Member Info for TheClive

I hold it with iWeb in an ISA. I get taxed 20% on the dividends. I asked about getting them to claim it back, they declined.

Price action not great these last few weeks, notification that the SA sov wealth fund which had been building up its stake over 2024 to 18.6% has cut it back to below 15% by 25th Feb is probably major reason. The share price had been resilient even with weaker coal price for much of 2024, now seems to be underperforming.

Not great when the biggest shareholder is reducing their stake.

Seems good on the coal production numbers in particular.

One thing stuck out to me though going through the numbers, the buyback announced in August purchased 1.203mio shares at R159.6mio which is average price of R132.67. Looking at the share price on JSE it has spent only 11 trading days above that level (all in November) and the vast majority of the time it was much lower including a whole month below R115. It strikes me that most of the buying was a bit of a pump in Nov where many directors managed to dump their shares, rather than a buying of a set amount daily or weekly or even buying below a certain price - which would be more normal. Basically the value of the buyback doesn't seem very good as a shareholder.

Big spike in price just after 1:30pm from 84.75 to 89 accompanied by a jump in volume (up to then the whole day's volume had been about 90mio, jumped to around 270mio within 10 minutes) and now back down to 85-86. Looks like a big block trade or fat finger/typo, as I don't see any news.

Unless its someone is trading on a leak to results. But the fact the price has remained higher implies someone has bought a chunk. Happy enough myself as I had left an order to sell at 87.5 which got triggered, but lets see if there's any real news.

South African election undoubtedly weighing on share price. ANC will need to form a coalition and one (minor) party ran on a platform of nationalising the mines - basically seizing them from private companies such as Thungela. I mean this is a) extremely unlikely b) not a major party saying this, but even a small probability of this party joining coalition might mean much harsher taxes levied on mining companies as some sort of compromise.

I certainly attribute some of the share price drop to uncertainty of business conditions for TGA going forwards after the election outcome.

Nothing yet in iWeb. Was expecting it yesterday or today.

I sold 33% of my holding just below £5 on the first offer, only to buy it back a few weeks later below £3.

I'm cashing in 33% at £6.15-20 here.

I've read the whole RNS, the BoD and 15% of shareholders already support the deal and recommend it / will vote for it so IMHO I think there's a 70% chance this goes through, and as it's cash it will be seen as better than an alternative all share offer even at a 10% higher valuation. On balance I reckon it gets support of 50% even if there are many who see this company eventually having a higher value - I agree but take the profit and move on is a better way to be. 6.15 now vs 6.20 in a few months is worth it purely from an accrued interest perspective in this situation.

If the deal falls through because people don't vote for it (10%) then price goes down, so also better to sell here.

The only situation that it's not right decision to sell here (6.15-6.20) is if you think that a substantially higher offer comes in in the next few weeks. I'd put that at 20% chance.

On the flip side you can maybe view this like an option, if you think you get a guaranteed £6.20 in a few months with a chance of higher (another higher bid) then it's clearly worth >£6.20. The last deal falling through is making me take (some of) the money now.

Re: registering as sole trader:

Having held foreign stocks for many years with foreign taxes applied - it's fairly easy to offset the foreign dividend tax / WHT vs what you would pay in dividend tax in UK, so if you are higher (or additional) rate tax payer you would only then pay the difference of 33.75% - 20% (39.35% - 20%) in dividend tax, but getting rebates if basic rate tax payer is hard (but good luck).

One question though, if you are sole trader with share trading as your business surely gains are taxed at income tax rates rather than CGT rates, which for most would be much higher? Curious as to what circumstances make this worthwhile. In a future tax regime where CGT is charged at same rates as income tax levels, would make a lot more sense, as could offset CGT losses against income and tactically sell any assets that have losses to bring your overall tax rate down or sell assets with gains up to the top of the basic rate band.

Given how undervalued the share price is vs underlying assets - ITV studios alone is probably worth >90% of the market cap as of yesterday’s close - share buybacks make more sense.

Happy with this outcome tbh. Shows the board do care (belatedly) about the SP and not just their own careers.

And +7.1% in total since Thursday.

