Member Info for LordAdam

Hope this helps ... exDiv dates are almost always on a Thursday in the UK. The record date is the Friday ... that's the case here. To be paid the dividend you must own the share when the market opens on Thursday 11th ... which in turns will put you on the record at the close of Friday 12th. As far as I know there is only one dividend being paid of £1.00 Mike

I'm afraid the trade lists are notoriously inaccurate ... the trouble is that the actual list, I think its called the 'day list', doesn't contain the buy/sell information, only the time, number of shares and the price. So, trying to be helpful, some of the web sites try to label them buy/sell depending on the price in relation to the bid/offer prices. But it's a guess and goes wrong some times. To confuse matters more, the market makers can delay posting the trade details if the trade is above certain trigger values -- up to a day or so for the really big stuff! Hope that helps make sense of the chaos! Mike

It's not the buying that gives you the right to the dividend but rather the ownership of the share at the start of trading on the ExDiv date ... so you have to own it at 8.00 am on 11 August ... then you get the dividend when its paid. You can sell the share at 8.01 am and you still get the dividend ... and the latest you can buy it is 4.30 pm the previous day. Mike

Yes, a few thoughts ... the dividend, although significant in terms of being the 'first' and a demonstration of cash flow etc ... is small ... 2p when the bid offer spread on TRAK is frequently of the order of 10p. So the normal ramp to an exDiv date is basically going to be lost in the 'noise'. As we know the share is very tightly held and there's not a lot of them out there for the public ... and most importantly, not many out there for the Institutional Investors to buy. So an II can't really build up a holding by buying smallish chunks periodically. If an II wants a reasonable sized holding it has to come from a placement or from the BoD's own holdings -- we've seen both in the past. This means that the normal ebb and flow of II movements aren't taking place. So that leaves private investors ... last autumn PI movements drove the share price very sharply upwards, the press and commentators responded and in the thin market the price rose even more sharply. Then Winnafiver put the knife in ... a whole bunch of PIs who were profit/tip chasing got burnt ... and very importantly all the commentators didn't want to pin their reputation on TRAK, just in case it was going to tank. So we've had a thin market and a lack of PI investment since then. The final thought is that looking at the price movements and the volumes ... the market makers are using the swings to make money for themselves ... the price isn't really controlled by supply and demand, it's being 'fixed' essentially by the MMs on a day-to-day basis. So, what's the answer? Better liquidity won't actually help ... until that is, the company is somewhat larger ... perhaps 2-3 times what it is now. (And the best manoeuvre would be to add equity whilst keeping the BoD holdings constant, effectively loosening the tightness.) One fix is for the MMs to stop manipulating the price to exploit the swings and allow the supply/demand to actually move the price ... in which case the price will move higher naturally. I wouldn't hold your breath for a change of methodology by the MMs though. The other fix is for PIs to regain confidence that there's money to be made in the share ... positive, consistent reporting of the true situation and expectations is required. If the company were to use RNS again, as it was late last year, things would be much improved. RNS is monitored by the pundits and reported on, its searchable and archived, and creates the right positive feel about what the company is doing and where it's going. Trade press is OK, but it's uncontrolled, short lived and difficult for PI's to access when they 'have a look' at a share. Since the whiner affair the company has avoided the use of RNS probably as a policy to avoid stirring the pot. In it's absence we've had to rely on 3rd party reporting of contracts etc. Getting an RNS stream running again would be a big help. Well, as I said ... a few thoughts. Mike

I guess all long term holders/accumulators play this game and ask this question but I thought I'd ask around with this specific share and dividend as the focus for discussion. Next week, Thursday, SSE goes ex-Div on a big dividend, 62.5p which makes for a 3.9% yield on the current share price. I'm basically into long-term, high-yield, income shares ... I'm up to weight in SSE at the moment ... but could easily halve my holding by selling prior to going ex-Div. I'd lose the 62.5p and incur costs, but might be able to buy back some time in the near future (6 months) for less than I'd given up. (ie make a gain on the deal) Is the game worth playing? What do folk think? and what target should I set my repurchase price at? Mike

I've had an email from John Watkins to say that he moved some shares from one nominee account to another, that his total holding remains unchanged, but the formality of the system required the notification and apologising for the confusing nature of the form. As we thought, absolutely nothing to be concerned about. Mike

I'm afraid that I don't know any more details than are in the RNS ... and as you say it's a bit sparse. The RNS is a bit ambiguous and its not clear if the shares are going to or from John Watkins. The key point is the nil transfer price. You just can't transfer shares at zero value to avoid a tax implication (and we're talking of £5.5m worth here) with the one exception of a transfer between husband/wife. So my best guess at the moment is that that is what we are looking at ... an internal family type transfer to adjust things for any number of reasons. Mike

Looks like the CEO is adjusting the shares within his family holdings to minimize taxes on the upcoming dividend to me. Mike

It's the end of day automated auction that takes place 5 minutes after the market closes. As such you probably should not pay much attention to it as it is largely a book balancing procedure amongst market makers. Also ... it's a value of £13m ... normally folk refer to the number of shares in the trade for preference, in this case some 1.8m. Hope that helps. Mike

