Member Info for LordAdam

Testpack3 ... if I've got it right and you're using CFD's to short RDSB then you will have to make good the dividend payments as well as service the interest etc. ("In the case of short positions, the dividend adjustment is debited from the client's account"). For RDSB that amounts to a whopping 30% at today's prices ... and you're hoping for a drop to £10 over the same period ... that's a 50% drop. Seems like the game is not worth playing to me. Also if the share falls by more than 6% over the year ... you are not in the money ... because you've had to pay out the 6% dividend + the 5-6% service costs. Me thinks the money is actually being made by someone else here ... Finally ... suppose the shares go up? At £25 you've got to stump up £25,000 for the increase on 5,000 shares ... if they hit £30 you've got to find £50,000 ... that could mean a very embarrassing forced exit from the position if you can't service the margin call. Nope, not for me I'm afraid. Mike

Hedgies ... I'm interested in how you're shorting ... I'm guessing that you're not doing the textbook thing and 'borrowing' shares from someone to sell in the market place in the hope of buying them back cheaper some time in the future ... so what are you doing, how does it work, what does it cost etc? Mike

On 7 Sep, five months into the first half of the year the board had this to say ... "Trakm8 is pleased to report that trading in the first five months of the current financial year commencing 1 April 2016 has started satisfactorily and is consistent with its expectations for the year as a whole. Group new orders booked have been received at a rate of 37% greater than the same period last year, of which 27% is organic growth. This continues the trend of strong growth of recent years." "In line with previous years, the weighting of Group revenue, profits and cash flow is expected to be in favour of the second half." "Overall, Trakm8 has had an encouraging start to the financial year in terms of new orders, as a result of which the Board's overall outlook for the year is unchanged (excluding the impact of exchange rate movements)." This board is not one for over promising or failing to deliver. I take them at their word. Mike

To qualify for the dividend of 19p per share, payable on 12th January 2017 you must own the shares as the market opens at 8am on Thursday morning 3rd November. You can sell them at 8.01 am on the day and you can buy them at 4.29 pm on the day before ... but you must own them at the magic 0800 on 3/11/16! Good luck. Mike

Milender ... a very reasonable and well judged response I thought. There's a couple of things I'd add ... On the subject of RNS's and the apparent lack of responses from the BoD ... the chairman is on record as saying that they have been advised that comments via RNS that are not geared to specific 'normal' corporate notifications could be viewed as ramping or deramping activity and implied that they would not be going down that route in the future. Also, we went through a period in the new year/spring of very public company bashing from one particular source ... the BoD chose not to respond via RNS to that, I think to avoid getting into a tit-for-tat arguement about what would essentially be considered 'opinion' rather than 'fact'. Ultimately time would prove one or the other right -- so far there is no sign of the BoD not delivering. As regards the current share price and volatility ... the market makers make money out of trades ... a 'turn' on each. But to make money they need trades and stimulating the market is one way to get those. Hence big swings on low volume ... there's nothing like a -5% to attract attention -- even if it is based on a few thousand pounds worth of trades. Fear is a bigger motivator than greed, at least in the short term. Finally, this is not your usual 'let's spend someone else's money board' ... collectively they have over 35% of the company in their own holdings. Their personal worth is tied to the share price of TRAK. They don't seem unduly worried about what on paper is a halving of their money from Christmas to now ... I don't think I should be either ... the reality is that the real worth of the company is more like £3-4 than £2. Mike

It's the same story as always ... the company is quietly getting on with the business, not making a fuss, not blowing it's trumpet ... and some folk can't cope with the peace and quiet of a successful company just getting on with making money and growing the business. So they sell out because they can't see what's really happening. To put it into perspective, as I write 50,000 shares have been sold, 0.15% of the company ... and the price has shifted by 10% ... come on, get real. You're looking at the trading effect of a very tightly held company. If you've got the cash (and I haven't) then buy ... next week it will be back to what it was a few days ago. Mike

Today's announcement of the disposal of 16.7% of SSE's stake in SGN for the sum of £621m also contains the words "it would expect to use the proceeds to return value to its shareholders or to invest to create value for shareholders, should there be the right opportunity". A quick, back of the envelope style, calculation suggests that the cash would support a special dividend of 50-60p. Of course the board might think that there's other, better, ways of putting the cash to work ... what we *don't* want to see is any form of share buy back scheme! There's to be an announcement on 9 November as to what is happening. Mike

No, the buy back is not good for us small share holders ... put simply ... the choice is stark, a special dividend of about 25p or a small increase in the EPS caused by cancelling shares in issue, followed by issuing more shares as 'options' and the a reduction in EPS ... Put in that way, the comparison is stark ... the BoD have taken the cash surplus that the company had, and not having a sane/sensible use for it has decided, not to hold it as reserve or give it back to shareholders but to use it in a way that I personally think, and other opinions may differ, rewards themselves differentially at shareholders expense. I see no evidence in the recent share price movement that their strategy has increased my wealth by the same amount as a special dividend of 25p per share would have. Ergo, for me, they made the wrong choice. Mike

By the way ... there's obviously some crossed bid/offer prices out there in amongst the market makers! My buy of shares at 173.9 was below the mid-point and is clearly showing (in LSE's way of interpreting it) as a sell order. So we really can't rely on the buy/sell numbers to tell us what is happening here. Oh, the Joie de vivre of it all! Mike

