Member Info for picstloup

Quite a decent piece. 16 minutes in.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000dfnz

Just sold 85000 at 5.531. Keeping a low 6 figure number just in case of a takeover, and got another 250 AAL at 2200.5

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-7908877/Mining-giant-tables-405m-bid-Sirius-Minerals-Investors-urged-Anglo-American-takeover.html

I'll be voting to accept, 5.5p is fractionally better than no bread.

The share price has been going nowhere for years. I topped up at $1.45 last April and am thinking of doing so again. Quite glad I got rid of most of my holding 3 years ago (for a few years after foot and mouth I had quite a lot - "I liked the flour so much I bought 0.3% of the company").

But I think we may be due another of those very pleasing extended rises, like back in 2010-12, and 2003-5, so I'm dipping my toe in for a few more - divi covered several times over, decent profit growth, Brexit effect on British agriculture exaggerated, bed-blocking dead weight Chris Holmes finally heading for the door, leaving management to get on with it without him.

If somebody was considering a counter-offer, there would inevitably be rumours, and the share price would be higher than AAL's offer. If the price does creep above, say, 5.6-5.7, then we can start to hope for a higher bid.

Dipped my toe in here for a few at £4.80. It looks oversold to me, and with Peel Hunt and Liberum having a target of £13 seems plenty of upside, although it has been sliding for ages.

They make a decent product, there is international demand for it, and even if they don't make much money they could be taken over. It's a punt, but I'm getting the take-over proceeds from my holding in Charles Taylor, so parking a quarter of that here, and putting the rest into something more "sensible" (AAL).

The takeover has been approved and we should get the cash on or soon after Feb 4. Thinking of splitting the proceeds between AAL (looks likely to pick up poor SXX on the very cheap, pays a decent divi and has very low debt) and a punt on Accesso Technologies (just dipped my toe in for a few at £4.80 (looks oversold to me - Peel Hunt has a £13 target).

The FSCS/FCA isn't going to pay out for SXX even if shareholders were deliberately misled (virtually impossible to prove even if true - as shown by total lack of evidence anybody has produced) as SXX isn't covered by the Special Administrative Regime regulations as it isn't an investment firm. It's highly unlikely ShareSoc will be able to do anything about it, just as they failed with RBS shareholders.

We bought shares in a company that was unable to complete its ambitious target and had to call in the grown ups. It happens. I've already started building up a modest stake in AAL (decent divi, well covered, debt down from 12b to 3b in the last couple of years - so plenty of room for the extra 3-4b needed to get Woodsmith producing - eps-enhancing share buy-back scheme etc) and will put the proceeds of the SXX sale into it as well, assuming we get the 5.5p - not guaranteed in any way.

So glad I've never topsliced this one, having first bought in at around £2 in the early 10s. The divis may not be great but the eps and capital gains (safely tucked up in my SIPP and ISA) are. My stockbroker (Investec) advised against these, and against taking up the rights issue way back when. Glad I ignored him on this occasion.

That might explain the recent rises - the RNS says they've now got 11% of the company, up from 8.8% in the last FT "key information" section ("as of 6 January").

Small change for them - and volume back down to "only" 25000 today, from over 1m yesterday.

Picked up my first few of these late last week at £21.50. like the well-covered divi, the low debt, the heavy profit ratio, the share buy back scheme and the Sirius purchase, which seems pretty much the bargain of the decade. Will be picking up a few more each month and when next year's ISA sub is available and it makes up 5% of my wad.

It seems they hold 288m long and now only 750k short. They seem to have called it right, as did Lex of the FT and even the Motley Fool's mostly mediocre pundits.

Liberum Capital consistently called it wrong, as did Fraser, Gaia's Kidney, Per Ardua ad Astra and many others here, including me. There was no conspiracy to defraud us and we are all, supposedly, adults responsible for our own actions, and I trust vanishingly few of us will have put more than a few % of our portfolios into this obviously high risk venture.

So it goes. Still tempted to put the wreckage here into AAL, as I believe in the product Sirius were aiming for even if they collectively didn't have the expertise to achieve it themselves.

