Member Info for Pianista

If you go by the chart, shorts actually increased from 0% to 1.31% on 29/9/20.

...TO 350 (300) PENCE - 'BUY'

Yes, all the excitement over the supermarket deal and Raza's purchase has slowly but surely evaporated!

A useful indication of Raza's thinking would be if he now bought some more. It wouldn't surprise me if he did.

You'd also think that now would be the time for the new NED to get her cheque book out.

They probably don't even need to go as far as giving it away at this stage; how about the first 3 months free, for example?

It would help if Jefferies retracted their target price of zilch. Even they must have been impressed by the interim results, which lend support for the current SP, deal or no deal.

Already priced in.

Joe - I noticed that the Barclays deadline was not a true deadline either!

Although their website stated that a response was required by last Friday, you could still take up the offer through them yesterday.

And I would have done, if the SP had jumped up to say 15p.

Per AA: "The roll-out of Smart Breakdown, our premium connected car offering, was affected by lockdown. Despite this, over 10,000 new and existing customers have Smart Breakdown and we are encouraged by the take up rates in our digital channels. Looking ahead, we will continue to build the base of new and existing customers who are connected through Smart Breakdown, whilst continually refining and optimising the customer experience."

It was 4,500 as at 7/5/20, so 5,500 have been added in the 5 months May to Sep. If we assume May, June and July were a write-off because of lockdown, the current monthly rate is probably around 2,500, but rising month by month as people get the message through advertising and word of mouth.

So with a membership of 3.2 m, it looks like we are heading for a 1% take up by early next year, which would be a reasonable out-turn for Trakm8 for the first year, but it is still too early to say whether or when the potential for 1m units pa will be realised.

Enough to help secure Trakm8's future, without sending the SP into the stratosphere.

The FT thinks we'll be lucky to get 50p (though they've waited till after two of the PE's have pulled out to give us this pearl of wisdom!).
They also play down ABC's influence because they only have a 1% stake in the "enterprise value", but I think they are comparing apples and oranges. After all, ABC is only interested in the equity element of the enterprise value, in which they have the best part of a 20% stake.
They also think the AA will struggle in a changing world "in which cars break down less often but have more complex problems". Hopefully, the interim results on Tuesday will show otherwise, partly due to "cars breaking down less often" being a benefit to the AA!

I can’t see it at 15p – 20p as soon as Monday (but would love to be proved wrong).

Before the rumours of the capital raise in late Aug, the SP had drifted down to around 14p. The news of the raise was generally well received, with the SP briefly shooting up into the 20s, but it settled back at around 16p before dropping to an ex-entitlement price of around 15p on 11 Sep.

It’s difficult to explain the further drift down to around 12p so soon after good news, except that people seem to have short memories these days, and of course the wider market has been dire.

Once the market comes out of the doldrums, and the capital raise is successfully sealed, I can see it bouncing around the 14p to 15p area again, but the man by whom we set so much store, De Haan, will need to break cover and make some favourable noises about the resumption of cruising, before the SP moves onwards and upwards back towards 20p (or £3 in new money). The very maximum stake that De Haan could have after the fundraising is 26.4% (c552m out of c2,094m shares) by my calculations, so we can forget about a takeover by him for the time being.

With Barclays, the deadline appears to be 11.59pm tomorrow, Friday 25/9/20 (at any rate that is what they have confirmed to me over the phone).

Slownsteady - thank you for replying. Your only UK example though is of Guinness, which happened 35 years ago, when I would agree enforcement was tougher. It really was “the good old days” in that sense - though I note that Saunders only did 10 months as he was believed to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (from which he subsequently made a full recovery!).

These days there’s more regulation, but less rigorous enforcement: there have been countless cases since Guinness where allegations of financial irregularity have not been properly investigated, or charges have been dropped or defendants acquitted for “lack of evidence”. I’m not going to name names obviously, but most well-informed PIs will know whom I’m talking about…

Slownsteady - I'm still waiting for you to tell me who's actually been jailed for your "jailable" offences....

As for the SP, this will move in response to a whole host of unpredictable market forces. It would be naive to assume that the fact that it has moved south means that no attempt has been made to manipulate it north. The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that…

...next Tuesday. This will surely include an update on SB, which will hopefully validate our Chairman's claim in the recent AGM Q&A that "the potential that remains within the roadside assistance space does give us the opportunity to meet this ambition [of 1m units pa]".

Slownsteady - I'm afraid you're the one living in a fantasy world if you think the City is squeaky clean!

The RNSs concerning the bid over the last 2 days have been royally mishandled.

If there'd been just one RNS covering the current state of play, the SP probably wouldn't have moved at all, or if anything risen slightly.

It has at least begun its (relatively) long journey back to the mid 30s....

They're now talking about a "strong interest" in making an offer from the remaining bidders, not just an interest.

Should cancel out yesterday's slightly negative news.

At last, we will get the interim results on 29 September, which I imagine will be good.

The Times: "Platinum Equity and Centrebridge Partners both said they have walked away from talks with the AA's board, in a move that could potentially leave just one consortium.
Last month it emerged that one bidder, Warburg Pincus, was speaking to an allegedly rival consortium led by Centerbridge and Towerbrook Capital Partners about combining forces rather than launching rival offers."

I don't think this is correct. The Centerbridge RNS only mentioned TowerBrook, its partner in the consortium, as still being interested in making a bid. If Warburg were also a partner, they would have had to mention them too, but didn't. You wouldn't mention one, but not the other.

So it looks like Warburg are still in the race - because they haven't said they're not - and furthermore not jointly with anyone else.

"The other Friday there was a sale of 7.2 million shares after close, and I’m yet to see the corresponding purchase"

Why should there be a "corresponding purchase", rather than a large number of purchases adding up to around 7.2m?