Ben Richardson, CEO at SulNOx, confident they can cost-effectively decarbonise commercial shipping. Watch the video here.
Some commentators regard share buy backs as an admission of failure to find ways of investing spare cash. Also signalling to the market that you are doing buy backs raises the share price so that they are less effective. I know that there is a tax argument versus dividends but if there is unused cash available then I would prefer it returned as a dividend then I can decide where to invest it.
I have been investing for over 45 years and if there is one thing I have learned its that funds and managers come and go. I have been lucky to have followed some of the big names like Antony Bolton, Nimmo, Terry Smith, Buxton even Woodford (for a time) and done very well but if I look back at my holdings say 10 or 20 or 30 years ago the names are unrecognisable. What I am trying to say is that SMT might not be the long term success that you hope for so keep a careful eye on it and don't bet the farm on it. I have been criticised before for saying that there is some evidence that SMT is a one trick pony having been successful with Tesla and the mantra from the managers is as ever "you need to take the long view" but where is the next Tesla? Moderna was supposed to be the big hope but that's taking a long time. So I wish everyone future success but don't be blinded by BG's previous success.
I have just reduced my SMT holding down to £40k At age 74 I am starting to have a different view on long term holdings as I can't wait forever.
Also this makes interesting reading.
https://citywire.com/investment-trust-insider/news/james-carthew-trusts-like-scottish-mortgage-could-do-more-to-narrow-discounts/a2401224?section=investment-trust-insider
Just a thought but I note that a few of my ITs including SMT are currently doing buy backs presumably to reduce the discount and raise the share price. Whilst I understand the reasons for doing this It struck me a slightly bizarre that (unless you are using spare cash) you are selling some of the Trust's underlying holdings to generate cash which you then use to buy back the Trust's own shares and that the Trust's shares should rise in value even though they now represent a company with fewer assets.
Discussions about cash liquidity in SMT are a missing the point that a lot of the portfolio is tied up on positions in non public companies where extracting yourself from a position in one of these can be a very difficult and slow process. It's similar to a REIT in some ways. Add to this the difficulty of valuing some of these pre IPOs anyway and I often wonder how a share price is arrived at.
Quite a few ITs are trading at a discount at the moment so don't use that as your criteria for buying SMT, however I take the view that you are buying the underlying assets cheap which can't be a bad thing. In my view SMT is more like a venture capital company in that it invests in a lot of early stage private companies (where valuation is difficult) in the hope that some of them take off spectacularly. It can be very volatile .
I detect a trend in the messaging here that things will be better in one, three or ten years etc. IF there is one thing that I have learned in my investing career of 45 years it's that there is no return to "normal" (just as the Russia business started when we all thought that we had got over COVID). When the Russia war is somehow concluded there will be something else that will come up that we have not thought of so for me the important thing is to invest in fundamentals and not speculate on where share prices might be. So keep things like SMT as a small part of your portfolio and mainly invest in the boring stuff. Oh and hope that BG find another Tesla.
I am 74 and have started reduced my holding which is about 6% of m portfolio. They say live as if you will die tomorrow and plan as if you will live forever. So despite having had a minor heart attack 4 months ago I am considering buying myself a replacement road bike :)
I don't trust the buy/sell figures on here. I have made a few trades over the last few months of various shares and often a buy shows up as a sell or vice versa. I suppose the problem is that for every seller there is a buyer so what does it mean anyway?
Don't get too sensitive about it. I merely asked the question as to how the rest of the portfolio has performed over the past few years. I have been investing for 45 years and it;s always worth asking the difficult questions. SMT is down 42% on the year. BG American has gone from top performer to down 45% in 2022. Tesla was one lucky investment out of a lot of bets so I am looking at the success rate, which is actually quite low. SMT is more like a VC operator.
My SMT holding is still around £50k and as it's a small part of my portfolio I will probably keep it.
There was a discussion on the BBC Today programme this morning about a research programme at Edinburgh Univ about developing cures for this that don't really exist yet and that it was being funded to the tune of about £15m by BG . They clearly have a view that biotech is where it's all going and as a retired scientist I can only agree. The problem really is that curing sick people is one of the areas where you are not supposed to make a profit, after all
From my experience of investing over the past 45 years this is just the time when you should be buying if you have spare cash. Whenever I look back I see missed opportunities although at the time it was difficult to see the potential upside through the doom and gloom. Oh and don't forget that it's on;y a paper loss at the moment.
If you listen to the various webinars about SMT they refer to how a lot of their early investments in start up businesses go nowhere but that a few are very successful and make up for the many failures. To me SMT operates more like a VC company and if you strip out Tesla over the past few years the performance is pedestrian. Just look at other BG funds like the American that topped the funds list but is now down about 30% this year and the story repeats itself across BG funds with a Tesla component. So hopefully they have a few more in the pipeline (Moderna perhaps?)
I was just wondering what percentage of peoples' portfolios are in SMT? Mine is currently about 7%. It was at about 14% last year but I offloaded some on the way down this year. I will probably leave it where it is , it;s dropped 25% since Jan 1st so needs a 33% rise to get back to the start of the year. I am 73 so not looking at too many decades to recover :)
Sop now DGE is borrowing money by issuing bonds at the same time as buying back shares. Is this a way of boosting the share price? Terry Smith once said that he was wary of companies that buy back shares as it showed that they hadn't got a plan to use the cash to expand the business. I seem to recall that Tesco did this a few years ago and got into difficulties.
Share buybacks always seem a bit illogical to me. I know the theory behind it but when you announce that you are doing a buyback programme then it is bound to increase the share price and hence reduce the number of shares that you can buy back. Sounds like a value destruction strategy