Member Info for 1GW_

No it wasn't me who asked but I do have the impression they were trying to get away from having to put one out every quarter. In addition, companies often seem reluctant to provide much information while M&A processes are underway. If they are ahead of (or behind) "expectations" by more than a certain amount though then they would be expected to inform the market.

Official press release is an exhibit to the schedule TO filed tonight. Or here's a second-hand version: https://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/RhythmOne+plc+Commences+Exchange+Offer+To+Acquire+YuMe%2C+Inc./13656829.html

I don't think Company B would feature at such length in the F4 if it didn't exist! But whether it could be persuaded to re-enter the fray, given its concerns over "the political climate in the United States and certain U.S. foreign relations issues", even if Edenbrook could find out who it was, is another matter.

I wouldn't be surprised if Edenbrook might be hoping to find out who company B is with a view to encouraging them to bid, notwithstanding any US political / foreign policy issues.

Bmac - in terms of how it could be enacted in practice, how about they just launch the F-4 with the cash alternative already written in? I put the following para on the other board in response to MidasX reposting my 6th Dec post. Clearly just speculation on my part and I am sure there are several other scenarios to explain the delay in public filing of the F-4 which don't involve R1 making a cash alternative. -------- Incidentally, the scenario in which a cash alternative was going to be proposed in the F-4 would fit well with the idea of developing the F-4 with the SEC without formally filing a first draft for SEC review and comment. I had assumed that once R1 had what they believed was a compliant F-4 it would be filed with the SEC with any particularly confidential bits redacted until the SEC was ready to declare it "effective" so that the offer could be launched. But if the confidential bits are actually the terms of the offer itself (i.e. the existence of a cash alternative) then I can see why R1 would not want to tip their hand too early - effectively giving any potential counter-bidder extra time to raise financing for a counter-bid once they see the level of the cash alternative. And the SEC might play along on the grounds that ultimately R1 were trying to make their offer more attractive to YuMe shareholders and wouldn't be prepared to do so if they felt their cash alternative would be used as a stalking horse for other interested parties.

That's me out again for now. I had meant to stay longer but want to raise some cash and it is easier to take the windfall here than sell some of my other positions.

Sold a few there to lock in some profit.

Yes, curious. Some investor sites (e.g. the Telegraph one linked below) show Stifel as a joint broker to Sports Direct, which would prompt some questions, but I can't see any connection on the Sports Direct site - where Liberum is listed as the sole corporate broker from January this year. http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/fundamentals/?epic=spd

That's a big trade. Nice to see it going through (just) above �2 and providing some validation of the current market price.

Edison's update. http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com/research/report/findel558313/preview/

Just have to hope it's not "fools seldom differ" that is the more credible explanation, EJ.

This seems to be even more concentrated than last time I updated my spreadsheet. If I have the numbers right there is nearly 70% held between Sports Direct, Toscafund and Schroders: 30% Sports Direct 20% Schroders 19% Toscafund Now that the (Findel) business appears to be heading in the right direction, and Sports Direct's new head of strategic investments has presumably settled in to his role, if not perhaps yet completed his "thorough review of all current strategic stakes", is it too much to hope that we might see progress on the SPD front before too long?

And of course the non-value argument of a relatively concentrated shareholder base including the Sports Direct holding suggesting the possibility of corporate action, and/or some kind of supply/marketing agreement with Sports Direct, is still there I think.

Having studied this some more I really like those results. 7.5p/share of "bottom line" earnings as well as the 11.9p/share of adjusted earnings. The only adjustment appears to me to be the charge on the forex hedging (fair value movement on derivatives) which I think is reasonable - and could easily go either way in future given the uncertainty around sterling. They comment that there is some 1H gain from intra-year timing differences (including from the new bad debt provisioning model) which will be unwound in 2H, so they are guiding to meet (rather than beat) expectations for the full year. Digital Look is showing around 22p/share expectation for the full-year. But even so, 22p/share of earnings for the full year, with a hope that they will be mainly "bottom-line" rather than adjusted, looks excellent to me given the growth in Express Gifts, the turn-round in Findel and the comments on current trading. I think I can more reasonably start to look at Findel as a "value" share at under �2. So I've chased the price up a bit further and bought some more.

Wow! Looks encouraging, so that's me back in, probably pushing the price up in the process, so I hope it sticks as people consider the detail.

Given the drop in Crest Nicholson, I'm having another go at the CRST-TEF trade, selling TEF to fund buying more CRST, meaning my CRST holding is now about double the size of my TEF holding.

I take it you're not expecting a windfall profits tax to be a part of the equation for raising funds for more building then!

I think this is a real red herring. If the increase in SoL is due to arbitrage (and my guess is a lot of it is) then the whole point is that (for arb trades) there's no net short if the deal completes. The shares sold short in R1 will be matched at completion by the entitlement to R1 shares from long positions in YuMe. The potential problem for the arb traders is if the deal doesn't complete. Worst case for them (and me) is perhaps that YuMe has a sudden and material cash outflow which means at completion it is in breach of its commitment to have a certain amount of cash available and R1 decides to walk. In such a scenario (which for the avoidance of any doubt I think is highly unlikely) arb traders would most likely be dumping long YuMe positions and buying back R1 shares to close their R1 short positions. But that's more likely to be a problem on the YuMe side than on the R1 side as there would probably be other selling pressure on R1 if the deal fell apart like that.

And unwound my other recent Crst-Tef trade by selling Crst and buying Tef. That puts Crst and Tef back to more-or-less the same weight in my portfolio, which seems right to me ahead of the budget. Whether I then want to leave them like that through the Tef results, I'm not sure.

...and bought back one of my Tef sales now. Happy with the extra housebuilding exposure ahead of the budget and wanting to restore a bit better balance between my Crst & Tef holdings.