Member Info for storm

Laughton, SGI now owns bidStart, so it was the same item from the same seller and the price was exactly the same. The point is that if they have a site in the US that works perfectly well why have they not got the same here until Christmas? Who is the person in charge of this?

The other day I attempted to buy an item from the online site. Whilst the site was very slow indeed when compared to eBay nonetheless it was possible. When it came to payment I wanted to use PayPal but this option seemed to be unavailable. There was a help number and the telephone was answered by a most helpful woman who fully sympathised with my plight and said that if I wanted to buy something I could do it by telephone! I was told that the site was being sorted out and that the PayPal facility should be in place by Christmas!!! When asked what was the point of putting up a site that is not fully working there was no satisfactory answer to this. Following this I went onto the US site bidStart, there it was easily possible to find the item, purchase it and pay with PayPal, the whole process took about two minutes and was as easy as eBay and interestingly the bidStart page layouts are not dissimilar to those of eBay Yesterday there was an email from the company offering a 20% discount on purchases which can at best be described as annoying having bought and fully paid for my item a couple of days earlier. With the share price down about 7% this morning alone I am beginning to wonder at what price they become a buy. If I had the time, the money and the energy of youth I would take over this business and turn it, I feel that it would be a relatively easy matter and incredibly profitable. Sadly I am no Armand Hammer. At the age of about 60 Hammer founded Occidental Petroleum and successfully ran it for a number of decades.

Someone on another chat site alleges that he has had an email from the company secretary saying that the awaited announcement will come (on? or) fairly soon after October 6th. This goes on to say that the company is fully aware that the online selling site has faults and that a high-tech team is in the process of sorting it out.

APAcquisitions. That's funny and thank you for it. If the downward trend continues we will soon be at three 2nd class stamps or 1 SGI share!

At this moment the shares appear to be falling quite hard, whether or not this is to do with concerns about the interims in a couple of months time, it is hard to know. Having pondered buying into these for a few months now I have come to the conclusion that it is best to wait a little longer until the situation is clarified. In general terms is this the moment in history to be a stamp dealer holding millions of ponds worth of stock or is it a better posture to be in the business of an international stamp, coin, medal, bonds, books and wines auctioneer such is Spink? Another question is whether the ownership of provincial auction houses is really the best deployment of capital. Personally if today I were the person running Gibbons there would now be a no holds barred strategic review and a possible approach to the unquoted Spink whose earnings stream would appear to be somewhat more attractive. But what would I know.

Thank you theheirachy for your succinct summing up of the present state of play, excellent. .

On Tuesday.

62 - 65p, up 7.63% on an official turnover of 168,883 shares (London Stock Exchange). If this continues then it is beginning to suggest a serious stake building. As best is understood: If a buyer wants a big stake in a business they would first approach 'the shop' and see if they know of any sellers. If there are no known sellers then the buyer has to decide whether to buy in the market in dribs and drabs or go for it and force the price through the roof. If I were a serious bidder for a business I would have a clear idea as to my initial bid price and would pick up as much stock as possible below this price. So what is really happening here? Maybe nothing to get excited about, perhaps it is just someone who thinks that the stock is cheap. Time will tell.

Including this there have now been 55 CNC posts on this site since 25 June 2010. Against this and as noted below by theheirachy, is the fact that CNC has a strong balance sheet, pays a decent dividend, makes good products and has a healthy reputation within its industry. The fact that there are no fireworks means that CNC is an old fashioned investment as opposed to an out and out punt. With a number of market sectors now falling out of bed, oil/gas, gold, general commodities, and retailers, it is something of a relief to own a share in an extremely high-tech and steadily growing business whose market, products and posture are not in a state of chaos but merely subject to developing products for which there appears to be a steady market. If anyone wants excitement for the sake of it then this is probably the moment to buy gold!

tom111, Such is the lack of interest that not a single share has been dealt in today - so far. Falling Knife, So far the possibility of a takeover has been the main reason for holding. The fact that there is no follow through leads to the thought that someone thinks that the business (which is now almost entirely liberated from a Government sales embargo) is/will be doing better than is generally realised, thus the rise might be more in the area of a re-rating than an imminent takeover, we will see.

At a closing price of 55.5p this now exceeds the five year closing high of 54.40p of mid-January 2013. It is interesting to note that the trading high for today was 57.5p. Patience is now being rewarded for all those who have hung in here for a few years. I do wonder though that if they come back a bit whether it is time to take the risk of topping up, i.e. averaging up - or is it silly to ruin a good position? The Concurrent high-tech products appear to be world class and despite the Government lifting the sales embargo on most of them, it is said that there are a few that are still 'sales sensitive'. Since he market cap. was and still is quite low I bought on the hope that someone would buy them out, maybe it will still happen. Please what does everyone think about this? Thanks.

You are right. This always was an all or nothing stock, it didn't work out, but that's the nature of the game. Maybe it will work out one day who knows, there again maybe it won't - time will tell. Anyone who bought when I did four years ago now has a vast paper loss. Sure its tough but even so if you are going to punt in these types of stocks you need to be prepared to lose all. if you are not prepared to take losses and survive them then go and do something else with your life. It was my choice to invest, no one pressured me into doing it thus it my fault, end of story.

Currently trading at 53.5 up 7% so far. The turnover is low so presumably either the 70,000 buy yesterday afternoon has left the market makers short of stock or there are orders that cannot be fulfilled, perhaps there is heavy trading on the derivatives market. Whatever the reason it does seem that this overlooked little business is ripe for a takeover. The market cap is under £40M, and they have some very useful patents along with lots of know-how, also there is it seems a healthy order book and they pay dividends with a yield of over 3%. Thinking about the overall it rather feels like a question of time. If I had the money and were younger I would consider buying it myself!

.....and Diverse Income Trust having picked up 6% of the business must be over the moon!

Director topping up, stock options granted, s/p up over 8%, not bad at all for this overlooked world-class small company. Whoever it was that sold 2,000,000 shares last week at a much lower price must be feeling a little upset this afternoon.

At this moment we are just under 11% up on the day. The question is why all of a sudden this should be. Hopefully we are not being bid for as this has always been a rather comfortable investment with good steady long term growth prospects now that the rules to whom they can sell to have been re-written.

This has to be one of the quietest publically quoted profit earning high-tech companies in existence. Why?

A really good and most positive announcement. I am so glad that I didn't bail out when they were at 15p, there again my buying price was £1.86 - and in an ISA. Perhaps it is time to average down a bit.

I cannot fully understand why it is that this business is so overlooked by the market. Could it perhaps be the case be that their products are so specialised that very few people understand what it is that they do - or what? Certainly their website provides little clue in layman's terms as to what it really is Most unusual.

Reading through today's announcement it sort of feels that maybe, just maybe, we might have the basis of a rather successful business here. Overall everything appears to be gradually coming together quite well. The real difficulty is that because the business is quite small it is not really on people's investment radar. The innovative products are mostly marketed in the US with a bit of endescope from the UK. Another factor is that the quotation is here when perhaps it should be quoted in the States. This is all rather summed up by the small turnover in shares about 7000 moves them 2% Time for a roadshow around the British brokers and analysts, there is at least a story to tell/sell. What do other shareholders think? Thanks, storm.