Member Info for Avalueinvestor

Jatw - I couldn't agree more about the attractiveness of selling prior to completion when the current price is so close to the buy out price. I sold within 1 day of the offer at close to the offer price and that's more than 6 months ago.

Interestingly the CEO agrees - he sold 85% of his holding at 212p in November. He was more often a seller than a buyer anyway but he should know.

I think selling now in the open market and moving on to another opportunity would be attractive still.

Ggplyr - I'd like to know more about the Slimfast opportunity. If it is possible to connect Slimfast products with a disciplined programme of weight management along with or after taking appetite suppressant drugs (which are expanding from novel to normal use in my view) then surely the opportunity to increase revenues must be significant. Supreme paid £20M odd so they must have some confidence. I've never worked in FMCG however and have no useful knowledge.

I was more surprised about the bolt on acquisition of 1001 from WD 40 - pity we couldn't buy WD 40 ! I haven't bought a carpet cleaning product as per that product range for more than 30 years and I think the trend is for all the home to be laminate flooring except lounge and bedrooms - ie a declining market before factoring in that the overall number of dwellings continues to increase as the population grows. But to me the 1001 acquisition looks like batteries and lightbulbs - we'll still sell some but the trend is downwards. Again, I have no expert knowledge at all and this is just thinking out loud.

I nearly missed five RNS announcements yesterday after the market closed, announcing new and increased shareholdings by Mikhail Borisovich Stiskin who has bought 7.14% of the shares over the past month. I estimate that he committed about £12M at an average of £1.46). I've not heard of his investing activity before but a bit of research suggests he has an investment banking background in Russia, though now Limassol based. Mining and value investing get a mention in simple research (veracity not checked). That same simple research (not quality checked) suggests that he has been a significant investor in FMCG business Kitwave plc which has accepted a buyout offer in early 2026, allowing him to exit at a premium price (and freeing up some cash to invest in Supreme).

I think this makes him the second largest investor, with Sanday still having more than 50%.

I think the Typhoo purchase, from administrators, was cheap as chips - it included a lot of stock which was sold at a profit - the CFO confirmed in a webinar.

Message was attenuated by the system....

A couple of typos:

Dec 23 - 35.9M shares had been bought back (rather than 39.5).

The last two dates cited of 1 January and 17 February are both 2026 dates.

Final comment was intended to be 'In my view, the Execs and wider Board have done a spectacular job in enhancing shareholder value and the pace of product innovation looks to be increasing as well as the horizontal diversification (ie same products in new jurisdictions) is also very encouraging.

What a fantastic job the Board has done !!!!!!

Long time followers of Plus500 will be aware that at the 2013 float there were 115 million shares at £1.15.

At the time of the proposed acquisition by Playtech in 2015, the price had risen to £4.00 (it did not proceed obviously).

In 2016 the founders sold 15.5 million shares.

The first buy back of $10m was announced in 2017 and for a maximum of 10% of the shares.

Moved to the Main market in 2018.

The founders sold a further 9.4M shares in 2018 worth £145M. The shares were at £15.50.

In Aug 2019 a $50M buy back was announced.

In Aug 2020 a $67.5M buy back was announced.

In Feb 2021 a $25M buy back was announced. At this point 12.6M shares had been repurchased.

In August 2021 a $12.6M buy back was announced.

At December 2021 there were 14.8M shares in treasury and 100.2M shares outstanding.

In Feb 2022 a $55M buy back was announced.

In April 2022, a further $50M buy back was announced.

In Nov 2022 a further $60.2M buy back was announced.

By December 2022 there were 21.5M shares in treasury and 93.3M shares outstanding.

In Feb 2023 a $70M share buy back was announced.

(In June 2023 the Board bought back 7,327.605 shares from the distressed seller Odey Asset Management at £13.83 for a total of about £101M).

In August 2023 a $70M share buy back was announced.

By December 2023 there were 39.5M shares in treasury and 78.9M shares outstanding.

In Feb 2024 a $100M share buy back was announced.

By March 2024 the price was £17.80 and there were 36.5M shares in treasury and 78.4M shares outstanding. $560M had been committed to share buy backs in 8 years.

In July 2024 a new programme of share buy backs of unto $110M was announced with the price then being £25.

At this point there was a record cash pile of $1002M and just over 600 staff.

(In August 2024 J P Morgan takes an initial stake of 4.6% at around £26, spending about £90M).

Market cap was around £2Bn summer 2024.

