Member Info for alex1621

Hi smalltrader

Don’t get your hopes up on a reply, other than a polite comment that tells you nothing. You’d only get some feedback if you were on the register as owning 5% of the company. And that would be an off the record meeting in person. If what is going on is legal then they can do nothing, and making public statements (including a private correspondence) would not help them, it might give the market the impression that something was wrong. So a policy of silence on share machinations is probably best.

The FCA are a toothless organisation, but you might want to ask them whether the GS/Liberty arrangement is tantamount to market manipulation? Given that these organisations are lawyered up the answer is likely to be yes.

I’m just going to sit and watch this play out. I reckon ITV will post increasingly better results going forward and I’ll wait for the cycle to change.

In the meantime Liberty Global has paid twice the value of ITV for a much smaller and much less profitable company. An indication of the value in ITV. You’ll need the patience of a saint.

I share your frustration. If Goldman Sachs have been manipulating the share price as we all suspect I really don’t know why such activity should be permitted in a trading exchange. I’m not sure ITV will make any comment on it, as it seldom helps when management teams comment on shorting activity. They’re job, as they see it, is to run the business without reference to what the market is doing ... and that’s probably as it should be.

I’d love to know in detail what they are doing but doubt I ever will. So we can only speculate, but that’s not evidence of anything.

The topic of FTSE expulsions was covered in Simon Thompson's (Investors Chronicle) Trading Secrets book. Apparently most shares bounce back strongly after expulsion, so i'm relatively sanguine about that prospect. Which might present a further buying opportunity on ejection.

Yes, so true. However low and undervalued you think a share is, it can go lower. But unless there is another lockdown (and I don't believe there will be one) I think ITV's updates will only show an improving picture. There might be some bumps in the road but I'd expect the SP to be beyond your entry price of 73p before the year ends.

The results were predictably poor, not that surprising given the economic backdrop caused by the pandemic. But some signs of green shoots ... cash preservation, lower debt, pick up in advertising and production. ITV will clearly survive this period, albeit with the odd bump in the road until the Covid-19 picture becomes clearer.

If it helps holders history suggests that economies bounce back quickly from pandemics, even though the environment can get very dark when you are going through it. The biggest winners will be beaten down shares ... banks, airlines, retail, leisure and media ... at least the ones that can survive. And ITV will be amongst them.

I think Capital have announced the sale of 50% of their holding (approx), so they have decided to reduce. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to get out altogether. I don’t know of course, as we have seen no further RNS.

Interesting though. There’s not that many people who have bought in the last week or so and are simply taking a small profit. So I’d guess it’s shorting activity or the Capital fund dumping the last of their holdings?

I don’t really trust broker notes, even if they are saying something I like to hear. Look at the SP spike we had this morning, which is now fading rapidly. I often wonder if they have a client setting up a short move prior to the update, which is not likely to be good ... but may be less bad than expected or accompanied with some positive news?

Bold moves have landed many a company in enormous trouble. In fact many decent businesses would have benefited from just being left alone ... look at the moves Tesco made after Terry Leahy left the business? Stick to the knitting might be the best policy when going through difficult times.

I was concerned when they were looking at Endemol as a possible acquisition. The evidence suggests that the only the shareholders of the acquired company tend to benefit.

When share prices are rising the CEO is a hero, even if they are riding a macroeconomic, environmental or social wave that has little to do with their actions. Same applies when the share price is falling ... it’s too simplistic to blame a CEO unless you can point specifically to a strategic move they made that created the problem. ITV is a cyclical business that even today is still reliant on the advertising market. Few as agencies are doing well, did the CEO’s just suddenly forget how to manage, or ate they simply on the wrong side of the economic cycle?

Some CEO’s engage in strategic decisions that end in disaster for their companies, that’s certainly true. But Caroline McCall’s moves to date seem reasonably sensible to me. I’m not sure in her position what I would have done differently.

During the last recession ITV were solely a free to air business, they are that today but also a major producer of content, a business that is only going to get bigger and more valuable.