6Feb-22Feb was between 90-93

Friday jumped to 95.55, and Monday to 98.75.

I don't claim to know what's driving this, I just keep an eye on the market. This stock is really a leveraged bet on coal prices, like it or not. My personal view is that coal is more likely to settle in a 100-150 medium term trading range rather than 60-90, so I like TGA at these levels, but with that view I see TGA around 6.50-9.50 being a fair target, I am not expecting a move to 18 (or even 10+) although of course I wouldn't be unhappy. I am a medium term holder, but trade it a bit, have been watching and waiting to buy and after the Friday move in coal I finally pulled the trigger yesterday at 4.21.

The other two big US names in cybersecurity (Sentinelone and Crowdstrike) are both down over 6% in after market trading as a response to the Palo Alto news, so was expecting 3-5% for DARK. I guess the sentiment with Nvidia crashing lower is also turning, and like it or not, within UK stocks, Darktrace is one of the few with genuine AI links and May have benefited from that tailwind, which has now flipped to a headwind on the same day.

Unsure what's triggered this big jump today. It's been in a 132-147 range for months and two weeks ago looked like it was breaking lower, now it goes ex-div today and rockets up over 10p to break the top of the range. Can only assume some news that insiders have heard or a re-rating higher by someone.

I've been buying in the 120s and selling in the 140s a few times over so happy to sell some today but still hold medium term long and confused as to why it's suddenly gone up today... if anyone is the wiser would be great to hear why!

Reading some of the PDS chatter in the US - obviously the share price over there hasn't reacted well to the last couple of trials/RNS' and was trying to work out why as they seemed positive on paper - the general vibe was that yes good trial outcome but to take it to next level needs influx of cash which will dilute the existing shareholders. Maybe also because it's not high enough outcome percentage to make it a lottery ticket outcome - sure it reduces risks and prolongs life but only by a bit, it's not a cure / gives you 20yrs.

Seems a strange way around to look at it, what would happen to share px if trial results were poor???

Anyway there's also all sorts of talk of govt intervention to reduce drug prices in the US which is weighing on a lot of healthcare/biotech stocks and people seem to be repricing the value of a new drug with that in the back of their mind.

For those that can't be bothered to read through the links:

Interim Dividend of 3.85p (same as last year) ex-dividend date 12Oct, paid 24Nov.

Given cashflow I can't help but put my baseline outcome as an increase in the final dividend (May/Jun 2024) from the 7.05p earlier this year to at least 7.7p which would be a 6% increase y-o-y for total, but still yield in the 4-4.5% range which isn't great when you can get higher in risk free Gilts. Obviously I hope for more but they may keep it on the downlow so as not to be seen as profiting too much from cost of living crisis and let the rest come via share price appreciation or even buybacks.

In a nutshell, stocks like M&G are stable businesses with predictable profits/returns/dividends almost like a bond.

Sure there are some underlying business and company specific factors which are just as important, but when those factors don't change, but yields do then the price will change.

Think of it this way, if M&G pays 8% dividend yield then when a medium term risk free investment like a UK Gilt pays 2% then the M&G stock is paying 6% above that for some greater level of risk. If those risk factors don't change but suddenly Gilts are paying 5% yield then the extra you get for holding those risks is only 3%. The market priced a 6% yield premium to hold the M&G specific risk in the first scenario, so for the price to stay the same with Gilt yields moving from 2% > 5% either the risks of holding M&G have gone down significantly or the price of M&G stock will fall so that the yield premium stays roughly the same, so the 6% yield premium means M&G moves to 11% dividend yield.

If there is a 10p dividend then 8% dividend yield = stock price of £1.25, if that same dividend is giving a dividend yield of 11% then the stock price should be £0.91.

This is a very simplistic explanation, but where M&G specific factors stay the same, but we see a big move in yields (as we did yesterday after UK CPI) it's clear that lower Gilt yields make safe dividend paying stocks more valuable and vice versa.

See also REITs where they are safe and have a relatively low level of leverage and pay very stable returns funded by rents.

The biggest issue IMHO was that the main basis for Terry's bearish view seemed to be the low level of cash that Thungela was going to have later this year. Yes that view seemed to be held by a few people and the share price went down, and most people arguing that TGA was worth more were disputing the cash projection that Terry was stating. JPM selling a huge 4-5% stake also drove the price down.

