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But presumably he’d need a significant number of shares sellers from which to buy the shares? Presumably many shareholders like us are in it for the medium/ long term and aren’t selling after buying at much higher prices?

I'm not sure why he would bother himself with buying more shares, given he already owns 60% and controls a further 10%. In the great scheme of things, what he would make buying £10m or so now, wouldn't make much difference to what he already owns. What would make a difference to what's it worth is paying a bit more attention to the share price.

Maybe once this year's Times Rich list is published in May, and Danson notices how far he's fallen down the list, he might pay a bit more attention. By my estimations, his share of GD is worth more than half a billion less than this time last year.

Entering the FTSE 250 in June will be the only time the tide turns. In addition to the EFTs, I imagine other fund managers will see some value in GD once in the FTSE250 arena.

Thanks mate.

Fact is there’s simply no interest in GD. Not hugely profitable, risk of one person owning the majority of the company with no accountability, a non-exec Board who have no real control of the company, risk of companies cutting spend with GD as they haven’t made their proprietary data case clear, an owner who does feel the need to reward shareholders with dividends, and so on.

With such a sustained downward trend in share price, I also fear they will lose some really key new talent, leaving the dead wood behind they were meant to replace.

I wish I was just down 23%! I’m more like 65% down.

The lesson I’ve learnt is to stick to trackers. I naively thought GD was a stable bet a couple of years ago for a very small return and have been burnt very badly. Hopefully it’ll turn around over the next couple of years, but the stress of looking day to day has been torturous.

It would be interesting to find out what GD is saying internally about the floundering share price. Presumably many senior staff have incentivised options which are now essentially worthless in terms of current value, not to mention the 5% held in the employee share ownership scheme.

The new CFO (due to start Q3) was Group Director of Investor Relations at Sky before joining his current position in June 2023. Maybe our prayers will be answered...

Thanks for the effort Senator1.

From the limited and rather robotic comms I've read from GD, integrating the acquisitions, reorganising and upskilling the sales teams and returning to higher profit margins appears to be the focus. They took on a new Chief Revenue Officer two years ago, who appears to have a decent background in companies like Experian and Reuters, so we should begin to see the fruits of his labours soon. Integrating acquisitions is always a huge risk, and I do wonder how much actual return they will deliver over time.

Agree the CFO is out of his depth. He joined from Informa, and should have been replaced a while ago.

The only conclusion I can draw from the non-existence of IR is that the plan is to sell the company in its entirety, rather than attract individual or institutional investors. With solid customer base and reasonably steady revenues, it might be a good fit for LSEG or Bloomberg. Just like Informa taking over Datamonitor, it'll be a case of waiting til someone has the appetite.

Just looking at the Broker Ratings. Berenberg Bank set a target of 1200p for GD in 2020. A fine piece of fiction!

I need to stop looking at the share price. Wake me up when it bounces!

New CFO later this year too. Make of that what you will….

I think Liontrust were an institutional investor in Datamonitor and I imagine made a fair return, so they're happy to take a further punt

Most likely/ hopefully the plan is to sell in its entirety rather than attract institutional investors who would only be a pain to manage. In the meanwhile the minority buckle up.

Where did you read / hear about the Bain Capital offer??

I still cannot get my head around who is selling, and why they would at the near bottom of the market. You would have thought that with only about 20% of shares in public hands, they would be in short enough supply to at least drive the price up ever so slightly!

The Lord alone knows. Most likely investors are selling shares they feel might be greatly affected by AI (as someone mentioned earlier), not appreciating the value in GD is in its proprietary data, which isn't publicly available.

I worked for Mike Danson's previous company, Datamonitor, and I remember in the very early 2000s no one was interested in us as they felt "all information is available for free on t'internet"

Once the sentiment settled, Danson sold for a fortune.

Sadly I didn't have faith then. I can have nothing but faith now!

Quite possibly. Seems plausible enough, although I've no idea what his personal ambitions are. For now we just hold on.

I do wonder why shareholders are selling as they would have bought at a higher price, unless they're just cutting their losses.

I thought he would take it off the market last year around the £1.50 mark. But speaking with some friends who have more than a pedestrian knowledge of corporate finance, it would have been expensive to raise finance (if he was even offered it), and he would have then been beholden to the bankers. MD isn't a man to answer to others, so he was probably happy to keep his 60 odd percent and carry on.

I've resigned myself waiting another few years, which given I first bought shares in the company over 16 years ago, doesn't worry me too much.

Not sure PR would make much difference. Anyone can see it's a pretty solid business with proven managers. Again MD most likely feels there's little point in wasting money, which I would agree with.

Very good points.

I can see why the whole AI issue discourages investors, and makes current one look for safer options, but your point about proprietary data is spot on. However, having worked in the data/information sector, these are exactly the costs companies look to cut when looking for savings - hence the short/medium term future doesn't look bright. Having said that, GD talk alot about forward contracted revenues, so this might be well mitigated. In any case, there's plenty in the bank to keep them afloat.

Given MD turned down offers of 190+ last year, he must feel the company is worth much more - although my feeling is that we're a few years away from that. Entering the FTSE250 is only likely to move the dial ever so slightly