I was in Glasgow during the last recession and I recall taking a look at the STV building beside the Clyde river. At that time the company was valued around £20m. They were in a much worse position than ITV, but in a few short years you’d have made more than ten times your money Investing in them. Even today, with the corona induced share crash, they are capitalised 5 times that number.

Perhaps we’d all be better off by buying the shares then never reading another bulletin board or business page for five years? I might try that.

I think it’s more the rate that they can charge, despite the fact that viewer numbers are up. There’s a typical hit piece in the Sunday Times today on ITV, expecting a sharp fall in revenues and imploring investors to avoid. I was reading another bulletin board and someone actually predicted that such an article would appear ... how prescient.

Whilst I don’t expect ITV to perform brilliantly in this environment when the dust clears the pick up in performance will be strong. Investing in ITV at the moment requires patience and a strong stomach.

You sell the stock, push down the selling price, buy it a lower price ... then repeat that process, making money along the way. The ITV Collar arrangement gives them custody of Liberty Global's stake, and they are allowed to loan it out as they wish. As long as the trading conditions for ITV are poor (Brexit concerns, no deal concerns, Netflix et al competition, lower advertising revenues ... and now coronavirus recession) you will not see many strong buyers to act as a counterweight.

There are legitimate reasons why ITV has fallen in price, some of which are shown in the brackets above, but it appears to me that ITV have fallen far harder than is merited by the news flow. And Goldman Sachs having effective control over a large percentage of the shareholding might explain that. Should a predator start to buy up shares they will be among the first to know and are unlikely to get caught out.

This is a theory, because none of us are privy to what's happening with the 20%.

Goldman have 20% of the shares to short, rinse and repeat ... a positive view of Goldman’s is like welcoming Gary Glitter as your children’s nanny ... everywhere they go they game the system, be it credit default swaps on subprime mortgages, financial legerdemain surrounding Greece and the Euro, as well as Sovereign Wealth Fund fraud in Malaysia. The vampire squid analogy is pretty much on point.

It could be Capital Group trying to sell down before next week’s update?

Green wolf ... I think if the business starts to show signs of recovery then positive future results will see a relating, and when it moves it will move fairly quickly. Even if the broadcasting business is stagnant I can’t see content production being anything other than a growth business given the number of new pay channels. That together with the archive is probably worth more than the current market capitalisation. If this was a private company none of us would be fretting as we wouldn’t be subjected to the daily torture of the market, or be victims of the financial shenanigans undertaken by unscrupulous outfits. I like Benjamin Graham’s analogy that the market is a voting machine in the short run, but a weighing machine in the long run.

There is some logic to the share price fall as results have been lacklustre but the extent of the fall is similar to a company that is rapidly running out of cash and is likely to go bust ... and whatever view one takes of ITV it is not in that situation. I recall the SP spiked with news of Goldman and Liberty’s involvement. But closer scrutiny of the Collar arrangement makes me suspect that’s it’s merely a mechanism designed to suppress the SP. It offers Liberty downside protection so they are not worried about a slide in the SP ... all legal and above board ... apparently.

I think the sensible policy would be to defer the dividend until the Covid-19 issue passes, and I suspect that will happen sooner than people think. As for low-ball bids, I just can't see the board or institutions rolling over for a 30% premium to todays price. I suspect that any bid for ITV will be competitive, with several suitors ... but it won't go for a song.

My view is that it’s a profitable company with a content division that will grow in value, there are many examples of companies whose share price languished only to reignite. You can buy 888 for about £1.90 (approx), at the Covid plunge it was 75p .... I recall way back when it was 28p and a City analyst predicted 14p. That’s the stock market for you, on some occasions it gets things wrong. It’s not NMC or Wirecard.

There has been much speculation over the years regarding ITV as a M&A target, but no bid has ever materialised. Whilst free to air broadcasting is not a growth area it is still a decent business, but the real gem is content production, the demand for which is only going to get stronger. Is it only a matter of time before a Liberty, Apple, Amazon, Disney, etc pull the trigger?