Member Info for thinksmart

I don't believe a T/O can take place without acceptance by a majority of voting rights. The BoD would aim to pick a preferred bidder and recommend their offer to the shareholders. We would then get a circular asking us to vote. However I think a straight T/O in the traditional sense now looks unlikely as we have been told things have got complicated. That may well suggest a joint venture takeover, or a sale of only part of the company, or its intellectual property, products, or licences etc. In such a case different rules might apply, and the effect on the SP is much harder to predict. In any case the BoD may be in no position to stick out for 10p+ with creditors' defaults snapping at their heels and any potential buyer would be optimistically hoping to snap up a deal on the cheap given the financial pressures.

I don't agree that investors are being very fearful. There's been no big sell off. No sudden collapse in the share price. The SP was around 2p a couple of months or so ago and we're still way above that now. Daily traded volume is very low. There is some caution, some pessimism, and a lot of boredom and impatience which is leading to a slow decline in SP whilst people seek what they perceive to be faster, safer, or better prospects elsewhere but its hardly a fear-fuelled stampede lol.

WB's tip is good as long as you can afford it to be wrong sometimes. i.e. More often than not its good to take that kind of bet as long as the ones that go against the advice don't hurt you too much along the way. He can afford a few to go south without losing to much sleep knowing a winner will be along soon enough. I've yet to hear any convincing argument for what a T/O offer might be. The creditors are going to have loud voices in any decision I'm sure. Obviously the directors all want over 10p as do we all, but I'm less sure that ATD are in a position to hold out for that. Only time will tell. meanwhile fingers crossed and good luck.

I think a lot of these apparently red transactions must actually be DMA buy/sells bought on the bid price as otherwise this just makes no sense

Something funny going on - masses of apparent sells and masses of MASSIVE sells raining in but price somehow holding up. Maybe there's a big buy order being put together or some monster buys not yet reported or something. Will be interested to see what comes through.

I wouldn't call myself experienced but these things really can take varying amounts of time and this one seems to have become more complicated and hence more protracted. But the thing to consider is, are you asking when a T/O might be completed, or when it will be announced as a firm offer offer from a preferred bidder sufficiently to take the SP up close to the offer price? From offer to completion can take just a few weeks, and in the case of Hot Tuna (now Concha) their T/O (or effectively a reverse takeover I think) seemed to go through pretty quickly, but on the other hand The Niche Group de-listed from AIM whilst going through something similar (but more complicated) towards the end of last year, and still haven't announced anything further whatsoever. Its a case of how long is a piece of string.

The other positive, although even older, news in that article was... "Business subsequently picked up towards the end of 2011 with revenues for the twelve months expected to exceed 2010." ...which originally came from the RNS of 18 Nov 2011 It would be good to see the full year's final results and some indication of whether revenue remains improved in 2012 but last year's final results weren't scheduled until early April and then were postponed to the end of the month so we may not see them this year yet awhile.

Slothman: Fair point - it does seem a backward step that no deadline is in place at all now as far as we are aware, and I would imagine they would have to let us know if there was a new deadline. With discussions being complicated it kind of brings up the idea that it might not be a straight takeover being discussed, but sale of parts of the company or of its products/licences/intellectual property, or perhaps a joint take over or merger. Just thoughts as I have no idea what's going on behind ATD's doors. Johnny7: Why do you say TWO interested parties? Is there some news out to that effect, other than what was in the RNS?

I love the unbridled optimism guys as I've bought too many of these and could really do with 15 or 20p but can you explain your reasoning for those t/o prices as the only justification for an offer like that would be a bidding war in my view. Today's news was worrying as it now sounds much less likely that atd could go it alone and any bidders will know that. Hopefully more than one bidder will want what's on offer enough to avoid a silly low price sale. Other way it would be daft not to hold now til the end game as there must be a reasonable chance of a t/o at more than the current sp

Waiting for you to work it out and tell us. I reckon about 12p but that's extremely rough and ready and out of date.

Just searched back. It was YOU!

Agree they def owe their shareholders an update. Presume there's a big sell being worked in the background behind today's drop. All immensely frustrating. Someone on here said the company had told them news would be very soon so fingers crossed.

What do you mean, what have you heard? I can't see any new rns

0.15p? That's not a dream that's a nightmare!

Shot up to over 9p recently on nothing more than momentum. If rns comes out saying interested parties are doing due diligence but without naming a price it might well go above 10p. Obviously if a price is given then it should go somewhere near whatever that price is. Check the last 3 or 4 RNS announcements for details of when they put themselves up for sale (last year) and when they were hoping to announce an offer (mid Feb). I'd ignore much of the chat on here on likely offer prices - no-one knows what's going on, or what an offer might be (if one comes), or the reason for the delay in news. Could be good, could be bad, could be irrelevant. Definitely frustrating though.

Note the offers COVE are getting. They aren't even firm offers yet and yet they are both in the public domain. Possibly because they were good offers at premiums to the SP when announced. Hope we hear something similar soon from ATD

Yeah probably the ones that are a bit more friendly with their boss than his wife would like ;) lol I probably should have said "should" rather than "would" as no doubt even with best intentions some details slip out if employees are in the right place at the right time and are keeping their eyes and ears open as to who is visiting and from which company. But they aren't supposed to let on when we phone up to ask lol

Employees below board level would be unlikely to know much more than we do, in my opinion, as otherwise would lead to either insider trading or a leak.

From past experience (which admittedly is somewhat limited) a company would usually inform shareholders via an RNS of an offer when they believed they had got the best offer or one that they could recommend shareholders accepting. I think "recommended offer" pretty much indicates that it means one that they recommend to shareholders, which of course means letting shareholders know. The Jan 5th RNS states; "...with the intention of being able to ANNOUNCE a recommended offer by the middle of February.", and ; "...an offer document would then be posted in the subsequent 28 days." Pretty clearly then they had hoped to have an acceptable offer by 17th Jan and to be able to recommend it to us by way of an announcement by mid Feb, and then to post out a formal proposal 28 days later. We're just behind on the hoped for schedule probably because of auctioning, or price wrangling, or ironing out details. Hopefully if offerors needed yet more time for due diligence they'd have advised of that but I suppose that's also a possibility. We should expect an RNS well in advance of the proposal document in any case in my opinion/experience.

I'm over-exposed here too mate and totally respect hedging bets through reducing exposure. I'd do the same if I'd be locking in a decent profit rather than my current loss. My hope is that the worse case scenario wouldn't get too much worse that the current position and therefore that's worth the gamble of holding because the best case scenario must still be considerably better than the current position. If I'd had spare cash a few days ago I'd have topped up and to be honest I still think that at current prices a top up is a tempting gamble. A slide back to 3p would be extremely depressing though. Hopefully we must get some sort of news fairly soon at which point we can all make better informed decisions.