Member Info for Monkshood

It looks like capital gains have maxed out for now. Still accruing income at a rate more than fast enough to cover the div though.

In addition there was a linked application for warehousing at the site - this seems to be separate from the winery although it is not clear if it will be used by Chapel Down (or is integral to their needs). The application was supported by Defined Wine (and a number of their customers) , a contract winemaker already on the Highland Court site.

There was another block of warehouses in the original plans but they seemed to have been dropped as the application progressed.

Probably maximum positive spin on growth but the extracts below are from the Economic Benefit paper in their planning application. Also an idea of cost.

It is expected that the development of the site will lead to a significant private sector construction investment amounting to approximately £32 million. The assumed build costs and other costs have been derived from developer estimates. As such, this level of investment is considered to be a conservative estimate and in reality, may be higher.

The new state-of-the-art winery is designed to allow Chapel Down to continue to grow. It will have an initial capacity of 3,500 tonnes of fruit and the ability to produce around 3.2 million bottles of wine per year. The company’s objective – fulfilled every year since 2009 – is to grow by at least 15% each year. At current growth rates. Chapel Down expects to continue to grow by two further phases of approximately 1,500 tonnes to take the total capacity to 6,500 tonnes, producing on average in excess of 6 million bottles per year by 2032, with a peak capacity of 9 million bottles in exceptional harvest and with further capacity to grow. After storage, the wine needs to be riddled, disgorged, bottled and labelled. This proposal therefore provides Chapel Down with the opportunity for a new packaging line that would sit alongside its wine processing facility. The existing facility at Tenterden will not close, but will remain a tourism centre and small boutique winery for very specialised wine cuvees.

As Chapel Down grows, it will need increasing storage capacity for its wines as they mature. Generally, the company’s still wines which will account for circa 45% of volume by 2032, require only 6-12 months storage. However, its sparkling wines can require storage of 3 years or more. In 2021 that will amount to storage of up to 3m bottles, whereas by 2032 that number could be 10-12m bottles. This will mean Chapel Down becoming the UK’s biggest selling premium sparkling wine brand, overtaking Moet and Chandon.

Liquid biopsy company Angle (AGL) has signed a ‘pivotal’ contract that signals a ‘landmark achievement’, says Berenberg.

Analyst Odysseas Manesiotis retained his ‘buy’ recommendation and target price of 120p on the stock, which added over 3% to 12.1p on the first day of trading in 2024. The shares plunged 75% last year.

Manesiotis said the group announced a ‘pivotal contract’ with Eisai Inc of Japan to test oncology drugs that is worth $250,000 over the study’s duration but ‘also marks a significant milestone for Angle, offering potential for extensive follow-up studies and establishing a promising collaboration with a major company in the pharmaceutical industry’.

‘This contract with Eisai Inc represents a landmark achievement for Angle, signifying its entry into high-profile pharmaceutical collaborations and the potential for a transformative impact in oncology therapeutics,’ said Manesiotis.

‘While Angle’s approach remains novel and hence less likely to be trialled during periods of weak biotech funding, we continue to think it offers significant potential in one of the most attractive cancer diagnostics niches, and with a fresh commercial muscle, products and now strong validation, the shares could trade very well as biotech funding recovers.’

From The Times-

'There was a record-breaking backlog of 15,000 aeroplanes on order in November because of soaring demand for travel coupled with supply chain challenges, according to the latest figures from the UK’s aerospace trade body ADS, which represents aerospace, security and space, reported that there was a 350 per cent increase in the number of orders for aircraft compared with last November and a 10 per cent growth in the backlog. '

13% below long-term average which I was surprised by - it seems like it has been wet and windy for months now!

The past three Decembers (El Nina's ) have been below the long term average so it will be interesting to see what happens now we are back in a El Nino phase.

Putting it politely, they seemed to be very 'astute' with their timing so I assume it came before the placing.....

