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https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/news/market/6434357/Broker-Forecast-HSBC-issues-a-broker-note-on-Prudential-PLC

There you go gold5 - some optimism! Long term, you have to assume the madness ends and this returns to somewhere near it's true value as a business, rather than a political football.

There are worrying reasons for the drop. The UK suddenly got dragged into the heart of Trump's trade war, with ARM bowing to US pressure and the Chinese ambassador issuing warnings: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48377235
With the UK's neutral position in tatters, Pru are not just in danger of collateral damage from retaliation against US firms, they are sadly now an obvious target for direct tariffs or restrictions, which would go straight to the bottom line. The cause of all this visits Britain on 3rd June.

Wow James, that's remarkable. So during the decidedly downward SP movement of November and December, you somehow picked up shares at around £13 and traded them as the price steadily fell? And you somehow kept winning against a falling price in some fantastical way such that your gains outweighed the losses on your core holding? That's truly incredible! Well done! A truly amazing feat, and of course I am jealous: such implausible luck! Did you win the lottery, premium bonds and Grand National too? I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to learn from your story: don't post when you're high, perhaps?

How about the real world issue I mentioned - no wisdom to impart on that subject, oh self-appointed "better"? I think the US/China spat is developing into a new phase: Huawei have bought a development site near ARM headquarters in Cambridge, hoping to invest in a huge new R&D facility. A company connected to the Chinese government already own the nearby Imagination technologies. Interesting times. UK policy towards China seems to be diverging considerably from the hostile US, which may just possibly mean better times ahead for PRU Asia?

Superb post Troublesome: the quality of this board has really improved lately. The comparison figures against Samsung confirm that they are using inferior dots, presumably based on price (or sheer nepotism - owners of Hansol and Samsung are related). Very interesting, and encouraging. SP has returned right back to where it was at the beginning of the year (Crow predicted this, I think) - it looks fairly attractive at the moment, given Nanoco's relatively comfortable short term finances.

Sage played a blinder in the 6 months to end of March, with revenue up 6.5% and pretax profit up by 16%, partly due to the successful ongoing transition to subscription fees from licences. Strong growth in North America - revenue up 20%, helped by the acquisition of Intacct. Interim dividend up 2.5% to 5.79p.

James, concentrate, the price never dropped below 13 last year, your "explanation" needs to stay within the bounds of possibility if you want it to retain any credibility. Tell the truth now: you lost money on Pru last year, didn't you? Your core holding clearly went down with the SP like everyone else's, and your fantasy "trading" success is predicated on fictional, imaginary buying points.

Back in the real world: what do you think the impact of Tencent and Alibaba gaining Hong Kong banking licenses will be on Pru? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-banking-digital/tencent-alibaba-xiaomi-units-win-hong-kong-online-banking-license-idUSKCN1SF11L

Trumps trade wars will probably end as the US presidential election approaches, with a heavily spun climb-down from a hopeless deal-maker with no real strategy. The next president, however, will also have to engage with emperor Xi. What may become more interesting for Pru is the emergence of enormous new Chinese players in the financial industry: Tencent and Alibaba. Slightly worrying, but played right this could be a great opportunity for partnerships?

The classic Hitler comparison exit? How traditional. Thanks for the heads up Biffadog, good luck, and no goosestepping on your way out.

" last year everytime price fell to circa £13 I bought "

The last time the price closed around 13 was July 2016, which doesn't seem to be last year, at least, not on this planet.

After a long think you now believe that you avoided losses last year by trading, but it was a period of sustained downward movement with no significant upward spikes. Even if you somehow had amazing luck, you'd still not be able to cover your trading costs and the spread, let alone wipe out the huge loss on your main long term holding. You seem to be mistaken. Maybe you miscalculated and you didn't actually avoid losses on Pru last year after all?

Good luck with the buffalo wrangling.

"We take a pragmatic, executable path to production which decreases our dependency on asset sale and our prevalence against market aversion."

As opposed to unexecutable paths to production? Good choice! Is prevalence against market aversion a medical condition, it sounds nasty, but hopefully it's executable.

"All our commodities possess sound market fundamentals, supply and demand equilibrium, and a favourable price outlook."

It's good to know that everything is actually in equilibrium, when all indicators seem to falsely show volatility.

"Resisting volatility, our assets are low cost with a healthy margin potential and each operating within the first and second quartile."

Wait, volatility? You've rocked the boat there, after promising equilibrium. Good to know there is resistance to the non-existent volatility though, and we all like assets in a highly numbered quartile, even in a random meaningless context.

Mines a vanadium, on the rocks.

"Not sure where this 30nm FWHM figure has come from" The only source we have so far is NigWit's memory.
In the webcast Nanoco describe this as a "key metric" which has improved, and they also claim that some of their materials are "way ahead of what competitors can produce". This is standard fare from Nanoco management, despite the lacklustre finances, and should be taken as vague, largely irrelevant, filler material, imo.

