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With the Luca price at 0.55 I believe we would hold £3m in just Luca shares/warrants and physical gold alone.

I’ve lost track of the rest of the listed portfolio but I’d be surprised if it’s worth any less than £1m.

Then you have the Ideon stake which was valued at £0.9m at the most recent funding round. Albeit that’s a while ago now.

We could ask Ascendant for our contractually guaranteed £4-5m whenever we like. Which would either bankrupt Ascendant or more likely cause them to get the cash from Sprott.

And we have the Golden Sun equity stake which was valued at £1.1m the last time money was raised for that project.

So the assets that could be monetised in a day underpin just about the entire mark cap right now. You then have £6-7m of assets that are contractually obligated or legitimised by third party valuations from organisations that were genuinely stumping up their own cash.

Of course none of this guarantees that the Luca shares/gold will stay at these prices or that the more illiquid assets will ever be monetised. It does, however, look as though risk reward is weighted in favour of anyone buying shares at today’s price.

This price just seems bonkers to me.

Now that you have an 8.1% rental increase for the shared ownership portfolio H2 cash flows will almost certainly improve vs H1. That is without potentially lower interest rates. So we are getting towards an 11-12% distributable earnings yield. You’d be hard pushed to find that in a retail unit REIT let alone one with such sticky occupancy as RESI. The portfolio valuation has dropped significantly but that has bottomed and could reverse unless interest rates start going up from here. So the huge discount to NAV seems unlikely to narrow from the top down.

The only thing I can think of to explain the current share price is that there is an intangible background legislative fear around shared ownership landlords. Otherwise this price looks a complete gift.

Very encouraging that they’ve shown the confidence to maintain forecasts this deep into the trading period.

In this context, it strikes me as odd that they are still looking for ways to de-lever the balance sheet. If they are making 7.6m PBT then gross debt would be cut in half in just a couple of years from internally generated cash flows. Net debt by two thirds. Why bother doing anything else?

This is my first look at Crest Nicholson. There are obviously uncertainties with the cladding provision. Who knows whether that gets worse from here? Or by how much?

Today’s results were not great as they are working through selling properties at rubbish margins built during the worst of the build cost inflation. However, they stayed very active in land acquisition when prices were at their most favourable in 2023 which has allowed them to be more selective in what is now a more normalised competitive environment.

Is there a potential situation arising in a year or two whereby they are completing construction, absent of the extreme build cost inflation of 2022/2023, on sites acquired at cheap prices?

This would have a turbo charging effect on margins that other developers who adopted a wait and see approach in the 2023 land market may not benefit from in the same way?

Feels like OTUS are taking the opportunity to sell in a manner unrelated to the quality of the results on what is likely to be a day of decent liquidity. Speculation, of course, but I think these prices should represent a good entry once they're out.

I think something interesting is going on in the world of personal investment.

Premier Milton’s results yesterday morning showed continued outflows. Whereas HL and AJ Bell have showed really significant inflows in the same period.

Moreover, we’ve seen improved transactional activity from the likes of CMC markets.

It looks to me as if a lot of the money that came out of the fund managers over the last few years is coming back into the market with the self investment platforms not the active managers.

Obviously this has been going on in a small way for a long time. But it now looks as though more people than we thought do actually know that active management is a con but they’ve been reluctant to make the switch most likely because it’s a pain. Now they are taking the opportunity to make the switch as they had cause to remove their cash organically.

With HL and AJ Bell already having made their jump to trade at high teen cash flow multiples, I think the best opportunity right now is with IG.

It trades at less than 10x forward cash flows, is buying back shares like nobody’s business and looks set to benefit from cash that is due to flow back in to the market. Whether that’s people who want to self invest in shares, low cost index funds or derivative trading.

The only caveat is the FCA investigation into client interest. If the outcome of that is anything other than devastating, then IG looks really cheap right now. In my opinion there is a potential upside to both valuation and earnings.