They sold out during the Summer -

''A total of 460,614 shares in Velocity Composites plc were sold during the period. No shares were held in Velocity Composites plc at the end of the period.''

They have a large RI shareholder base, if we are all buying more wine because of the share price rise, then the profits will rise and we end up in a glorious (inebriated?) perpetual upward spiral.....

I think that was the best presentation by the company to date (and I have seen a fair few of them now....).

Safe and boring definitely has its place for me when it comes to providing a pension income.

I moved from a more speculative growth pot of individual shares to a more income focussed IT based one last summer in preparation for my partner retiring next year (although this may now be pushed back).

I like divi paying IT's as they provides a steady income without me having to make the decision as to when to top slice.

Given that they also have revenue reserves the amount you need to keep in cash in case of a protracted down turn is arguably less than with some other strategies. Platform charges are also lower than OEIC's on the one I use.

I don't change things much but I will move the odd chunk around if I think the price or macro considerations warrant it. I also have some growth orientated IT's in the mix to provide some capital gains.

Total returns since last August have been 11.2% which compares reasonably to four mixed asset income funds from the the main names that I bench mark against (the worst -Fidelity is actually 2% down!)

I did keep enough back for a reasonably sized small cap pot to keep me entertained but, with the odd exception, that has not gone so well this year, however it has been very good at times in the past and is far more fun than premium bonds....

Well, the move to Aim has certainly added liquidity.

The nice price increase just before Christmas is timely, and has enabled me to justify another few cases to my other half...

Thanks, glad it is useful. I have a large holding in Bips and I find that writing makes me focus on the details rather than just following it with a cursor look.

A couple of the banking bonds I follow (not CoCo’s) that are held by the fund are now back close to their February 2023 highs (clearly still off from historical highs though), this is not reflected by the AT1’s (from the AT1S) which are still around 14% off this level. As circa 25% of the fund is in AT1’s it indicates that there is good scope for further increases in the share price as confidence in this sector continues to return.

The next quarters income is now covered.

It would have been nearly a couple of weeks ago but 0.34p 'disappeared' from the income account around the same time as the big drop in the Signa bond (between 2nd and 3rd Nov). I did email to ask where it went - fees/reserves /reinvested? but as always it is hard to get any response from Board or Investment Managers.

It is interesting to note this is a 10 month update rather than a Q3 as is typical.

The profitability is there, but as you say the growth rate is not. Marginally ahead of the last Broker forecast so nothing to shock the market either way.

Lets hope they land the new contracts they mention next year.

Signa have filed for insolvency. Their bond (DE000A3KS5R1 held by Bips) has dropped from 60 down to 10 although most of this fall was at the start of the month. It was (at the last portfolio update -August ) 0.53% of holdings so will have taken about 0.4% off the nav although this should have been priced in by now.

Move to AIM confirmed for the 7th December.

Shhh, don't spook it. It's really picked up nicely since the start of November.

There is usually a Q3 update around now, in the past they have typically hit the previous full years revenues at this point but I cannot see that happening this year. Hopefully they will have still managed steady growth and be focused on profitability now that they should be coming to an end of the major capex they spent on salesforce, a training center and training a lot of new technicians (the later is still ongoing).

I had not realised until this year that they had some dependency on new builds in the US in their revenue stream. Hard to see that this element will have picked up in the last quarter but it should provide an uplift next year.

Likewise, I hold it with BRFI (with a larger weighting to the latter) for my EM allocation. Although there is sometimes a little overlap they generally complement each other in the regions as well as the sectors they each invest in.

Sterling Index back up to around 3200. Also nice to see that Santander got off a $2.5B issuance yesterday at 9.625% . This follows UBS's oversubscribed $3.5B issue a week ago and another $1.75B for Barclays this week which settled at a similar rate to Santander. It looks like the market has finally settled down now after the Credit Swiss problems in the Spring.

From a recent presentation by the fund manager I think that BIPS is currently holding circa 25% in CoCo's.