'Mediaeval History'23 Aug 2017 11:24
I have just found this site while investigating this morning’s 3% b-o-u-n-c-e on the 'other' LSE.
Back when God was a boy (or girl), in the mid-seventies, my father retired to Dorset and befriended John Tyler, then the MD of Meggitt, when it was a ‘penny share’ making gas fittings and other widgets. MD wanted Dad to join the board as an NED, which was factionally divided, so he started buying shares to show faith and credibility. He invested ~£8,000, at an average price around 2p. The other directors then vetoed his appointment (seeing him – quite rightly – as a dangerous voting ally of the MD), but it just wasn’t worth the cost of selling the shares again. They dozed on, never getting above ~5p.
Years later John wanted to retire, so Nigel McCorkell and Ken Coates at Flight Refuelling (Cobham), which was based just down the road, MBI’d into Meggitt and changed it to an aerospace supplier. The shares rocketed so the old man sold a few, and a few more over the years. He died, and I sold a few more. I still have ‘a few’. My theoretical cashing-out price used to be £6, so it was perhaps a sentimental relief when the shares topped just shy of £6 a couple of years ago and drifted back to the mid-threes – where I bought a few more, so it would be ‘real money’ and not just a freebie.
When the next, inevitable consolidation of the aerospace component industry comes along, I reckon that Meggitt will be snapped up by one of the big US players. I have adjusted my selling price to £7+, and am happy to wait. It’s a fine company with niche products and good management, paying a healthy dividend, and I believe it to be still undervalued.