What would you say it’s worth? Not that I think this will happen but imagine a scenario in which all the assets are sold and capital returned to shareholders.

Shire might be worth 12x its post tax share of profits plus the 22m cash is 47m.

I think all that could be returned if the property plant and equipment of 8m is enough to pay off staff and shut down the PLC. Unless all of the PPE would be gone as part of the Shire sale…? Not sure.

Not much at all.

I came across Themis company yesterday and tried to get a full position but could only get £6500 through IG at 94 (nothing with Hargreaves Lansdown)

Looks like unbelievable value even at these prices though.

So as of October 31 2023 we know they had cash of 2.6m. Since then they’ve liquidated a 0.5m asset and made about 0.5m pre tax profit.

So cash as of today must be about 3.5m. Now add the positive 0.8m difference between payables and receivables at 31 October 2023.

That gives you 4.3m of net liquid (or near as damn it) assets. Which is the same as the market cap.

You might expect to see that kind of value for a loss making company but not one that just made 1/8 its market cap in PBT over a 6 month period.

Interesting that they mentioned in the last results that they were benefiting from business picked up from the Safestyle administration. You would have to expect that an Everest administration would be even more impactful.

Looks as though the strength of the balance sheet has put Eurocell in a position to take advantage of a less competitive environment when the bounce back finally arrives.

They were making fairly consistent 20m+ profits

until this year with the exception of FY20. With a bit of pent up demand, the cost saving measures and an increased market share… does 30m sound unreasonable in a year or two’s time? I don’t think so.

That’s true if we knew for sure that a mine is guaranteed at some point. Then yes of course you’d rather have a larger percentage. But it’s naive to not at least acknowledge that if Ascendant defaults on the put, which means Sprott have decided not to stump up despite have millions in sunk cost already, then there is a good chance that the whole project is scrapped and no more cash ever materialises.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s what will happen but to not acknowledge it as a possibility is just silly.

To be honest thinker I wouldn’t expect it to due to the obvious doubt in the market about the materialisation of the put option. Today’s price is quite finely balanced. If you don’t think the put option will happen then it’s a decent selling opportunity. If you think the put money is imminent then it’s a great buying opportunity.

JVs investment that should say

Luca mining has doubled in the last 5 weeks such that it now represents 20%+ profits on Jobs investment and that doesn’t include the warrants.

If we sold that and realised the 5-6m from the put option we’d have a 50%+ cash premium to today’s market cap by year end.

Then add whatever value you like to the other equity holdings, ideon stake, golden sun and the potential for a positive negotiation with the Portuguese government.

Really interesting q&a session at the end there. Particularly around on shoring and near shoring. This a long term growth driver for them for which they couldn’t be better placed. They do good business in all developed economies except China where their business is negligible. By all accounts the next few years will see a lot of concrete being poured in the USA, Europe and Australia that used to be destined for China.

A couple of days ago this was trading at 8x cash flows with a rock solid balance sheet, proven returns to shareholders and the structural growth driver mentioned above.

Looks like a great entry point for a company making about 15m at last count with a rock solid balance sheet.

On a qualitative note I’d also say that this management team has shown them to be very cautious custodians of capital over the past few years. So if they are spending 17m to increase production in order to meet demand, I’d say there’s a very good chance that demand is indeed real and those 15m profits are set to grow from here.

This morning looked like more good news to me. Presumably that money will go towards improving net debt without sacrificing any material profits.

Market doesn’t agree. Hopefully that’ll change.

I’m surprised by the muted market response here. Fund managers pretty much across the board have had outflows for around two years now.

Not only did they manage minor inflows in their H1 results, they’ve now added over 10% in one fell swoop. Talk about bucking the trend.

I make it 19m look through earnings after making the appropriate adjustments to the cash flow statement which is handily the same as net profit on the income statement. In a reasonable market I think that trades at 15x easily. Especially when you consider their track record for organic and acquisitive growth.

Sprinkle falling interest rates on top and it could be even more.

Whoops! Meant 4% buyback obviously