Member Info for Senator1

£217M net on £3.4bn market cap is a return on market value of equity of 6.32%. Even if net grows another 5% thats 6.7%. There is not a huge amount of upside, cant see the shorts being too worried. If your time horizon is years it will be fine but over the next 12 months I dont see major upside.

Yes I agree broadly with your estimate of index buying, Im a bit narrower at £10-15M. However, the average traded value of the last 12 months in DATA is just under £3M, if you take they do a max of 10-15% of this volume, thats £300-450K a day, that will take a trading month to fill. So while it doesnt sound like much when you say £10-15M of buying, it is in the context of the practicalities. Add to that and my bet is DATA will also announce a further buyback with their results and then if Liontrust wake up and call their borrow, this could get very interesting. If I was shorting this share and new that Liontrust was essentially the source of the borrow and assuming Danson is awake and his shares are not in a stock lending programme, then I would not be shorting this share as I would know I could get absolutely buried. It is one of the most stupid shorts in the UK market as my upside is making small amounts of money from "clueless" retail but then I could get absolutely smashed when the bigger holders act and you would never know the day that is coming. Its a uniquely stupid short, moronic imo. BUT it does require the other side of the trade to have a small amount of understanding of what they are doing and whether that exists is anyones guess.

Unless the trackers find a share that tracks the performance of DATA and they shouldnt be able to because of the huge concentration and the issues I raised above, the trackers will have no choice but to buy. At current market caps it is a near certainty for inclusion. The requirement is only a min 10% free float so there is no obstacle there. That is ridiculous to me but those are the rules.

They cant do anything as they are in a blackout period before the results. also to be fair, until a few weeks ago they were in the market everyday doing c. 20% of the volume. the responsibility for stamping all over what is going on now is the LSE. Even on AIM you arent allowed to "spoof" the market with small trades with the intention of adding uncertainty & panic so that you can buy cheaper on a larger volume. selling 1 share at 75p you will lose money as you will on the purchase side as you have transaction costs. The only reason you would eat these loses is for a bigger anticipated gain and dislodge the weak hands. The issue for the LSE is at the moment they have to prove against whoever is doing it that their intention is to profit from the behaviour. If you sell 1 share for 75p and then turnaround and buy 20,000 for 75p and you do this every day for a month and so keerp driving the price down, short term you will have made a loss on your larger purchases. so then they can say well we didnt make a profit, which is true. but if your horizon is 6 months from now, particularly with ftse 250 entry in june, it is a different matter. its never 100% certain but as a professional trader you have moved the odds substantially in your favour and that is the name of the game. the ones who suffer are the weak hands while the stake is being built in this way. You also need some general noise around the industry and the cos hands to be tied to help make it work which is the case with DATA. It also helps if there is a trigger in the short term (June) for some share non-discretionary buying with a share that has limited supply. Again DATA fits that criteria.So as I said, its a perfect storm. My guess its a group of professional traders who have a deep understanding of market mechanics and will be happy with a couple of hundred k profit or 40-50% return in 6 months with high probability.

Now a raft of one share bargains, one after another

Same rubbish going on with share price again. 3/4/5 share bargains, continuously. The AIM market really is total rubbish, no supervision. You can do anything you like. If participants can do this with DATA which is one of the larger constituents just think what you can get away with lower down. No wonder UK small/mid caps are cheap and will remain so as there are too many small professional players gaming the system and doing it in quite a blatant way. totally ridiculous, lse needs to wake up.

In the closing auction £205K worth of shares traded, that is nothing and most of the rest of the day it was 3/5/6 shares and then someone would be dislodged and over and over again that was the pattern. There is no real message here other than someone gaming the price and they clearly want the price lower. They also know there is a void before the results and they know that because DATA delayed on the main market listing they have missed the cut off for FTSE 250 inclusion in March so they dont need to worry about those buyers but ultimately they are front running the June inclusion.

I dont think its an institution as the amounts of money are just too small to be meaningful but some private trader(s) taking advantage of an almost perfect set of circumstances. However, I am certain there is no insightful message in volume of this level. The last £200-300K value of trades dont define the value of a £500-600M market cap co. It does however say what a dreadful job DATA have done with their shareholder base that they are over-reliant on Liontrust, their EBT and buybacks. That is a damming indictment of however takes responsibility inside DATA for the share price reflecting the real value of the group.

The platforms need to get hundreds of emails to wake them up.Its easy for them to ignore a handful of emails. Its a case of he who shouts loudest gets attention. If DATA had a proper IR department this wouldnt happen as they would be all over it but IR at DATA is handled by the company secretary who I suspect has a limited understanding of market mechanics.

