Member Info for Dartron

Can you provide a link? Especially as you are a new poster, with no track record of reliable information. How do we know your information is genuine or well intended?

I did a search and I can only find article from 2023 that people were made redundant.

Sept 24 Half year accounts adjPBT was up 33%, would seem at odds with your claim.

Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Eurocell would have a large number of sales managers. Its usually just 2 guys working from a trade counter. Reading those accounts and the 2023 redundancies, I think they already got to a point where the business was lean.

Interactive investor (via Morning star) shows fair value at 97p. I dont fully agree with that, but it shows what some people will think. Nearly all out now. A great day to sell as everything else is down 4 or 5%, hence increasing gains further in my mind.

Tough one, I assume it goes through, so you wait for another 7p or grow your cash elsewhere.

AGFX will report late January I think. Nigel Railton, would not have put 200k in here if wasn't good..

I also bought a little JSE, think that has a good 2025.

I bought some for the ISA yesterday with my TIG profits. That was fortuitous.

I have bought back in @393 (1/3 position). I honestly think this gets taken private in 2025.

I used my profits from TIG which got 2 take over offers yesterday. Its worth reading about these take over offers, they are all structured differently, in the case of TIG, its more like its delisting with a exit price

Not sure if I will buy any more here just yet, I still feel it could go lower.

Thankyou, I didnt expect the buy out here so soon. I was close to an exit on my Spread bet and ISA holding and would have kept the SIPP. (had this in all 3 accounts! I felt it was a great opportunity) I Hope you got a good profit too.

I nearly mentioned EKF in my last post. I think it goes private this year. Although my last post is a little conspiracy theory, EKF has moved around suspiciously recently, could it be a clue? To other readers, its no where near as a good a set up as this was. Far better next moves out there, but I think / hope it leaves the market this year.

Perhaps a conclusion we can draw here is the speed which this deal materialised must mean valuations on AIM are close to the bottom. I have spread my self thin across many stocks, hoping for multiple take overs this year.

Yes as shares are cancelled then your stake of ownership is increasing. If the shares are being bought back at a discount to their intrinsic value then your equity is also increasing. (how much you own and what it is worth on paper) So far so good.

However, there are clearly people with opposing views to you and I, and they want to sell. In a away PRU are providing exit liquidity to the sellers, so this is why the price is not increasing. As a side note PRU do not want the liquidity to dry up, other wise then they will have to pay more for the shares. This is worse for you and I, we want to buy back stock at a discount. The buy back is relatively small in the total share count (a few percent of the total issued shares from memory) so this wont really move the needle much. But, (again from memory) I think this is the second buy back now, so if they keep it up it will start to have an effect. What will also help is that the earnings per share should increase (less shares) and maybe the dividend yield will increase in the future (less shares) but bear in mind buy backs and dividends come from the same pot.

I would recommend you take a look at a much smaller company to understand buy backs. PRU is just so colossal that the effects are hard to see here. Look at something like EPWN, DATA, or even very small ANG.

Buy backs are really a way of returning capital to share holders.

Your last point, theoretically any public company may need to raise more money and issue more shares. But in general managers are competent and have an agenda. They obviously dont plan to raise funds and are really using up excess capital. (It has happened to me once, when an small oil company had a leak and had to raise cash after a buy back). Some people dont like buy backs in a stock, as the stock is not really a growth stock if they cant find anything better to spend money on. FWIW, I think PRU is undervalued and will re rate, and in the mean time is a safe investment providing some good diversification and a modest income. Its ballast for me in my pf.

I Like the informal sale angle SB. Also ties in with Kestrel not having all the cash to go it alone.

Having considered it at some length, it is possible that games were also played in the market. I can piece together a situation where suppressing the price would have yielded a profit in the form of a cheaper buy out. Operation cost also offset by the buy backs which helped buy 1.25 for 90p. I am not saying they did this, and it is always easy to fit a conspiracy to prior events. I personally dont care, as I profited, but its good to draw lessons from here as doubtless will see again elsewhere. I think they could have stitched PI's up far more if they had wanted to. (e.g. Asset Co / ASTO delisted their only valuable part with no financial compensation - I think delisting is the greatest threat to aim investing right now). Good luck to them on next leg of their journey. Glad they got it over so quickly! Im happy with a 35% gain here over 2 months, and money already moved to other stocks. After what SB has pointed out, this is a done deal.