Up nearly 5% today and over 10% in the last week and finally burst through the fiver barrier. Is there a bidder lurking?

Not complaining, the price has been range-bound for a couple of years but I'm nudging 300% up on my original punt 4 years ago, not counting divis. Not planning on buying any more but not selling either.

Myles Allsop calls AA a sell and targets £18 .he's underwhelmed by AA's move for SXX .not sure i'd want these in my portfolio either .sorry picstloup
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You may well be right, modsto123, and Allsopp is a good analyst, but Citigroup and DB both have AAL as a buy. I find analyst recommendations quite difficult to take too seriously, as you can usually find highly paid, highly intelligent, highly qualified people reading the same data and coming to 180 degree different conclusions.

Over the last 2 years and more I put about half of my ISA and SIPP dividend income into these up to the last rights call, at prices between 15 and 28p, so I’ve lost quite a lot of money.

Like many, I had pipe dreams of the share price in triple figures, and profits in the billions, with a golden stream of divis flowing out of Woodsmith and into my wallet. But building the first deep mine in the UK for 50 years, and the longest tunnel, was never going to be a one-way bet,.

Sirius Minerals made an impressive go of it under extremely difficult circumstances, getting planning permission , raising a three comma sum and getting work underway. Sadly, it just wasn’t enough, and one-time local hero Fraser is now being vilified (and libelled) here and elsewhere.

Everybody who invested here must have known it was going to be risky. They should also have known not to put too many eggs in one basket - other than BRK/B, I try never to let any of my investments make up more than 10% of my portfolio. Sirius, when it was up in the 30s, briefly touched ~6% of my wad. Now it’s less than 1%. So it goes. It wasn’t a conspiracy to defraud us, it was just that they weren’t quite up to the very ambitious project they’d undertaken.

Anglo American’s offer is unlikely to be bettered. Shareholders have the option to vote it down if they’d rather have nothing than 5.5p. I think the ownership of this mine could make a not insignificant contribution to AAL’s future profitability, so I’ve made my first investment in them - 3.5% divi, debt of only around $3b, high eps, profits of $6b on revenue of $28b etc. If/when the take-over goes through, I’ll probably put the proceeds into them as well, so at least I’ll have a continuing interest in the project.

Not bad, just under 50% up in under 18 months. Definitely worth that punt. Now what to do with the takeover proceeds.

Turnover grew 18 per cent from £536.8 million last year to £611.5 million, there was growth in all of its metrology product lines, in its healthcare product lines, and a record adjusted profit before tax of £145.1million (up 33 per cent).

"I am pleased to report our 2018 annual results. We achieved a record turnover for the second successive year of £611.5m (2017: £536.8m) with revenue growth of 18 per cent at constant exchange rates," said executive chairman and co-founder Sir David McMurtry, in the firm's preliminary results statement for the year ended June 30 2018'

"We are also reporting a record adjusted profit before tax of £145.1m (2017: £109.1m), an increase of 33 per cent. Our total shareholder return during the year was 48 per cent, ranking Renishaw 18th in the FTSE 250."

Final 8.4 this will open 150 plus - says goldy7 _______________ Delusional

Decided to dip my toe in for a few of these at �3.16. Adequate divi, up 50% in the last 6 years, decent prospects of capital growth, majority of income overseas based so limited Brexit worries.

In an idle moment, I decided to work out what an average "Sid", who, like me, bought 600 British Gas shares at flotation, would have if s/he had held onto them, and opted for max RDSB on the BG takeover: 534 shares in Centrica, worth �667 174 shares n National Grid, worth �877 374 shares in Shell, worth �7800 Total: �9344, plus various cash returns over years (most recently and significantly, �2250 on the BG takeover. Not a bad return on the initial �810 investment (although down from �11250 this time last year, in a rising market). I sold my Centricas last year, but unfortunately kept my NGs, (both of which I'd bigged up on greatly in the 30 years after privatisation) Still not sure when/whether to come back into Centrica.