Member Info for RyeSloan

You would think so re the Bonds but they are unsecured.

The way I read the Bank loans RGL must be in covenant breach with them and they ARE secured and have the right to call in the loan. I suppose I'm wondering if the risk here is the banks pull the plug and by the time the fire sale is over the Retail bonds are too far down the queue to get their full nominal back. The market seems to be discounting these very sharply in recent days...makes you wonder why.

And they sure were!
Bit disappointing they didn't bump the div by 5-10% or so though as they have plenty in the reserve at about 1.2x annual div and only just made the 85% min payout by a couple of percent this year. I get they probably expect revenue to have peaked or certainly don't expect the revenue received to rise meaningfully from here and are possibly re-allocating to lower yielding assets in the portfolio but still I think the scope was there if they wanted to.
But overall this just feels like a handy place to have some funds allocated to. No idea what the SP will do from here right enough but have never held this as a trading share just a very long term hold....which brings me back to my whinge about the div as always nice to see a rising div on my long termers!

Fact is as it stands there is no special dividend. That much cannot be disputed.

I assume the question here is what their intentions are with regards to the capital raised via the recent minority stake sales.

History would suggest they prefer buybacks over specials but as the last chunk of cash from the Phoenix sale is still being spent on buy backs there may be scope for a special this time around.

Or indeed it might be used to secure the dividend going forward or for a small bolt on acquisition. There has been no formal comms on any of that and I wouldn’t expect any until the finals or a pre finals trading update (rare for abrdn) next year.

The HoldCo debt is substantially reduced by I assume it’s all now sitting at OpCo level…while I assume this has some benefit beyond being able to give a (potentially) misleading leverage figure for HoldCo it certainly doesn’t help the average PI assess how much debt the company actually has across all of its subsidiaries, nor indeed the cost of financing all that debt.

I assume it’s buried in the results somewhere but the structure means it’s never easily found in the headline figures.

Yeah I'm with you, the seed round has not closed but I assume they are confident it will but until then it is a bit 'wait n see'.
ANIC has committed $7m, Agrarian another $3m so half of the raise has come from Jim backed entities. I suppose that's one way of making a 20x return...set the future price yourself ;-). Siddhi Capital have obviously committed a substantial chunk as they are being touted as 'co lead investor', would have been good to hear how much that was. Still they seem to be experienced players in this market so that does give some comfort that at least one other human on the planet thinks the price being paid is correct!

ANIC is not in a realisation phase...and none of the assets are valued in this way. Of course the uplift in NAV this deal represents results in a liability to Shellbay but to say that is the ONLY result of this uplift is clearly not logical either. The NAV of the company still benefits substantially from the revised carry value.
I totally get the fact that the 15% sticks in the craw of many but are we now saying that we would prefer the company didn't have NAV uplifts on our investments (measured as per the accepted standard accounting practices) so we don't have to pay Shellbay 15% of it unless we can realise all of that gain tomorrow? Or that we would prefer not to have NAV uplifts at all to avoid paying Shellbay anything? Must admit I'm struggling with that line of thinking.

Jim is a shareholder as well is he not? To the tune of about 15% of the company.

Yes his company Shellbay that does all the work on behalf of ANIC is remunerated via the NAV uplift over relevant periods. The generosity of that fee deal has been debated many times before but you can’t seriously be saying that shareholders do not benefit from the company turning $627k cash into an unrealised gain of $14.8m in 4 months? In fact if you are saying that it is NOT good for all shareholders then you are in fact saying generating a return on investment of over 20x is actually a bad thing…that doesn’t seem overly logical to me.

And of course all other shareholders…the price of success here was always that Jim
Had his slice of the pie a before anyone else. At 20x returns in 4 months or whatever I doubt many care!

Often happens between close and 5pm...can never be traded like that. sure someone can explain why this happens but is basically just a reporting glitch that resolves after 5pm.

On a different tip I see that BRWM has earned enough income to cover 3 interims of 5.5p already this year with over 2p to spare...not even 5 months into the year! Income received is running over 30% higher than last year at this stage. Receipts will be lumpy of course but it will be interesting to see how this pans out over the rest of the year...all the signs are that another bumper final dividend will be on the cards though. As I stated previously it would be good to see the board get some of this income into the hands of investors quicker through increased interims but hey ho.

What's the red flags Velo? How they value their forestry assets?

Just (big!) bumps in the road...as we know Covid shocks tend to dissipate relatively quickly and when they do the story on miners and metals remains strong I'd say. Core holding this for me anyway, will just sit out the waves and compound the divs along the way. Still it looked better at 800p than 680p there is no denying that....

Just not showing here...on London stock Exchange website and many others. Yesterdays NAV

677.83p Capital only (undiluted)
695.01p Including current year income (undiluted) XD

I concur Krusty…about as good as could be imagined those results. Added myself.

