Member Info for LordAdam

Late this evening (Thursday) an article was posted on the website of http://www.motortradenews.com which begins ... Automotive News Vertu partner with Close Brothers for military sales Vertu Motors plc has entered into a partnership with Close Brothers Military Services to facilitate sales to serving military personnel. ... See the rest of the article for further details. Turns out that both Artemis and Schroders are major shareholders of Close Brothers as well as Vertu ... but this could be coincidence of course! Mike

Today's RNS is LATE ... it relates to transactions for last Friday and should have been notified by close of business on Tuesday. Majedie Asset Management were late in their notification to the company -- whether that's significant or not depends on how Machiavellian your thought processes are. But its still not the whole story: 1. Overall 16,500,000 shares moved that day in "unusual transactions". 2. Today's RNS is for exactly 3,500,000 shares and that trade was at 8:28:22 on Friday morning. 3. We know that L&G moved shares that day as well. 4. There were other transfers that are as yet unexplained. But we don't know where any of these shares went and who else contributed to the rearrangement of holdings. Over the last few days there have been several other significant share movements ... Overall I think I know what's going on. Mike

We shall see what the bell brings this morning. The good part of this is that the shares that were moved were moved at a price *above* the trading band at the time. So it's not a dump or a cut and run ... what ever it is it's more of an agreed/strategic nature than anything else. Mike

So we have a partial answer to the conundrum ... last Friday 16.5m shares were dealt in 30 minutes ... and today, with one minute to go to the expiry of the deadline an RNS news item was posted saying that Legal and General had reduced its holding to under 5%. There's a lot here that doesn't seem to stack up. Firstly L&G had 10m shares ... not 16.5m ... and over the day (Friday) 24m were traded in total. So there's a lot more going on than just the L&G news item suggests. The RNS item says L&G have reduced their holding to less than 5% ... it was already less than 5% ... 5% of 341m is 17m, not 10m. So on the face of it the L&G declaration is meaningless -- and if 5% is the mandatory reporting level, then it wasn't even necessary in the first place. And where did those 10-16m shares go? I can't for one moment think that a market maker took them for their book ... _at more than the bid/offer price at the time_ ... why pay over the odds to take L&G's stake off their hands? And what market maker wants to be holding 5-10% of the company? No it still looks to me as though the trades were pre-arranged outside the normal trading mechanism. Why haven't we seen a matching RNS for where they went? ... or were they split into multiple holdings? (There were 3.5m, 1.5m, 5.5m and 5.2m tranches dealt.) I think we are in for a very interesting time ... Mike

On a bigger company, more liquid market etc you some times see these little trades as a result of folk doing a DIY dividend reinvestment type thing. But Trakm8 has no dividend and the timing would be all wrong anyway so that's not it. I think the trick is to look at the value of the deal ... today there's a buy of 51 shares with a value of £74. This is obviously someone with a very different approach to share buying than you and I ... I suspect they don't have access to a discount broker or low cost dealing facilities. So putting two and two together to make four point three they may well be someone taking a 'punt' with a spare £100 that they are prepared to risk. Generally I think its people who should know better following tip sheets, press comment and pub talk? (Delete the later, probably rather biased statement if you find not to your taste). Mike

Leaving aside the 20,000 options shares lets look at the 16,200,000 shares that changed hands in those 30 minutes. First a bit of context, in those 30 minutes 5% of the company changed hands .... more shares moved in 30 minutes than in any 2-week period in the last 3-5 years. It was an unprecedented amount of activity -- and there was hardly a ripple on the water, nobody blinked an eye -- that's the really strange bit. My best information on the major shareholders in Vertu (in millions of shares): Artemis 29m Octopus 23m Cazenove 17m Ruffer 14m Schroders 12m Legal & General 10m F&C Assett 10m Friends Provident 9m Rensburg 9m So this activity was well up the league table. Lets look at the trades list: 8:28:22 3,500,000 @65 (Bid offer was 63.0/63.5) 8:28:36 1,500,000 @65 8:47:41 500,000 @ 65 (Bid/Offer was 63.5/64.0) 8:59:32 5,500,000 @ 65 (Bid/Offer 64.25/65.0) 9:02:41 5,200,000 @ 65 Now if that lot is not 'related' then I'll eat my hat. Interesting points ... No market maker is holding 5-10% of the company in its jobbing book ... so these orders were 'matched' outside the market, hence the price is outside the bid/offer range and the trade type is not automated ... plus the market hardly blinked at this enormous volume. It looks very much to me that a big chunk of the company has been moved from one of the principle shareholders to someone else, possibly somebody that we already know about (ie another of the ones on the list) or to someone new. But who and more importantly why? Does anyone know what the reporting levels/times rules are for companies on AIM of this size? ie at what level do you have to report holdings via RNS and in what timescale? Mike

On Friday (29/5/15) there were about 15 million shares bought in 3-4 big chunks in the space of the first hour of trading in VTU, 24 million traded over the day ... 15m is about 4-5% of the company. I'm not surprised by the buying ... looks like one of the bigger players adjusting their holding or getting in ... what I am surprised by is that the price didn't move more then or today. Of extreme interest is the RNS posting on the same day ... shares in the option scheme for employees which on a cursory glance explains the increased volume ... But 20,000 for the option scheme is nowhere near enough to account for the 15+ million and me wonders ... was the RNS news item timed to cover the big purchase? ... was the purchase timed to coincide with the RNS? ... or are the two totally unrelated? I wonder what other folk make of it. Mike

It will be very interesting to see if Trakm8 attracts the attention of the weekend press ... which would probably be a bad thing overall ... or to see if it can stay under the radar of the media. Mike

Well it was relatively quiet when I posted ... just one or two trades ... as you say there's a bit more selling going on at the moment, but some sign of buyers coming back into the fray. Calendar ... the best indication that I've found is the dates of last years RNS newsfeed ... looks like early July for the annual statement and early September for the AGM itself. Mike

Almost nice to see a quiet day ... last news release was on 23 April. Does anyone know what the significant dates are likely to be in the company calendar over the next 6-12 months? I'd like to get a feel for when the annual results are likely to be posted and when the AGM is likely to be (it's local to myself and I may well go along). Mike