Pleased to see regular posters made good money, and congratulations GGG on the new baby.

Was listening to an interview with Peter Spiller (capital gearing trust) one of the few people not bullish on the S&P. He reckons China will do well this year, the stimulus will be to stimulate the internal economy, so domestic facing stocks should do well. Perhaps regionally too.

Well spotted Silverblade. That explains the low ball price then, it is effectively delisting with a low get out price.

Much more chance of this going through now.

Might get them back cheaper, look at EQLS.

I feel something is a little weird here. I have sold my ISA holding as the profit is more than planned for. I still hold in my SIPP. But I do not feel Kestrel will sell at 125p. They have been buying and holding for around 10 years, dont know their average but they have certainly paid higher for shares. That is a poor return on investment from their POV. TIG were due to address the market in January to explain how they were going to create shareholder value, I hope having some low ball offers and a subsequent rise in share price was not the plan all along. This may serve as an excuse or delaying tactic.

Slaters from 8.3 shows they have increased to 11%.

Also, did anyone else notice the price was up 8% before the RNS.

What will Kestrel say?

BOOM ! ! !

Aim seems to be up today

I have updated the spread sheet, to show a continuous graph from November to current RNS. I chopped off early November before the share drop. Graph now shows columns of shares bought, and line graph of Vwap paid.

As long as buy backs are above £100k each day I am happy. That would be 22 days of 100k = £2.2M. We will see.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wRD9Z7Kpfl48B_UhhJWyEyhirlZC-5jweUtGpQ62HIg/edit?gid=310980312#gid=310980312

I also not buying more here as I want to diversify more in to other inv trust assets. Im low on Globals, and would like more Asia, and maybe even another bond OEIC. I do have a lot of renewables and they are all on a loss - GCP, BSIF, NESF. If I bought any, I would buy UK wind.

i would look at other renewable trusts, spread the risk a bit. they are all cheap, or better still diversify even more, you can get a good income from reits or even corporate debt. i have hefl an asia focussed trust which pays around 10% dividend, which is covered. perhaps as low as a 6% yield with some growth will ultimately work out better.

i do expect the discount to come in a little here, but on fundamentals its not the best trust imo. i am on a 18% loss (not including dividends), having held since august 23 (though added along the way). im not buying any more, but will hold to see. i expect there will some type of 'event' here and the price will reset, either up or down. being diversified, i can wait and see, then act accordingly - i.e. buy more if the price crashed on a dividend reduction.

maybe look at target health care reit, which i believe went through a dividend cut (before my time) but i am in there now, and it seems to be recovering. or of co**** you could look at the battery storage trusts, which cut dividends and are not recovering as a glimpse in to a bad outcome - e.g. grid.

looks like we are getting a bounce here, but nothing has really changed. i wont buy until the fundamentals change. i have said previously they need to change the payment method to the management team, it should be based on sp not nav. otherwise, where is the incentive?

Hi Actuary, yes I have heard that argument made many times, but debt is debt. The market views it as debt, which it is.

The prefs are actually convertible to shares, so at some point there will either be more shares (despite the buy backs) or they will have to pay the debt back. FWIW, I agree that 4.75% is a good rate, but it is still debt.

Arpea the drivers here IMO are - Bond yields (yields increasing is bad), they are high currently, this is due to both USA and UK governments having high debt. When bond yields are considered risk free, anything else must trade at a discount. Yes interest rates higher for longer wont help here, as the same argument applies to cash deposits vs equities. The next issue is forward power prices (which were low, but I think are picking up a bit now). After that the debt of NESF is rather high (hence the same argument for higher yields just like the government bonds). If the debt is high, then it questions the dividend and also the buy backs. Are buy backs even sensible, when they could be paying down debt (Well the buy backs are a token effort IMO). I personally dont think it has anything to do with the amount of sunshine, unless by sunshine we mean market sentiment for bond proxies built on renewables.

Finally we could say that investors are starting to realise that the structure here of using an investment manager (paid on NAV) who then doesn't report very clearly is making this a leap of faith. In the bond proxy universe this yield can be got from multiple trusts and asset backed classes, so why NESF.

I hold, but that is the bear case.

Investec starts Bytes Technology with 'buy' - price target 600 pence