With prices still rising and annualised profits of £100m (if I read the results correctly) and a NAV of about 125p and Grind delivering big time ) with more to come from there even just divs) and potential capital uplift and a nice yield AND a special div (surely at least equiv to another quarters div) then I’m thinking the current market cap is well below what it should be.

Wouldn’t be the first time I’m wrong of course but this looks set to climb a good bit from here.

They are not 'clean' for long though! Already 14.3p income accrued in the year, 20% ahead of the amount same time last year. I hope the Board look to move up the interim div levels this year as while a nice fat final is always nice it would be good to get some of that income paid out quicker. An interim at the same level as Q3 would be 5.5p v earned of over 14p.
The final div also takes an age to be paid, being finally received in May for the year ending the prior December, quite why it's so long after the year end and only around 6 weeks before Interim 1 is a bit of a mystery to me. Does anyone know why the final has 2 months between XD to Pay compared to the usual 1 month?

Easy, from the website. Only $28 for 6!

It was not a salary to JM directly. It was a fee to Shellbay for:
· Reviewing prospective asset purchases;
· Procuring and coordinating due diligence in relation to any target approved by the Company;
· Providing appropriate information to the Board in relation to any proposed acquisition or disposal opportunity;
· Providing transaction support services as requested by the Company;
· Assisting in operating, developing and commercialising any intellectual property and/or assets of the Company (including by way of joint venture, licensing agreement or other partnership);
· Developing new markets and/or territories for assets and/or intellectual property owned by the Company (including by way of manufacturing, distribution and/or branding partnerships);
· Supplying the Board with regular reports on the progress of companies and intellectual property where the Company has an interest (including any financings); and
· Assisting with recruitment of management teams and operational supply chain partners for relevant products and intellectual property.

OK JM owns Shellbay and doubtful he spent £7m doing the above but it's also worth noting that this was the first fee paid to Shellbay by ANIC. Also looking at the IRR of the investments to date it's hard to argue that Shellbay has not done a rather impressive job to date. You also need to factor in that we don't pay any management fee so it's payment for success or nothing.

And yes the fee was largely due as a result of the fund raising...but that fund raising was completed at huge premium to NAV! You've previously dismissed that achievement as nothing special as there is plenty money around but I think you'll struggle to find many (any?) investment companies that have raised substantial sums at that sort of premium. It's also exceedingly unlikely that any future fundraise (including last Decembers) will have anything like the sort of impact on NAV that the first one had due to the size of the company now v any future raises so we are not likely to see a repeat of a fee of this scale unless it is due to fundamental portfolio performance.

Yes I think we all agree that there should have been some sort of cap or collar on the performance fee when it was relating to a technical inflation of the NAV as a result of premium fund raising but none the less I think despite the size of the fee the company benefited hugely from raising substantial sums at a substantial premium and that is ultimately what matters most.

And let's be honest this is a JM vehicle in all but name. The other Directors are not worth considering. Yes that means the governance is not aligned to small shareholders but again that's the price we all need to pay to get exposure here...there is simply no alternative. I get that doesn't make it 'right' but if we are paying 15% on a rising NAV for years to come then there will still be plenty left over for us mere mortals!

It’s an interesting move, especially considering we already have an investment in Bond Pet Foods.

As you say no details on how much is being committed but we can only assume that it’s seed level money currently.

But as Roslin already clearly have a lot of the ‘basics’ under their IP already that this can be funded and scaled quickly.

Not sure why the JV has dog rather than pet in it’s name but I suppose they can be changed easily enough if and when they start to scale and develop products.

Talk about getting in at the ground floor!

Why would they feel let down when the policy is crystal clear. Until capital return is 1.5x the div it stays as is. Today that ratio was quoted as being 1.18x so it’s unlikely the div will rise for at least another 2 years.

But clearly the yield is not an issue here as it’s already over 7% and that’s before the possibility of the special from the Phoenix sale.

Much more likely is the market is not buying the growth story. Today was a sign the ship had been steadied but there is still no real sign of any serious growth in the core Investments vector. If they can get some back to net inflows (not happened since the merger), drive up performance AND keep the costs falling then maybe the market will change its mind. Until then it looks like the jury remains out.

Results were 4th March last year so hopefully this week...

Not sure if it's possible to see how much the treasury shares cost in total but they bought back 700,000 of them in 2020 at 66.5p...they have been re-issued at over £1 recently so a not insignificant profit to the company on them! Treasury shares are now exhausted so any new issuance are new shares. As these are at a (modest) premium this is to the benefit of existing shareholders not only from that small premium but also helps to enlarge the overall NAV and thus shrink the OCF. As this is a relatively small trust the issuance of new shares is something that should be welcomed. It's certainly in a sweet spot just now that's for sure.