Again today, your share price hit with continual 4 share trades this morning and then recently one share trades. This is clearly a party/parties allowing these small trades to print with the hope of dislodging larger holders to give up. I have reported this to the LSE’s market manipulation department and to my platform’s compliance department for them to raise with the LSE. This has been going on for weeks and is creating a false market and as issuer of the shares I would hope you have also already raised it with the LSE. There is no reason any genuine party would need to buy shares to a value of 80p or need to receive that amount of money. It is blatantly and continually creating a false market. For an issuer about to step up to the main market this is a particular concern. Whoever is doing this is feeding off the general AI/software uncertainty and have been doing this in the case of DATA for quite some time.

I have also noted from the Liontrust RNS today that while they increased their holding by c.100k shares they are the source of 90% plus of the borrow for the shorts. This is all a bit “manipulative”. Lend your shares out, know the shorts will drive the price down given DATA is out of the market and then be the other side of the sell. When you have finished your purchase plan, call the borrow! The really annoying thing is its so blatant!

You clearly don’t have an IR department so whoever is playing these games, keeps doing it as they can get away with it. I know it probably suits DATA as well as I suspect you will also buy more shares when you get the results out of the way but bigger picture it is not acceptable for a prospective main board share to be so brazenly the target of this shoddy behaviour, with even one of your largest shareholders being associated with it as is printed in black and white in the RNS.

Let's see what happens. Hopefully someone starts to feel the pressure. The only 2 parties that can really do something are DATA itself and given it suits them to buy more shares cheaply they have a conflict but the one who should really care is the LSE but they need to feel the pressure and there is nothing more concerning to them than an appearance of a false market. That surely is the one thing they need to hold sacred.

If I owned the company I would come down on whoever is behind this with determination and vigour and make them rue the day, they ever came across DATA.

My advise if you hold the share is call whatever platform you use and ask that their compliance department raise it as a concern with the lse. this will put the heat on whoever is behind this manipulation as it will put it in the spotlight. Do not let them fob you off as you must contact the LSE as all the platforms use a nominee structure and they must raise it as they tecnically are the holder of the shares of which the individual is the beneficiary. All the platforms have a market manipulation/compliance department and the more it is raised, the more the spotlight, the more pressure the party doing this will feel.

They are now back at a continual 1 share. That has been the more common share quantity. Who does that? keep spending/receiving 80 odd pence. What genuine purpose could this have? What are the chances of their being multiple genuine parties that want to invest 80p in Global Data and multiple parties that need to receive 80p? If the LSE's market compliance cant deal with this brazen activity they might as well shut down and go home.

What is really interesting is that there is circa 2.41% of the shares are sold short and in the updated shareholding from Liontrust they are the source of most of the borrow as they lose voting rights on these shares. this is a paricularly scary position for the shorters as if Liontrust want to exercise their voting rights and call the shares which they can do on a daily basis this will cause a rapid change in the share price. As they are clearly buying shares they will leave the borrow in place until they get what they want. It might be legal but its a pretty borderline practise i.e lend your shares out so the shorters can drive the price down and then pick up more shares and when you are done, call the shares. Its all pretty shoddy and it is so blatant on this share. If I was shorting this share I would be really scarred that all the power is with Liontrust, when it suits them, the shorters will have a really bad day.

This share price is being manipulated. A small number of shares (today its 4) matched at lower prices with the aim of scaring those with more shares to give up and sell theirs. The party doing this knows that Data are now out of the market until the results and are feeding on the general concerns over AI. Nobody continually sells or buys 4 shares and a few days ago it was done on 1 share. If it is the same party on both sides of the trade or related parties this is illegal as it is creating a false market. I hope the LSE have in their software a system that flags these uneconomic share bargains and investigates as it creates a false market. This has been going on with DATA for a couple of weeks now and it really only has one purpose. Scare someone with a bigger holding to sell. The company with its own buyback has strongly signalled that there is no underlying problem and before the prograaming ending they were buying a couple of hundred thousand every day. Continually printing trades on 4 shares is algo driven and is a strategy from the 80s. In an uncertain environment print small trades and if you get lucky somebody big gives up and you step in and get what you were really after. Its particularly effective when there is a lot of uncertainty around software and what AI might do and you are in a window when the company cant say anything just before its update. The LSE should have a rule that requires that for small bargains, the names of the parties on both sides are released automatically so you can clearly see the repetition

I listened to AI for the range. Turns out AI wrong (Copilot), when I checked myself range is £338M to £431M so Data are definitely in at the June rebalance as I cant see its market cap falling to low £400M odd, so Danson will probably announce more buybacks. Not huge, £10-20M.

