Member Info for joxer22

Nice to see how quickly the SP has recovered the dividend drop - capital appreciation and dividends, what's not to like?

Not all specific to BIRG - most of the Euro bank stocks are well up today.

That said, both of the main Irish banks have got some good recommendations recently from US analysts

The article in the ST just noted that Predator was one of only two companies that could qualify for license extensions as new applications are not allowed - it's still up to the DECC to decide if they will actually actually approve the extensions.

There are also a few comments from Paul Griffiths in the article:

Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Predator Oil & Gas, said there was an element of

wilful ignorance in the situation. "On the one hand you don't want fracked gas and

you ban fracking.But on the other hand you import gas which nobody can be absolutely

certain where it comes from."

Article in Sunday Times about future Irish gas exploration - notes issues around licensing:

"Only companies with existing permissions, including Europa and Predator Oil & Gas, can progress licences, which have been beset by delays when seeking extensions from the government."

In some cases dividends can really work out well e.g. for a pensioner whose income is under the tax threshold there may be no tax liability or else tax at the lowest rate. Not so good for those in the higher tax brackets.

Dividends are taxed as income, not capital gains, so it won't be the 33% rate. The actual tax will depend on your overall income tax situation.

Davy seem to hint at that possibility when commenting on the strong capital performance - "Post Q1, there is either upside risk to this forecast, or to distributions"

The upgrade in NII (although not that significant) is still good news - BIRG tend to be conservative in guidance so their updates/outlook are fairly trustworthy - looks like everything is "steady as she goes" at present

I see that Davy have lowered their target price for BIRG to €14.60 (they had a target of €16.20). Their old target was way above other analysts covering the stock and their new price still seems very optimistic at almost 50% over the current SP.

Looks like some momentum on BIRG now - will be interesting to see if the gains hold through ex-dividend

Interesting to note that AIB is now not far off Davy target price (about 8%) - however the current BIRG price is still way below their target price - looks like the momentum is with AIB at present.

Blackrock have bought and sold BIRG all the way up from the €1.40 levels. Their buying/selling patterns are hard to understand - they seem to see BIRG as a trading stock and change positions frequently.

Looks like Bank of Ireland IT systems are playing up again - online banking outages again this morning.

They seem to keep having major IT issues even after the huge investments of the past few years.

Sunday Times is predicting €1.3B in dividends/buybacks from BOI and €1.4B from AIB. Traders could probably sell some BOI tomorrow and load up on AIB for a quick profit. I hold both stocks for the long term but I think AIB probably has a slightly better upside in the near term.

I wonder what Blackrocks plan is for their BIRG stake - they now own over 10% of the company and somehow I don't think they're just going to sit back and watch what happens?

There's certainly been a fairly dramatic change recently around where interest rates are going. Companies such as Greencoat Renewables which yields about 6% are suddenly getting popular again whereas interest rate sensitive stocks like BOI and AIB are getting hammered. There's also a lot of gloom around the ISEQ in general with the continual exit of companies. I wouldn't be surprised if Blackrock is also stirring the pot somehow.

SF won't have a majority so the key will be who they get into bed with and hooking up with a bunch of independents would result in a very unpredictable and unstable government. The most feasible coalition partner is probably FF (FG is obviously out of the question). SF with FF as the minority partner would probably be a reasonable compromise with a slightly less radical agenda.

A potentially bigger issue for ISEQ listed stocks including BIRG is the fact that most Irish pension/life companies are starting to close their Irish Equity funds. The majority of the index is now composed of a small handful of companies so it's become too risky for index tracking funds to invest in.

Looks like the bank stocks are just overreacting to BARC results today. In fact their results were quite good and they have to be seriously undervalued at a 20B market cap - a great buy at the current sp.