Member Info for LOTM-13

I tried to sell half my holding the other day when the price got to 180p, but it went into auction as I was trying to do so & was never that price again. Which was pretty annoying.

Anyway given the current price, I've sold something I wasn't intending to in the short term & just bought another 5,900 shares at 166.87

A lot more normal trades going through so far today & very little bot action. I wonder what the next holding announcement will reveal ? & what the next update on the major shareholding on the website will show as well.

LOTM

Mr.kioto

The share buy-back is not complete, they have only used up about $16M (£11.95M) of it. There has been no indication as to why it suddenly stopped on 4th August.

So over 4.5M more shares should be acquired when it starts up.

If you look in detail at all these holding notices, you'll see that slowly but surely Goldman Sachs are increasing there voting interest in the company. they seem to be carrying out quite a complex operation. Sometimes they are selling stock yet not losing the voting rights then they re-acquire the stock again.

So it could well be them that is causing the price to move so much at the moment as they try to force the weak holders to part with there stock.

I'll be quite happy if they pay out the $100M & do another share consolidation at the same time.

People are simply not seeing the long term value here.

What there doing is going to totally transform the company going forward. It will become a massive cash-cow for those left holding the stock next year.

LOTM

Well I split my order into 2 parts 2250 & 2750 both got filled while I was out so I've now got 15,000 shares again.

Lets see what the next couple of days have in store & if this is going to bounce or not. GLA

LOTM

Well when all said & done I've managed to buy back 10K shares so far, at an average all in cost of £1.753

I've 1 order still outstanding for another 5K that wasn't triggered yesterday in the £1.6's. I may adjust the price depending on what happens 1st thing this morning. As I'm going to be out for a few hours today.

Hopefully no-one got caught in that bear trap.

LOTM

Yep,

Knew it was a trap !

I ended up removing my 1st limit order & buying some stock back given the 2 previous O buys. As soon as my trade goes through bang, a whole load of trades go through & then the price drops.

Note it didn't happen when those 2 other O buys went through only mine !

Oh well I've 2 other limit orders still in place at lower prices, so lets see what fun & games they have in store for this afternoon. Technically that will be another profit banked given I sold those 5K at £1.82 odd yesterday & bought them back for around £1.79 including all costs.

LOTM

Ok sold over half the BBY shares that I'm going to be selling at a nice profit, the other half are on a separate limit order.

Been watching CNE in the meantime & I hope I'm wrong but this feels like a buyer's trap right now, as if they are tempting you to buy in at this price & are then going to take it lower.

LOTM

So I've held off from buying, I've put my first limit order in place for 5K in mid £1.7's the next is going in very low £1.7's & I'll take it from there and see what feels right.

LOTM

Is this another tree shake on its way ?

What's going to be a good price to buy at if it is, is the next question ...........

LOTM

Goldman Sachs reporting around 2 days behind everyone else just clouds the picture even more.

They dumped 9% on friday & then got it back on Monday !

So that now doesn't tie in with BOA (Bank of America) Merrill stake.

It's currently indicating that both Goldman & BOA have acquired voting rights to significant amount's of stock at roughly the same time.

So which 2 or more of the other 8 top 10 holders has sold there voting rights for cash ?

LOTM

Oh and Merrill Lynch are the ones meant to be carrying out the buy-back program.

So I presume while there tied up in all of this active in one form or another, there would be a conflict of interest taking place if they were to be doing the buy-back at the same time.

So until the buy-back announcements start to re-appear, I'm going to assume something is still a foot.............

LOTM

Confession time .....

The 2 sells for 9.9K & 9K this afternoon were mine.

I wasn't intending selling & certainly not at that price.

However the sheer drop on BBY at lunchtime made it impossible for me not to go there. Just failed to bank a nice profit at the close, will likely bank it early tomorrow morning & then start to get the cash back into CNE.

LOTM

Wow market doesn't like it at all now, sub £3.00

Have to say that's a bit over done for sure, 5-7% I could understand 12%+ has to be over done.

Bought some of those sub £3 ones because they are a long term bargain. I hope the Buy-back is buying them back big time now to.

LOTM

Looks like the market does agree with me, in not being impressed with those results.

Those who paid £3.50+ 1st thing this morning must be pretty peeved off right now.

The £150M share buy-back program will get some cheaper shares to start the last 1/3 of it. Program might finish now with under 545M shares in issue when all said & done.

That should make a difference to the final dividend payment next year.

Will be looking for 10p a share this time round to go with the measly 3.5p there giving for the interim.

