Member Info for LOTM-13

Rightly or wrongly changed my mind, stopped my limit order & just bought 2400 shares at 178.6p instead.

Lets see if this bounces now or not, I wonder what GS will make of it all this afternoon when USA comes online ?

Hopefully the buy-back program has mopped up a little stock in the meantime as well :)

LOTM

What the heck is going on this morning, where has this massive price drop come from ?

Didn't see this come, should have bailed at least one trading block yesterday !

If I'd even seen a hint of it I would have but everything looked to be on an upward trend then this massive drop on no volume, is it a tree shake ? who knows

Anyway I've put in yet another buy order this time for another 2,500 shares.

LOTM

That's no stock bought in for 3 days in a row now - very strange indeed. I'm guessing there is no stock available or too many buy orders occurring in the background that is mopping up al available stock !

Oil price is nearly at its highest level since mid November 2022, that has to be helping the bottom line in Egypt & the payments they get for the north sea stuff they sold on.

Not sure where the trading exit point should be now ! history is saying just short of 190p, but my gut is saying its going to go higher than that !

I'm guessing we'll see weakness 1st thing in the morning & then the price strengthening from there as the day progresses which is the current pattern (which is no doubt driven by GS at the moment & there stake building & there instructions are probably coming from the USA - which would tie in with the above).

LOTM

Well it looks like Goldman Sachs have been busy getting a sizeable position in place of CNE shares & voting rights & SWAP's (some for as long as 10 -years) to reveal voting rights to 10.2% of the company, compared to not having any disclosure requirements on the stock previously.

They clearly see long term value here.

LOTM

1st significant point to note today is the fact there was no share buy-back announcement, so no stock bought in on friday.

I was going to comment about it anyway, but this gives me the chance to highlight it even more. The buy-back has ground down to a mere 40,000 shares or so being bought in daily. Given there is £8M still to be spent on the existing buy-back that equates to over 4M shares or 100+ days of actual trading at the current rate to complete it. Meaning it wouldn't be completed until December. So they really need to step up there game & be more aggressive in buying back the stock because we don't want a situation where the buy-back is continuing when there going to be paying out that special dividend in Q4 (don't know the size of it yet or whether it will be a share reduction as happened the last time, or a simple cash payment or a combo job). The less shares outstanding at that time the bigger the payment will be for everyone.

Early indications are that there is a bit of a stock shortage today, which is squeezing the price higher, bots are not selling into the rising price as much as they usually would do.

Question is how many more buyers are there out there to push the price even higher, I guess we'll get the answer to that as the day progresses.

LOTM

Only 149 trades on Friday, with 50 of them coming in the 1st 2 hours of trading, during which time they tried to get the price above 180p which was met with small selling each time but total volume during this time was just 20,000 shares.

Next 2.5 hrs saw little trading (7K) the 6K bias of more buys than sells lifted the price to the verge of 180p being the bid price by 12:45 then 2 identical trades of 83K 14 secs apart at 181.2p (possibly a b&b or move from 1 a/c to another).

Caused the bid price to reach 181p into which 2 O trades for 6K seemed to trigger the bots into starting to sell stock, taking the offer price all the way down to 180p again before the 100th trade. At that point the bots started light buying again. This only lifted the offer price to 181p at 3:30

Then no trades at all for over 30 mins during which time they marked the offer up to 182.4p & then when the bid hit 181.6p an O trade occurred which got little reaction from the bots.

Auction volume was light but very much on the positive side.

So all in all can't complain at all about Friday. Especially price wise with the near 3% gain on the day.

The next question is what will happen on Monday ?

Oil price is firming up all the time at the moment & the Ukraine attack on an oil tanker in the Black Sea might reduce Russian supplies further. There will also be the OPEC news to factor in as well.

Overall market sentiment doesn't seem positive for now, so that might be a hinderance.

Hopefully the price pushes on towards the top of the trading range again in the next couple of days at which point the trading profits can be banked.

LOTM

What can I say other than ............ it was an even stranger day's trading.

Not a single trade ( not even the bots) until 9:10 when a large sell of 14K hit home, only 3 trades until 09:54 when the bots decided to get involved. 40 trades later, its 10am & the price is 170 - 171 ! It then bounces back up within 5 mins on little trades/volume to 173 - 175 & doesn't trade again for 45mins when 2 x 63K trades go through. (also of note 2 x 133k trades 12:35) Bots were mainly buying & trade sizes were larger than usual.

Certainly looks like they want to push the share price high, lets see if they follow through with that tomorrow. If so then it should get to at least 180p during the day.

Not selling that 2nd parcel when I had the chance has proved costly :( as those funds could have been re-used at a much lower level. On the plus side it looks like we kind of have a trading range mapped out ! lets see if the share price acts accordingly.

LOTM

Very strange day's trading, down initially on virtually no volume, then picks up looking like it might kick on & then just before 3pm a string of sells for a mere 15k of stock smashed the price down. 4:20pm and a trade of 496,719 at 181.4p

Lets see what tomorrow brings........

LOTM

Looking like it might bounce from here........ in for a penny in for a £

So just topped up with another 1500 shares at 176.43p which will bring down the average buy price of that last purchase.

Lets see what happens given the strengthening oil price.

LOTM

Daibelts

Been around the markets a long time, but don't normally try to do day type trading.

Well I've left a lot of money on the table yet again, with trying to pinch to much cash for that 2nd parcel of shares.

Now making adjustments as to the range I expect the price to trade within currently.

