Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources, on delivering sector-leading returns for shareholders. Watch the video here.
I'm a long-term holder here and it was good to listen to some good news as delivered in this interview of 29 March 2017 with Mark Brewer Research Director Life Sciences at Finncap. Definitely worth a listen. In his view this stock is much undervalued compared to peers and he proffered some eyewatering forecasts. I'm not holding my breath for the highest of his predictions but he makes some excellent points. https://www.brrmedia.co.uk/broadcasts/58da7bfde742d95c634a1f6e/lidco-analyst-interview-finncap
I wondered if the two identical lots of over 5million shares was a sale and buy back, where someone re-established a position, but needed to book a loss or profit. I know it's not that time of year, but it crossed my mind. That aside, there does seem to be quite a lot of support, with buyers coming in when the price drops. I have held this stock for more than 10 years and I think the future is looking bright :)
"Matt Sassone, Chief Executive Officer of LiDCO, commented: "I am extremely pleased to be taking over as Chief Executive Officer from Terry O'Brien to lead the Company at this very exciting phase of its growth. LiDCO has reported two consecutive years of profitable trading and I look forward to delivering further growth and value to shareholders. The handover period with Terry has given me a clear insight into the opportunities for the Company. I look forward to advising shareholders how we intend to take the Company to the next level of growth in the near future."
http://www.lidco.com/investor/news/2015/06-05-15.php Looks like an excellent choice to me.
I'm not sure they are 'banging on' as much as reporting relevant information, and as they say Japan is a conservative market and Lidco gained approval from Japanese authorities three years ago. Japan is also very big market. The recent announcement was that LiDCOrapid V2 Unity software had been cleared for sale in Japan, and that Lidco believe this expands its product offering and differentiates it from its competitor. I'm not sure how you reach the conclusion the company is 'clearly' not being pushed to the front, but hey ho, if you're not convinced about the company's earnings potential then if I were you I wouldn't invest.
PS - given the price rise today on the back of a buy of just 100,000 tells me yesterday's two trades of 975,000 were 1 or 2. If it was 2, it suggests a market maker is quietly amassing stock, rather than bidding it up.
It could (1) be cross-trade, someone maybe transferring from one account to another. Or (2) there could be a buyer out there because ordinarily the bid price would move down, given current limited activity, by more than an .05, on the heels of a sale of close to one million. It could of course be (3) that the buyers of the two identical amounts were not the same market maker, but in fact the the same seller, in which case the seller would be not disclosing his total amount but hoodwinking market makers, but if that was the case I would have expected more of an adjustment downwards in the bid price, than the 9pence and 9.05 paid, as usually sellers who try to pull the wool over dealers' eyes are known to the market. My hunch is it was 1 or 2. ATB
Yes, I noticed that too :0
I think it's more to do with time horizon, and that some folk saw Lidco on the leader board, galluping up 80% in a day or so, and jumped on the bandwagon. For them movement and quickly is important, and when a share is too quiet and steady they get out. I think that happened with a few today. They will come back, when there is movement again. I was pleased to see that Old Mutual increased their holding to over 12 million shares. I think some others will follow their lead, as Lidco has stayed the course - still around after 14 years and going from strength to strength. I suspect they are on the radar of bigger fish looking to acquire a few jewels in the medical crown, but hope that will not happen yet, with the price this low. ATB
I think some who bought recently were waiting to see if the RNS would trigger another chunk of buys, and when it didn't materialise they sold. The big fall in price in early February was due entirely to one investor needing to sell some investments, which included circa 5million shares in Lidco, but the reasons were totally unrelated to Lidco. The amounts traded over the last few weeks are tiny as compared to shares in issue, and it doesn't take much - at the moment - to push the price of this share down. I've owned Lidco for over 10 years, and am comfortable with the fundamentals.
Excellent news, thanks for clarifying.
I reckon it's a sell, and a market maker bid up, as buys outstrip sells today, so could be a few shorts. I doubt there's many people left holding at the 6p/7p level; reckon they've banked their profit and moved on, so now mm's will need to be able to prise size out of people to maintain liquidity at this level. Otherwise, it could hike up.
Of all the II's holdings, Lidco must have been the best choice, perhaps because of the size of their holding in it. This II may not have wanted to show too much profit in the quarter or whatever period they were dealing with, as it could have upped the bar and left them underperforming in the future in relative terms. I gather it wasn't about Lidco, but about needing to sell something at a loss. Hope that helps.
So hopefully that sale is a one-off and better times lay ahead. Given the pleasing and positive RNS I doubt they'll be too many sellers in size at this level. And whoever sold yesterday must be kicking themselves today.