I'm grateful for, but slightly shocked by Crow2's stark analysis of Nanoco's deep unreadiness for the display market - if true, it certainly accounts for the lack of revenue and the disparity between management statements and financial results. I too noticed ME's extraordinarily curt responses to a couple of perfectly valid questions: he apparently wanted to avoid revisiting statements or impressions he has given in the past - the gaming screens being a blatant example of a story completely failing to live up to it's promise, and something he appears to be unwilling or perhaps embarrassed to talk about. Having said that, I would think the market has more or less already discounted the display market after so many disappointments, so I'm not sure more of the same would lead to much of a SP decline.

The webcast left me feeling that some momentum has been lost since last year though, and the notion that the second contract was simply a successfully completed piece of paid work doesn't ring true: if the research was successful you'd expect it to lead somewhere - I think the market is/was expecting more from that project, especially since other streams of revenue have met with so little financial success, despite the usual repetitive claims of increased "traction" and "activity". The improved short term visibility is better than at any time in the recent past, as Mr Tenner points out, but it's the perception of what happens after December that should affect SP movement. At the moment it looks like it's just one specific project which is making steady, boring financial progress, which is slightly less positive than a year ago.

It's one source of revenue, rather than one customer, which is the worry. Nanoco have a healthy and increasing customer base. Also, it's a risk to be aware of, not a deal-breaker - at least, not yet. Nanoco are genuinely in a better position than they have ever been, overall, imo. It's interesting that ME was keen to state that the relationship with the American-corp-which-might-well-be-Apple extends beyond infrared materials. Why then, was there no extension to the second contract, the one which researched other next-gen materials? From ME's honeyed words, one might expect further news on this, unless he was just nano-waffling, blowing two-dimensional smoke up his crystal matrix.

The webcast does not seem to contain any comment about FWHM of 30nm, in Q&A, or anywhere else.
One slide reads "Significant improvements in key metrics such as FWHM for commercial applications", so perhaps that's the origin of a false, though oddly specific, memory? On the other hand, where does Crow2's alternate range "38-42 is real value presently" come from: educated guess?

The presentation seemed to say that staff have been "pivoted" away from display to areas which actually produce revenue, yet have also increased their focus on improving display technology more rapidly. Maybe that is what investors want to hear, but sensitive listeners may detect a slight cognitive dissonance.

The risk/reward looks great, with strong earnings providing a credible safety net. The market may not agree until after the split though? SP appears to have been suppressed since it was announced. Issuing a timetable for the split would probably help the SP.

Sharpened focus, and a reduced regulatory burden, or even just the perception of it, could well propel the PruAsia portion of the SP relatively higher after the split, but the prospects for PruM&G seem less clear - Mike Wells has hinted at a more generous dividend policy for the European business, which could help. Overall, I agree this should be considerably higher in a year or so, provided the split is successfully completed in that time, at a reasonable cost.

You've made money while the price has been going down? Presumably you've been shorting over the last year then? I agree that both of your suggestions are plausible about the revenue/profit disparity, and both may go some way to explain the long SP depression. Do you think these conditions will continue then, or are you going to switch from shorting to investing?

Faulty logic is what this board is good at, and Way Hong sounds like cockney rhyming slang.

Contrary to my recent popular lecture concerning a lack of information about the split, there's actually quite a lot of detail in the numerous boring and technical documents issued with the results. Today they announced three non-exec directors for M&GPrudential too, so the news is arguably coming thick and fast. The markets still don't seem to like it, creating a possible buying opportunity for the optimistic and the brave.

Boring? Come off it jamesroo, you absolutely love my posts, you've even taken the trouble to ferret out information about me. Admit it, I'm your favourite poster, aren't I? This is really a chat board for Pru though. Since you are presumably losing money on them, just like everyone else, perhaps you should think about why. Did you notice that revenue was up substantially last year, yet profits before tax were way down - whats going on there then, d'you reckon?

Co-dependency is a strange description of a relationship where one side has a cash pile of billions of dollars and the other side has virtually no other revenue. The Runcorn investment is chump change or winning the lottery, depending on which side of this relationship you are. One side is using the other to aggressively improve an already dominant position, and the other seems totally dependent on the deal for survival. Describing it as a co-dependency seems like wilfully pretending the participants are equals. The other reason for it being a slight worry is that Apple have form in dealing unpleasantly with smaller suppliers.

We debated the "new" partner here exhaustively a year ago, and most eventually came around to Apple as the most likely candidate based on the few available clues. That extensive speculation has naturally hardened into a consensus over time, but it's healthy to continue questioning it, if and when new clues appear. It's a minor issue though: the relevant facts are that it's someone big, long term, and financially rewarding in a way Nanoco has never seen before. The main worry has therefore shifted, imo, away from financing to the real, but less concerning, issue of dependency. April offers the traditional annual hope that one of the older projects might finally produce significant revenue, and reduce that dependency. There is no actual evidence to fuel that hope, as far as I can see. The usual contextual display news is rolled out, as in this thread, but it's credibility is somewhat damaged by being less optimistic than last years promising developments and subsequent complete failure. Wah Hong's seemingly fascinating share price offered no insight whatsoever last year, so I'm not sure why it is deemed relevant now, but it's surely more realistic to regard it as harmless enthusiasm rather than gradient-based shenanigans. The only reason to expect good news in April that I can see is ... that there was last year?