LOTM

Another note to self - with CNE do not use odd point numbers on buy orders.

I had my buy in place this morning at 181.75p which didn't get filled even with the spread at 181.0 - 181.8p I could buy small amounts at 181.63p during that time if I wanted but it wouldn't fill the order.

So when the price went back up, I adjusted the limit price to 181.8 & got filled at 181.794 which isn't looking a great price right now :( given we're already down another 1.4p on that price :( hey ho it is what it is. On the bright side its 2p less than the price I would have got them at yesterday.

Lets see if this bounces now or not. (will be looking to exist around the 188 - 191 range when it returns there at some point in the future.

LOTM

LOTM

Made a complete hash of trying to day / 2 day trade this today.

Initially had an order in 184.7 but the price went up first thing & didn't hit my sell level of 191.2 on the rest of my current holding.

Then when watching the price drop later I altered my limit order to 184.1 and of course it then bounced of 184.4 & I never got filled.

There was quite a lot of sells going through at 183.4, so I then wrongly moved by limit order to 183.7p & of course didn't get filled again (my 184.1 price would have) & its now bounced again quite hard :(

Oh well there's always tomorrow ! will have to make some adjustments price wise for these orders going forward.

LOTM

Well finally sold half my holding this morning @ £187.538 to bank a profit of over 10p a share on the ones I sold. The other half are up roughly 15p a share on paper (& they may get sold later in the day depending on what the price does.

I know there isn't a lot of volume but I'm going to try day trading it, starting tomorrow (or possibly 2 day trading it, we'll see what happens).

LOTM

No1plasterer,

Looks like you left a lot on the table. With the bots suddenly springing into action.

I've put some sell orders in higher up, just in case, you never know what might happen, when something goes from a few trades to multiple trades in a few seconds.

LOTM

LOTM

Really shocked to see that they only bought back 48,186 shares yesterday. One of the lowest purchases seen to date even although there was good trading volume yesterday.

If your share buy-back program hasn't been designed to take advantage of such situations as yesterday then there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

They should have been "making hay when the sun shines"

Given the volume that did occur they should have bought back at least 250,000 shares yesterday.

LOTM

Sadly I was out most of yesterday & didn't get to trade it as I would have liked.

I had placed 3 different buy orders all of which were filled the lowest being at 172.8p the highest 177.2p (although the limit had been set at 178.1).

If I'd been around & seen the RNS I would have spread the prices out far more.

LOTM

The company really needs to draw a line in the sand, as to where it think's under valuation begins.

When the share price falls below that figure, then it should be buying in its stock on a daily basis (not an adhoc one).

Now that might only be 25,000 shares a day at say £0.85 as the starting point. If it goes to £0.86 the next day it doesn't buy in any, or if it falls further to say £0.84 per share then it buy's in around 50,000 shares instead. So the number of shares bought each day increases with each £0.01 fall in the share price. 80K @ £0.83, 120K @ £0.82 etc etc.

Remember equity is there dearest source of finance by far now (probably twice that of any other source), so the fewer shares there are in issue, the larger the saving there is in the total amount paid out in dividends per quarter.

LOTM

Zac0_4

As I said before in an early post on the topic. BP & Shell are the prime examples of how not to do a share buy-back. (or there crazy dividend policy of issuing shares near the bottom of the cycle to pay dividends).

How the institutional investors allowed them to go about it (buy-backs) in the manner they have is beyond belief. They themselves should be ashamed of there failures to act.

In any other context there buy-backs would be described as "ponzi schemes's " or such like. As they have never been in the best long term interests of there shareholders.

Designed & implemented properly buy-backs would have been in the best interests of long term shareholders. Instead I'd estimate both companies combined have LOST a conservative £25Billion of shareholders money in the last 15 years.

LOTM

Zac0_4

The results are not good on the numbers you've provided, that's for sure.

However, you're not quite comparing apples with apples.

VMUK's buy-back only started last year, BBY's is only in its 3rd year now & as for the banks we know the mess they all got into and are trying to put there balance sheet's right.

So if we're both still around in another 7 to 9 years time, that's when you'll truly know if the buy-backs significantly improved there performance over 10 years or not.

Going back to LGEN, I should point out to everyone who's against share buy-backs this. What is LGEN's most expensive source of capital on an annual basis ? Yep its ordinary shares who's yield is far higher than the interest rate the company has to pay on its external borrowings.

LOTM

Zac0_4

The best examples to think about might be BARC & VMUK.

There TNAV is roughly 2 times the current share price.

So when they buy-in shares, at around £1.50 each (yes its cash coming out of the balance sheet). £1.50 of TNAV is left inside the company to be distributed amongst all the other shares. Yes its miniscule, but over time it builds up especially when your buying in 5% or more of the shares outstanding year after year.

Some would say BBY 's buy-back has been pretty much a failure over the past 2.5 years. I would totally disagree.

There used to be 690M shares in issue, when the current buy-back is finished there will be close to 545M shares in issue (around a 25% reduction). 3 years ago the share price was around £3 its now £3.40

Dig into the numbers and you'll find the infrastructure portfolio of assets has increased in value from £1.1B to over £1.3B, now translate that into retained value (it used to be £1.1B/690 or £1.60 per share, now its going to be £1.3B/545 or £2.38 - or if no buy-back £1.3B/690 or £1.89).

The rest of the business the bit that makes the most money £200 pre tax profit - is now valued by the market at a p /e of around 2.5 ie £500M. Which is crazy. EPS are rising rapidly etc.

LOTM