Just spent the last two hours reading and going through the audited year end report that was published yesterday on the company web site. It's exceptionally thorough, well written, and squeaky clean. Totally inline with the summary that was posted by RNS last week it's exactly what you would expect from this board of directors. Mike

It is gobbledygook ... it's easy for some beserker type character to generate this kind of noise out of any set of accounts by mixing up things that shouldn't be mixed up ... if you want a simple version of this sort of thing look at this problem. "Three men eat at a restaurant. The bill comes to £25. They each pay £10. When the waiter brings the £5 change they each take back £1 each and leave a £2 tip. So each man has paid £9, which totals £27. The waiter has the £2 tip, which makes £29, so who pocketed the other £1?" Winnafiver isn't interested in clarity. He thrives on emotional tirades, obfuscation and confusion ... by all means look at what he says, but if it doesn't make sense then maybe that's telling you something thing? Mike

Excellent results and a complete vindication for those long term holders who kept their cool (and their shares) ... Vindicate ... show to be right by providing justification or proof. The reported and forecast eps, together with the growth figures (30-50% across the board) suggest a considerably higher share price. Once these results are more widely reported and new buyers enter the market the lack of liquidity will do the rest. Well done Trakm8 ... congratulations to all involved and thanks for the great results! Mike

In the interests of starting or tightening up the discussion ... not by way of starting an argument ... 1) You get the same rate of return, in terms of dividend, on 1 share as on 10,000 shares ... the dividend is paid per share. True, dealing costs are disproportionately higher on 1 share than on 10,000 and that has to be taken into account! But its not fair to imply that spending more improves the rate of return. 2) You don't have to let your money sit for 2 months ... you just need to be owning the share when the market opens on the ex-dividend day. I've bought the day before and sold on the day and then been paid the dividend on the payment date (which might be 2 months later of course). 3) For companies that pay large dividend yields and that pay them asymmetrically, ie most of the dividend paid in one chunk, then dipping in and out of the share at the ex-div date can be very profitable. It's usually called 'scalping' and there are folk who make a good living at it. 4) As a long term holder I play it both ways ... this time of year my plan is to increase my holding ... then reduce after the exdiv date at a good opportunity while maintaining a 'core' holding. This capital is then moved to another asymmetric yielder and so on. Mike

In amongst all the Brexit and market noise there was an RNS yesterday or the day before showing that the Hope acquisition is now cleared by the CMA and is likely to be concluded by August 2016 ... with the addition of Hope's overlapping influence BREE will be a much larger and stronger company and the present price of 62p will seem to be exceptionally cheap in retrospect! Mike

It's an interesting thought ... but with the whole sector down as far as it is, and VTU hit particularly hard ... are we looking at VTU being a potential take over target here if the low share prices persist for any length of time? Of course the usual mechanism of using paper to fund the acquisition won't work so well -- but when did that ever stop merchant bankers making a bit of money? Mike

So what we have here is a very interesting menage-a-trois between, BT Fleets, The AA and Trakm8 ... and underpinning all this is the creation last autumn of a special division, headed by Trakm8's most experienced sales director to handle the whole thing. Now, if that's not a game changer I don't know what is ... Mike

That's very much how I read it as well ... looking at the placement that took place late last year, the board had no trouble placing an extra 10% on top of its existing equity using it's in house broker (NOMAD). The current strategic plans of the company couldn't make use of a large cash injection, these are not megalomaniacs hell bent on taking over the world (literally with placements and share issues) ... it's a board that practices sane sensible growth through targeted acquisition where necessary. In that context JP Morgan is far more likely to be a long-term plan for flotation on the main market where I would expect to see the company approximately double in size with the management retaining their existing holding (which would then represent about 25% of the equity). Mike

Well, I'm over exposed here but I couldn't resist liquidating part of a holding that's going nowhere to buy in some more Trakm8 shares at this level. There has to be a significant re-rating of this stock at some point and the end of the Brexit hiatus and the results in early July is likely to be the trigger for it. In the meantime I have no problems with how the board are handling things ... and as regards a placing/cash raising exercise, well, it just doesn't make any sense and it's not going to happen at this stage of the game. Mike

Come on guys (and gals) ... let's get real ... surely we're not going to have a debate about what Shell plans to do in 25 years time! Or does the 2030 mean 8.30pm -- which is more like the timescale at which most investors operate. Sticke to tomorrow, next week, next month or maybe next year or so ... but 25 years ... Mike

No, it's not going well -- it's going disastrously ... and the reason is it says and asks the wrong things. It's dead in the water because it's misinformed and seriously flawed. If you research the subject fully you will see that it is the websites that apply the 'buy' and 'sell' indications -- it has nothing to do with the market makers and is certainly not the result of market manipulation. Typical small print on sites says "Trade definitions are based on the mid-price and are indicative only". For delayed trades the sites frequently get them wrong because the trade can no longer be interpreted within the now changed bid/offer spread. This is the second time this petition has been put forward. It failed the first time, and it's failing this time. For goodness sake revise it and make it say the right thing before you try to get seasoned investors to sign it. I WON'T be sigining this and I won't be encouraging anyone else to either. Put simply it's a job for the web sites and not one for the FCA or parliament. Mike