Right now the market cap range for inclusion (bottom 10) is 540-600M, Data market cap using 84p is £636M so they are on course for inclusion, although it is getting tighter and maybe they wont do any more buybacks just to make sure. They will be monitoring the bottom 10 to make sure. So trading in this share could get very technical and in reality Danson and his team after the results will be very motivated to get the price back up to ensure inclusion. Right now they are in a black out period so cant do anything. Its perfect for a technical trader, keep pressure on ftse inclusion by helping price to fall another 5% and because Danson has no IR and he can do nothing there is a void. The dumb money hasnt work this out so they see it fall in price and then join in.

It looks like DATA have finished their buyback as they havent been in market over last few days and as historically they have been c. 20% of the daily volume there is no interest until there is an update in early March. With Liontrust insiders have 74%, so still 26% of the shares can change hands assuming Liuontrust are static at 55M odd. All the trades of last few months are small so it suggests its the dumb money following the newsflow. While data it join the main market in March they are too late for 250 inclusion at end of March so will likey be June so the 250 trackers are not buying yet. thats when this will get interesting as the inheritance tax holders must mostly be out by now and thats why Data added to the buyback last year, so they could get out. At the moment its just the dumb money following the AI story selling and because DATA's IR is woeful (purposely) the next meaningful buyers will be the 250 trackers and its just too early for them. The cut off for 250 inclusion in March was Feb 20th but on that date DATA wasnt on the big board. So we have IT sellers and no buyers, except Data itself and now they have stopped. They will likey announce further buybacks with the results in early March to tide them over until June, so expect another £10M or so.

A forward p/e of 26x for a company front loading revenue through contract assets is ridiculous, this has a lot more to fall. This is a so called "growth co" only because of the way it accounts for revenue. By front loading they are just deferring the day of reckoning because they need to keep getting bigger contracts to show growth. Eventually they will run out of big enough contract wins and then the fall in revenue will be an issue for those that dont understand what a contract asset is and what it means for Beeks. To get a p/e of 26 on front loaded eps makes no sense to me. I find their explanation extraordinary, that the accounting rules require it!

Last 15 days its down 23.85% and Global have on average bought 18.8% of the traded shares. It's a mystery who is selling. There are 189M shares not in the hands of insiders & on average slightly over 1% of this volume trades daily and of that 1% GD are the buyer on circa one fifth. strange share.

With current RoTE of 12% and price /tnav =1.2 implies Ke of 10% which seems right to me based on Beta=1.2. I think the market has this valued just about right. They are targeting 14% in 2028 so when market starts looking that far ahead 570-600 ish is a reasonable target but 2028 is a long way in the future so a pullback wouldnt surprise me before its starts to think about 2028.

Aside from Gross margin, all the other margins are down, EBITDA, EBIT, PBT, net. In the case of the important EBIT margin, down 5.8%. As the share price is down 42% over past 6 months and most of these metrics are down 20% odd, a relatively small rebound is no surprise. Has this got real legs, in my opinion not until it starts to show organic growth. It has reported growth due to acquisitions but that is more expensive growth than organic and hence the 20% plus drop in operating margins. Forget gross as it is always possible to re-allocate costs from direct to overhead, what matters is operating margin. It looks like 2025 Ebit margin is 18.6% down from 24.4% in FY 24. A smaller drop than market was expecting, for sure, but hardly a backdrop for a bull run. It's a £100M turnover busines, tiny in the scheme of things and when times are tough this will get kicked around, harshly. A 11x PE forward, is that good enough reward for the risk? An earnings yield of 9%, I think the shorts are right.

And of course, that is why there is no IR team as that would work against the plan, bringing in him competitors to buying the shares. The main listing is just a smoke screen for the next couple of years and then he can quite credibly argue that he tried to get the public markets interested all to no avail. To squeeze out the minorities he will need to control 90% of the shares. With Liontrust at 7%, he will be almost there in 2 years and then he can negotiate the price with Liontrust and wherever they are happy will be the price everyone gets. The plan is absolutely brilliant in its simplicity and all he needs to do is have GD keep buying 400k odd shares every day and quietly know he will have the last laugh. The man is just brilliant. He plays the game to the minimal acceptable and the while having a real plan. Thats why he sold 40% to Inflexion as it gave GD the funds to keep growing and execute his real plan. The LSE move is just a smoke screen as he needed to shake out the IHT holders who are sticky given his size on AIM. I think the man is the Warren Buffet of the UK, although doesnt talk as much as it doesnt suit him to do so.