Well, despite being decidedly over exposed here I couldn't resist spending the war chest that I was keeping for the Phoenix rights issue on a short-term holding to run along side my much larger, longer term holdings. I don't normally trade this share -- the spread is far too large to make it worthwhile, but 175'ish is getting really rather silly and deserves to be exploited. Mike

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We don't really have 'rampers' here ... we do have some long term holders/supporters of the stock who give very reasoned arguments as to why they are holding and how they think things will go. On the other hand, from time to time we do have 'derampers' who pass through with ill defined reasons why the world is going to end tomorrow. Trakm8, as a trading share, is very sensitive to low volumes of shares being sold/bought, the spread is enormous and as I write a difference of 10,000 shares between buy/sell has moved the price 10% (effectively £20,000 has moved the company capitalisation by £6,400,000 ... that's gotta be daft. Normally a silly 20p move on a big company would be quickly corrected but here there's not the volume here and the market makers basically play games with the share price to make money out of the trades -- as is their want. Both the long-term holders and the board of directors are not really interested in 'talking' the share up ... eventually the share price will reflect the true value of the company (which is realistically in the range £3-4). In the meantime we use these opportunities to top-up and average down even further. I would myself, except that I'm ridiculously over exposed already (20% of a big portfolio). But notice, even at that level, I and others are neither getting out, getting worried or 'ramping'. Mike

Yep ... I'll take up the rights ... only problem that I have is that I have two holdings one in and one out of the ISA. The one in the ISA is going to be short of the necessary cash to take up all the shares that I could ... the one outside I can fund independently and is no problem. You're right, it's a fair investment ... about 1/3 of the holding that you have but I note a couple of things ... firstly its already fully underwritten -- so the placing can't actually fail, secondly market cap is currently just over £2bn ... and the acquisition is just under £1bn so it roughly balances out with a bit of working capital on top to boot. Yep, as I say, I'm in ... I was looking to increase my holding late this year, maybe next spring in anycase. Mike

I'm away at the moment but here's the detailed take on the dividend entitlement ... The notice for the AGM on Trakm8's site says that, if approved at the AGM, it will be paid to investors on the register at the close of the 26th ... that means that the exDiv date is actually today, and actually means that you need to hold the share at the opening bell of trading *this* morning. You can sell as soon as the market opens, but you must have it as the market opens. It takes two days for the company registrar to bring the share register up to date and that's why from the company's POV they say the 26th. So you will get the dividend for any shares that you owned at the opening of the market this morning. Of course this has to be 'retrospectively' approved at the AGM in 10-14 days time. Hope that helps. Mike

Sign it ... no way ... it's been done to death, and death is what it deserves! Get the research right and you might have a hope. It's not the market makers who specify the buy/sell, it's the web sites! And even that is based on a best guess of the bid/offer price at the time (even worse when the trade is legitimately delayed in time). It's dead because its wrong ... rewrite the thing, make a valid and proper statement/claim and you might get some support. In the meantime, TWICE this has been floated and TWICE it's failed. Don't flog a dead horse. Mike

It's been a long, long, time since anyone posted anything here ... ... and I know there's got to be folk out there who are interested in discussing Ashmore and it 's prospects. So where are you all hanging out? Where's the go-to bulletin board for ASHM? Mike

Not to forget of course that the currency fix date is actually in September, some time away yet ... so perhaps not best to get too excited about the devaluation windfall. Mike

Smith & Nephew announced in today's RNS that they are to pay all share holders a special dividend of 25p per share. Ooops sorry, got that wrong, they announced a buy back for the equivalent money. Ummm ... I wonder if it will increase my shares by 25p -- me thinks not. So what's going on? Wouldn't be something to do with buying/cancelling shares to artificially increase the EPS and the bonuses would it? Or maybe so that when options are issued we don't notice the dilution? Call me a cynic ... but buy backs are bad news for us shareholders. Mike

Take a look at Roadsense's latest accounts ... https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08300339/filing-history With a share capital of �104, tangible assets of about �1,000, total assets of about �13,000 ... it's what you might call a 'petty cash' transaction. At this scale it doesn't need an RNS. Roadsense are a reasonable company but they look to have gotten into cash flow difficulties and I suspect approached Trakm8 to see if they were interested in taking over the customer base etc in return for keeping their jobs. It's a reasonable trade to be honest ... subscribers, sales opportunities, and existing contracts in return for underwriting the payroll while Roadsense are integrated into Trak's operation. My impression of late is that the BoD is only currently using RNS for those events for which it is required. Mike

Well, just to put the whole thing into some kind of perspective ... Fleetmatics have about 700,000 units reporting to their servers and they've gone for an agreed $2.4bn ... that's about £1.8bn in real money. Now, we have 150,000 units reporting to our servers so that would value Trakm8 at about £385m. That equates to a share price of about £12 per share. Now I know that's a very simplistic way of looking at things but in reality its all about functionality, product and secured cash flow from subscribers ... on that basis we can see that Trak would be worth a great deal more than the £2 share tag that it has at the moment. Trakm8 is far too tightly held to be a target for a hostile bid, and if I was on the Board I'd certainly be looking for something like the Verizon bid price to make me even think about agreeing a sale. Just goes to show what the value of the future cash flow of this company is, and what they are prepared to pay for it on the other side of the water. Mike