LOTM

HarrierResearch,

Blackrock is already a 5.4% shareholder in the company.

I hope its not a good play for private equity as I see this as a really good cash cow for shareholders, only the market doesn't seem to have worked that out yet. Perhaps its the current lack of annual dividends that's masking the true story for investors to see. By this time next year I think people will get the message.

Until then the rest of the tidying up needs to take place & hopefully in a way that means a bigger benefit further down the line.

As to value, £2.70 was turned down before, since then the special dividend effectively bought in over 50% of the company at £2.11 per share. So a bid / offer of £3.10 a share now would barely get you to that point. Given the $35M of G&A cuts in there as well & the current outlook for oil, I don't see anyone getting the 11 largest holders to budge for under £3.25

LOTM

My goodness this is getting complex ...........

The previous Goldman Sachs filing was for last thursday (not the friday as I thought)

The one for friday shows them getting rid of virtually all of there 10% holding.

Now Bank of America (Merrill Lynch) have disclosed on Monday 14th August a holding of 9.48% from none previously, with most of it through indirect voting rights - so this is where the Goldman Sach's voting rights all went to.

Merrill Lynch only took on the direct share holding and part of the indirect voting rights for a total of 5.66% . It doesn't say (or show) who else within Bank of America got the other near 3% of voting rights obtained.

So it could be to clients of there's or it could be to other parts of the bank.

Something sure is going on .............................. & we're going to be the last to know

LOTM

I can't say I was impressed with the results, but market seems happy for now.

Adjusted eps barely changed even although there are a lot less shares in issue now.

Dividend unchanged, so the cost of the dividend to the company is less than it was last year. They could have at least maintained the amount in £ terms that was paid out to shareholders compared to the last interim payment.

LOTM

Goldman Sachs reporting's are 2 days behind what has actually occurred, ie today's filing relates to what happened in the market on Friday.

So we'll have to wait until at least tomorrow to find out if they bought the 2.6M Madison shares, if not then who did ?

LOTM

I was going to be writing to talk about the sudden stop to the buy-back program & all this Goldman Sachs activity until that Madison announcement came out.

Why would they sudden just stop the buy-back buying, when they could still be making progress (slowly admittedly) on a daily basis ?

Have they been approached recently, by someone regarding a merger or take-over & thus the buy-back has had to be put on hold until the market is made aware of the facts ?

Or is the broker they agreed to do the buy-back purchases through got a conflict of interest (ie is doing a lot of these transactions on behalf of Goldman Sachs) & has had to put the buy-back on hold until it has finished this other work ?

Maybe someone else will come up with some other possibilities because those are the only ones that I can come up with that make any sense.

LOTM

Hmm there is much more to this than meets the eye.

Goldman Sachs seems to be reducing the number of shares it physically owns, while at the same time increasing the number of shares it has the voting rights to, to keep its overall position stable.

Now who would want to buy stock & not having the voting rights attached to it ? & how much of a premium are they getting for doing so as well ?

Madison has just revealed a drop of 2.6M shares in its holding of CNE, which apparently happened yesterday, but there isn't any sign of that volume of trading going through the market yesterday !

LOTM

I was having a look at the CNE website at the weekend & happened to look at the major shareholder's list.

I didn't realise just how concentrated the share register is, with 10 groups each owning over 3% of the company as at 28th July. For a combined holding of 94.82M shares or 66.39% of the shares in issue.

Goldman Sachs is already in the list via "Goldman Sachs Collateral A/C" which is down for 10.6M shares or 7.42% of the company.

The recent major holdings announcements from Goldman Sachs seems to indicate (if you look at the 1st one from 8th August in particular). That this is a totally separate one to the other existing holding. (since the announcement on the 8th say there was no previous holding).

If that is the case then the top 11 holdings now control 109.3M 76.58% of the company & therefore the free float is down to just 34.4M of which CNE are trying to buyback around another 4M shares.

If you disagree & say no its connected to that other Goldman Sachs fund or the swaps are actually shares held by 1 or more of the other top10 holders that have sold/lent the voting rights to there shares instead. Then in that case the major holders now account for 98.75M shares or over 69% of the company & the free float is 44M shares.

I will return to this topic later to discuss the implications of the $100M special dividend that is going to be coming in the not to distant future.

LOTM

Well that was some "tree shake"

I wonder for who's benefit that was done ?

Were GS looking to shake out more stock or is there another buyer in the background trying to pick-up a decent amount of stock as well.

I do hope the buy-back program got some shares today.

Roll on Monday for more fun & games I guess.

LOTM