). But it has wiped the entire notional gain off.
In his post on 9th November, Redtom advised that Bakkt was on VSL's books at $21.4m or 5.7p per VSL share. The current Bakkt share price is quite a lot lower (about half) than it was before the October spike.
Has Bakkt hit trouble? Has anyone been following them?

Guitarsolo

Quest, it has, but that is slightly misleading.
VSL floated a few years back at 100p with a stated intention to may out circa 8%/ 8ppa. However, in those early days it had money on "marketplace loans" (i.e. almost direct lending to the sub-prime sector) as well as "balance sheet loans" (i.e. lending to lenders to the sub-prime sector). The former performed badly and the latter performed well. VSL exited the former but at some cost. The share price sank to follow the marketplace loans - I first invested around 90p and bought all the way down. The dividend of 2p per quarter became uncovered and was cut. I think it went down to 1.5p per quarter but that's from memory. Then it built from there to be back to 2p per quarter.
My only point is that if the ranking you refer to is because it has increased its dividend, that is only achieved because it cut it!
Anyway, I've been a fan of VSL and have long forgiven them for the marketplace loans error. I never lose sight of what they are funding (high coupon sub-prime lending) but admire their diligence for protecting the financing and the continued high dividend.
That said, I don't think they will increase the dividend anytime soon. I had hoped the extremely successful share buyback programme would encourage that, but it seems not. Still, I am happy enough with 8ppa and would buy more shares if I wanted more income (although it is already my highest dividend payer).
Still, nice to hear VSL being positively plugged!

Guitarsolo

I see that VSL had a mention in today's 'Money' section as '....the highest yielding fund of the 36 trusts that have increased their dividends..in the past 5 years.' (8.5% yield).
MQ

Hi Redtom, so the 30 November 2021 NAV came in at 118.85p - a bit above where you thought it might but still down on the October NAV of 126p. It seems that the fluctuations around various equity holdings, including Bakkt and VIH (which is the driver for the November change), are causing the NAV to bounce around a bit. I suppose this is largely irrelevant if there is a lock-in period as there is with Bakkt.
I did see the underlying earnings for November were 0.83% which is still OK. If they can make 10% a year they can afford the 8pps dividend.
I'd be interested to see some commentary from the company about how they see the relatively high inflation environment in the US affecting them. Will the inflation make the end-borrower's debt more affordable? Will higher inflation lead to higher coupon rates? Is there any change to delinquency rates or expected delinquency rates?
Guitarsolo