I gather that yesterday an institution shareholder sold approx 4mm shares in Lidco, PURELY in order to balance/offset profits in their portfolio. Given the size the price was discounted heavily. At the time they were clearly unaware of the RNS due to be released, as was, I believe, the market maker. But that is what has dampened the upward rise today. It is not to do with Lidco but with accounting and offsetting profits, presumably so it doesn't like they walk on water as that would set a precedent, so to sell something at a loss reduces the profit.
to clarify. Although I am also suprised at sellers in the 6s but a profit is a profit, so some quick in and outs I reckon. And maybe the large sells at low prices are to offset gains elsewhere to reduce tax? Bit early for that, but just a thought that crossed my mind.
this price, and the last sell of 1mm at 5.25 seems a hefty discount given news and today's turnover. Unless price is wrong? Or it's a 'delayed reporting' trade, that's been entered incorrectly, as there's been a few delayed reports in recent days. As a long-term holder of Lidco, I hope there is some decent press coverage tomorrow on the back of today's news, and that cashfornuthin is right; that we move into double digits in the next week. That would be welcome :)
London’s best-known bear is sharpening his claws. Evil Knievil, the notorious bear raider born as Simon Cawkwell, has his eye on a tiddler going by the name of LiDCO. The £44 million London-based company describes its business as “cardiovascular monitoring” — providing kit to hospitals that keeps an eye on the amount of blood flowing around a patient’s body during surgery. The market likes it. Profitable and debt-free, LiDCO was chased to its best since late 2005 this month after the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland published guidelines on care for the elderly during operations that endorsed the sort of less invasive monitoring machinery that LiDCO produces. Evil is dubious and has wagered against those shares through a spread bet with a City bookie. The source of his disquiet is a trial of LiDCO’s technology known as Optimise, carried out on about 740 patients across a dozen NHS hospitals and completed last year. Results have not been published but will, so Evil claims, prove that the tech doesn’t work. Except that it isn’t true, the company insists. LiDCO bulls say that the scientists who carried out Optimise themselves admit that the raw data was skewed. In October, the man who led Optimise gave a 20-minute presentation of headline results at a Paris conference. True, headline data showed LiDCO’s kit had no “statistically significant” effect on patients using it, but strip out the first few patients, when clinicians were learning how to work the system, and the effect was, indeed, statistically significant. Plus, some patients were admitted to the study without meeting the criteria for inclusion and shouldn’t have been. Researchers have gone away to analyse the data further, before results are published in full in a credible, peer-reviewed, scientific journal. Until then, LiDCO bulls argue, just look at the rate at which the NHS has been snapping up the kit. Clinicians know better than the bandits on the bulletin boards of financial websites whether it works or not. For now, the bears seem to have the upper hand and LiDCO shares eased 2.7 per cent to 22¾p, making for a near-15 per cent decline in under three weeks.
I quote verbatim, [this was published in our Morning Note of 9 Janaury 2014]: “Cardiac output monitoring: Although NICE guidelines recommend that oesophageal Doppler monitoring ‘should be considered for use in patients undergoing major or high-risk surgery’, there is limited evidence in the elderly and, especially, in emergency surgery. Cardiac output monitoring using Doppler directed at the aorta (e.g. oesophageal Doppler/USCOM) may be less accurate in the elderly, as flow through a poorly compliant aorta may overestimate cardiac output, and result in insufficient fluid resuscitation. Use of other cardiac output monitoring technologies may also be problematic; therefore, intra-arterial blood pressure monitoring should be considered earlier in elderly unwell patients.” Conclusion Who do you give more credence? The principal investigator of the Optimise study, the professional association of anaesthetists, or Simon Caukwell AKA Evil Knievil? The weakness in the share price represents a buying opportunity on Monday.
A friend who knows I own some of these shares kindly sent me a note from Lidco's broker, below, and following that, the Times article. I hope this helps. You may have seen the article in The Times on Saturday relating to Evil Knievil shorting LiDCO shares on the basis that the Optimise trial will show that the technology doesn’t work. Dr Rupert Pearse, the lead investigator, presented the headline data at a conference in Paris last year (i.e. raw results before detailed analysis). This was webcast and I watched it, and a subsequent interview with him. There are several absolutely key points, and to understand them, one needs to know that for a result to be ‘statistically significant’ in a clinical trial it needs to have a ‘p value’ equal to, or less, than 0.05. This means (given the inherent variability in biological systems) that there is a 95% probability that this was a real result, rather than pure chance. A p value of 0.1 means that there is still a 90% probability that the result was real. Back to the results of Optimise. To summarise what Dr Pearse said: • Complications were reduced in the intervention group from 44.4 to 36.6 but just missed significance (p= 0.07). • Chance of death at 180 days post surgery was reduced from 11.6% to 7.7% - but again not quite significant (P=0.079). • Hospital stay was 1 day less in the intervention group – just missing significance (p=0.054). So the results were all trending towards significance for improvement in patient care. Unfortunately the raw results just fell just short of statistical significance. Dr Pearse in his presentation made the following observations: • The lack of significance was most likely due to the study having insufficient power due to the number of patients enrolled. • There were a number of emergency/non elective patients entered on to the trial that might have skewed the results. It is not clear why these patients were entered as this was supposed to be a study on elective i.e. non emergency surgery patients. These patients were therefore included in contravention to the protocol, and excluding them is perfectly valid. These re-worked data have not yet been presented. • If the first few patients treated in each hospital are excluded, i.e. accept that there was a learning curve associated with the protocol – then the results ARE significant. So I’m afraid Evil Knievil is wrong. He should listen to what the clinician said, not what people are writing on bulletin boards. The paper with full data analysis and peer review has yet to be published. No doubt when it is it will take account of these last two points. Then there is the recent AAGBI Guideline for the perioperative care of the elderly published in Janaury 2014, three months AFTER Dr Pearse’s presentation (Source: Anaesthesia, 69 (Supplement 1), 81-98). I quote verbatim, [this was published in our Morning