)Nov 2024 Blackrock take a 5% stake spending around £90M with shares at close to £24).

In December 2024 the Execs are allocated around 1.4M shares with the share price at circa £27.

In February 2025 a new share buy back of $110M is announced.

In August 2025 a new share buy back of $90M is announced.

In Feb 2026 a new share buy back of $100M is announced.

By 31 December 2025, the share count was at 68,908,995 (down from 115 million 12 years earlier.

At 1 January 1,438,441 shares were taken from treasury and awarded to Execs taking the share count back up to 70,429,700.

By 17 Feb, ongoing buy backs had already reduced the share count to 70,163,017.

On this basis, if the current share buy back programme is fully utilised this year and the price stays around £45 (not suggesting it will), then by Christmas 2026 the share count will be around 68,000,000.

I have not commented on dividend distributions but there is a clear and ongoing dividend / share buy back policy which informs investors well of what may be expected.

But in my view, the Execs and wider B

I still think fair value circa one tenth of one penny.

One for gamblers rather than investors.

So they've set up a Help Desk.....

LOL

Any views on existing information, science or conjecture as to whether the patented technology which SALT has and which has been used for re-present crystalline salt in smaller doses but with the same salty taste may not be transferable to sugar - which would also be quite useful to the cereal, confectionary and food industries ?

I don't have much knowledge or experience with MEGP products, though I have used photo booths in there past - but increasingly processes appear to accept uploaded mobile phone images in place of a physical hard copy photo. I would have thought (with no relevant professional knowledge or experience here) that the Wash.me stations are where the money is. I used a garage type compression machine recently - 50p for a couple of minutes and screen wash from the same machine for £1. Convenient but good margin business - but not MEGP's. There must be further for this company to re cover some lustre.

As a holder, I hope the Iliad opportunity turns into a large contract. I've never put any store by Letters of Intent however as I see them as an exchange of letters between two friendly parties expressing an interest to do things yet without the money to do them. I've known absolutely nothing happen more often than something happening when LoI are used.

But i hope it does !

Sold my small holding not on the basis of price but on the basis that management and shareholder interests are not remotely aligned.

The London market has lots of interesting companies with greater transparency and shareholders interests being of greater importance than here.

Good luck to all.

My understanding is that DRDGOLD is a very substantially larger operation than GDP and that we would have the weaker end of any bargaining position for a revenue share if the tailings were processed with DRDGOLD's people or processes. But the Q2 and H1 performance is very good for such a small cap.

Encouraged that progress in current trading in month 5 is so good that full year profit forecast uplifted.

8-12 new sites planned in the year which should hopefully start to contribute next year.

The re-rating in progress is well deserved when one looks at the numbers over many years. My sense is that the value of the shares was held back by sentiment but that the sentiment has changed and fairer value being established. The number and frequency of strategic developments is accelerating in my view, all adding to momentum.

And that would be having a great deal of faith in this young company.

I've been a fan for several years (wish a decade longer !), partially due to the unfaltering buy backs shrinking tge number if shares in issue.

However, as the price has now advanced to a level where recent buys are around 8,000 a day, many fewer than in the past, that's not too dissimilar from the number of free shares handed to management recently.

I'm interesred in other views: could the free shares in circulation now cease to shrink because as they are bought up during yhe year, they solely meet the nu ber of free shares required to incentivise management.

Originally, there were 115M shares and about one third have been cancelled over 12 years.

But maybe there will be no further shrinkage ?

DRDGOLD made a 5 year labour force agreement today I think.

https://www.news24.com/business/companies/business-brief-growthpoint-boosts-paarl-mall-drdgold-secures-five-year-wage-deal-20260202-0902

That removes a lot of question marks over their operations and perhaps frees up management to focus on some strategic initiatives. The company is, I think, very substantially larger than GDP.

I popped into the Wallasey store recently to order some foreign currency for a trip and to engage with the staff to see what the shopping experience was like.

The staff and manager in particular were a delight - well informed, enthusiastic, efficient and I was delighted that the manager spoke of the CEO and FD on first name terms, articulating how accessible they are, that the manager is listened to and her views valued and respected.

This reinforced my existing view that this is a well run company.

There's a nice feature about buying foreign currency too - there is a guarantee to buy a good proportion of your currency back if unspent at the exact same exchange rate, insulating the customer from losing out on an unfavourable exchange rate when selling unspent cash, as well as suffering both the bid and offer spread exchange rates.

Very nice to see - and hopefully GDP is making some money with the gold price at compelling levels for sellers.