When the update came out it showed that the cash position was way better than Terry had asserted, so ultimately those who disputed Terry's view were correct and the main basis for shorting TGA was based on something that wasn't true.

Now Terry made money, if you take his trades/positions at face value; and to his credit he said he had closed any shorts before the recent big rally which he stated on this forum. Good luck to him if he did all that, great trading.

But I also made money too by only being long. I was long a core position from sub £3, having sold out 50% at £13-17 (pre huge dividend) and had been buying back slowly all the way down post the most recent dividend. I bought at 6.64, 6.27, 5.72, 5.48 and sold some back at 6.69 and 7.02. I still like it medium term and think we can easily see £8-10, and with decent (10%+) dividends to boot, sure it might go crazy again and i think I'll keep some of these for years, because right now given what I paid for it and what I've taken out, even with recent purchases I've already taken more cash out than I ever put in.

In some ways that's what makes a market, people with different views, different time horizons and different reasons for investing. Listening to people who have a different view is a useful thing to do as it helps you to question your own beliefs or research, rather than being in an echo chamber. So thanks to Terry MC for making the debate more rounded although the post count seemed a little excessive, but plenty of others were making it personal too.

Good luck all.

That's a cash position of >£4 per share and slightly higher than I'd expected tbh.

Happy with long position here. For sure things are not as rosy as when coal was $200+ but still 1st half eps between 70-100p, so even at the lower end of the range that's around £1.50/shr EPS for 2023 + >£4 cash so at £5.50 you are valuing the assets of the company at basically zero....

Unfortunately I don't see the price shooting up on this, but the positive efforts out of South Africa to tackle the power cuts in the last couple of weeks should improve the outlook for the medium term. At this sort of price happy to hold and will add £5-£5.50 zone, and sell some of the ones I bought down here already at £7.50-£8.00

The thing is they've put a 240p target on it, and with yesterday's close at 292p it makes sense to say underperform at 21% above your target. But at 255p now (only 6% above your target) you would probably put a "hold" recommendation instead.

So in the 250s this seems s little overdone for one analysts rating, if you think the analyst is correct not much point selling here, if you don't most other analysts have higher targets so you buy. Anyway I bought some here in the 250s replenishing ones I sold a couple of weeks ago in the 290s and will continue to trade around a core long position.

PDSB is up around $9 a share in pre-market trading from a close of $6.72.

In terms of numbers / valuation for NSCI: they own a 4.7% stake last I checked, which at yesterday's close was worth £7.3m, at $9 a share that stake is worth £9.7m which in theory should be a 10p jump in the NSCI share price. Obviously the PDSB share price will move a lot today (and pre-market is illiquid and volatile) so these figs will change a lot.

If PDSB share price was $15 (not that I think it will trade there today) then NSCI's stake would be worth their entire market cap.

NSCI total market cap (@70p) is around £16.4mio and the stake in PDSB makes up almost £10mio of that, so the other bits (Sofant, Proaxsis, Glycotest, EMV) make up less than £7mio which is way undervalued from any comparable measures I have looked at.

I mean look at the Sofant news this week - are you telling me after that Sofant is worth less than £1mio? I'm not saying they are worth £10mio but they are well into 7 figures. Same Proaxsis, Glycotest, EMV and another dozen+ companies.

For the moment very few really know about NSCI or want to own the stock, hence the share price still down here, it's all about AI.

I think one thing that's missed by many is that a lot of shareholders, particularly institutional ones, hold companies like Aviva because they are safe and steady and return a decent dividend yield. Now the 7-8% dividend yield looks especially attractive when Gilts are yielding 2-3%, but the whole curve now above 4% and moving higher (2yr is up 60bps in a week, 5yr 50bps) then the relative attractiveness fades.

There's an argument that a big part of the value of a share like this is almost like bonds, you are buying a steady income stream, so the present value of that income stream gets affected by moves in interest rates. That's not to say its all like this, but I view a stock like this as more like 50% equity and 50% bond. You can see a similar effect with other 'dividend shares'.