Member Info for Boltonwigley

I honestly don’t understand the market at times. This result met expectations on net profit and EPS. Beat at least one broker’s forecast dividend which was around 10.5p, i.e a cut. Net debt at £38m was considerably under half of net profit guided by the company in January, and £5m under one broker’s estimate. Future contingent consideration was also reduced.

What is the market seeing that I’m not? The only thing I can think of is one line in today’s slides which says Mach 49 significant contract contribution to profit was c. £30m. That’s a big chunk and was maybe more than the market was expecting. Any thoughts?

Percentage of shorts in CVSG increased yesterday again. Are hedge funds manipulating the market given no chance of a bid while the CMA investigation is on? How can they think the share price is gonna drop significantly from here when it's already cheap (EV/EBITDA ratio of 6 vs historic of 14)? Only thing I can think of, CMA did publish a working paper on 1 Nov setting out how it plans to carry out a profitability analysis. Not sure if anyone else has read it. It's detailed and allows you to model CVSG's economic profits (i.e. excess). By my workings CVSG's profits were excess by an average of £25m over the last 4 years (excluding 2020 as not representative).

At £8 CVSG's SP already prices in giving away 150 practices for free and £35m p.a. of profit haircut or £65m p.a. profit haircut without losing any practices. I can't see how these scenarios are credible.

Does anyone else come to the same conclusions?

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/veterinary-services-market-for-pets-review#approach-to-profitability-and-financial-analysis

Seen two short positions open up in the last week. Trying to understand why they think the SP is going to fall further even after the recent 15-20% drop.

Could be 3 reasons: 1. insider knowledge of CMA review (unlikely given CMA probably don't even know outcome yet). 2. weaker results expected (unlikely since cyber attack should already be built in). 3. expected abundance of sellers following 50% reduction in IHT relief from March 2026 as announced last week (more likely).

I can't understand why people holding for IHT purposes would sell now rather than in April 2026 when the relief has actually been reduced. Is there something I'm missing? Why do Shorters think the SP is going to collapse from 950 ish (when they took out the positions) when it's already ridiculously low imo based on historic multiples. Any ideas?

Me thinks the fall is budget related. RR rumoured to be removing inheritance tax exemption for AIM shares and CVS is one of the largest companies in these IHT funds. There’s gonna be a lack of buyers until we know for sure.

If confirmed then holders of these funds would sell I’d imagine and the SP could fall further.

But this company has strong fundamentals and the SP shouldn’t stay low for long. How long, who knows!

Anyone have any idea why Systematica would have increased their short on 13 Aug AFTER Sidara dropped out? What do they know that we don’t?

I can understand if they’d not reduced their short but increased is strange.

https://shorttracker.co.uk/company/GB00B5N0P849/