RNS Log For Shares Within Portfolio Voyager RNS Log WC 24/06/2018 As ever, although I may get keen about a stock, what I put into print here is purely me sharing my rambling thought process and NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE to either buy or sell a particular stock. The key to the colouring of text within these notes: Text in normal black: just my thoughts. Text in blue italics: direct lifts or copy & paste from the RNS issues by the business. Text in green: loosely, the investment principles that I feel comfortable with. Red is a disclaimer in that what I write is NOT investment advice. Just having a look at my diary and I see that its almost a year now since I introduced the Voyager RNS log to the site; amazing how time flies by, frightening in a way. The log does take little bit of leg-work but it only really formalises and records the approach I have had for a good few years. All of the stocks are based upon either good cash-flow/returns on capital or what I deem to be special situations. Noise, including recommendations from magazines, tipsters etc is just about totally ignored with only a passing interest taken of broker recommendation upgrades/downgrades. The life-blood of the portfolio is raw RNS news pondered in reasonable detail and of course, my trusty fag-packet calculations. I was going through one of my archive files the other day, it was rather nostalgic to look at my print out sheets from CD Refs in 2001 calculating my expectations for VP at 85p, estimating potential upside if this scenario or that scenario came into play. I eventually bought VP at close to that price and they did very well for me but I ditched them as the financial crisis unfolded. Strange you know, as VP still looks a decent stock today even though its price is now over £10 per share. It’s just my view but I reckon that the keeping of notes where an investor records ones thought process for either buying/selling or indeed continuing to hold a stock, is invaluable: you learn from your mistakes as well as feeling good about your more positive outcomes. As investors, we will never get our investment decisions always perfectly right or indeed, perfectly timed. Without a doubt, each of us will suffer the occasional profits warning and also every so often, the consequences of possibly poor decision making; that’s all part of life as an investor. The important point is to learn from those mistakes and try to learn from them rather than perfecting that mistake and watching the outcome repeating itself again and again. As we move into deep summer, the RNS news flow and market activity dry up like a chalk stream in a drought. With that in mind, for the months of July and August, the Voyager will probably move to a monthly review returning to a weekly review in September with more newsflow and activity. In terms of my recent market activity, I have continued to heavily top slice or even close some positions over the last month as I get a feeling that the markets will tend to fall a touch more as Trump does his thing and we ponder over the sausage sandwich game, sorry, I mean Brexit. I am not one that takes notice of any market noise but I tend to sense these are loud claps of thunder and just maybe a real storm is brewing. So, with that in mind, it’s capital preservation time and I have now moved fairly significantly into a cash-rich position within the Voyager. Yes, I know that I may well miss a chance or two with some of my reduced positions but as the last few years have been so productive, I would rather play the risk management card a touch more whilst the sun is still shining. So, onto a fairly brief RNS Log. One catch up from last week: Tuesday 12/06/2018: Bonmarche:BON: Mkt Cap £59m: Year End Results: Outlook: Trading since the beginning of the new financial year has been in line with the Board's expectations. The financial position of the business continues to be sound, with no net debt, and the robust balance sheet provides a stable platform for the future. We will continue to improve our proposition, through the implementation of a series of self-help initiatives. Whilst we anticipate that the market will remain difficult, we expect these ongoing improvements to make a real difference to customers, and we look forward, with confidence, to delivering further progress in the coming financial year. My View: The results were generally marginally higher than the consensus forecast and pleasingly the dividend generously increased by 8.5% to give a total of 7.75p for the year which going forward offers holders a very decent yield of over 7%. The market reacted well to the results which again showed an appreciable increase in online trading which although not massive at the moment, continues to increase nicely. I will continue to hold. This Week: Monday 25/06/2018: No RNS relevant to the Voyager Tuesday 26/06/2018: D4t4 Year End Results. Outlook Going forward, our focus remains on the collection, management and analysis of data thereby assisting our clients to derive considerable value from their customer data and on delivering highly scalable, analytical platforms with our hybrid cloud analytic services. The first few months of the year have started in line with our plan and we continue to attract new partners, new opportunities and new clients. This leads us to be confident for the year ahead. As a group we have invested in our people, our systems and our products and we look forward to keeping you up to date on progress during what looks to be a very interesting and profitable year. My View: These appear a sound enough set of results and tend to reinforce my view that the business is possibly undervalued by Mr market. Initially, I guess some folk were spooked a little by the greatly increased level of trade debtors but to my view, in this case, it’s simply work possibly yet to be completed for which the customer will pay probably in H1 of 2018/19. Personally, I reckon the September trading update/November interims could make interesting reading. I will continue to hold what is a reasonably profitable position. Tuesday 26/06/2018: Ramsdens: RFX: Mkt Cap £54m: Series of mid-afternoon RNSs regarding director sales. I can’t say that I am overly impressed with the way RFX have conducted this trio of sales of significant numbers of shares: Peter Kenyon CEO, sold 500,000 shares which was about 30% of his holding. Now whilst I see that the CEO does not draw down a massive salary, about £170k, and I can understand the need for a little reward, my criticism is in the way that the sale was handled. It was probably done on block to an institutional investor but surely such a sale warranted some degree of explanation from the directors i.e. to meet institutional demand or whatever. No, sorry RFX, that does not impress me and you have destroyed my earlier confident stance and have left the portfolio for a small manageable loss. You can’t win them all and only a fool expects to win then all whilst I like to think a wise man simply says “hey this one did not work out” and moves on. It may well be that the share price could soon recover up to the 200p region but for me, the management were a touch naïve in the management of the series of sales; as Duncan from Dragon’s Den would say “I’m out”. However 24 hours later: after that afternoon RNS and my sale of RFX, it fell a few % more the following day and I have to admit, I could not resist the temptation of a long spread bet at 166p. Why a spread bet? Well, I certainly don’t have enough conviction to entrust the management of RFX with a brown envelope containing a few £k of my precious ISA pot. Wednesday 27/06/2018: No RNS relevant to the Voyager I really don’t know why I bother with the 6:30 am swim on a Wednesday as half of the pool is roped off for the youth swimming club: nothing wrong with that by the way. However, what I can’t understand is why some rather weak swimmers more interested in talking than swimming, just turn up on such a crowded day; makes a swim really difficult and the mile feels more like two miles. Still, I suppose it continually tests one’s tolerance to those oblivious to their surroundings. Thursday 28/06/2018: No RNS relevant to the Voyager : Friday 29/06/2018: No RNS relevant to the Voyager: yet I could not let Friday pass without reference to that almost unbelievable bungling management team at Sprue Aegis (SPRP). Not only have these clowns steered their calamity of a company from accident to accident and continually destroyed shareholder wealth: the shares have fallen 80% since early 2016, they now have changed the company name to Fire Angel Safety Technology. I have previously written a few times that historically a change of name does frequently not bode well for the companies future; I mean who really cares what a company is called? In this case, the management has displayed incredible naivety by adopting the TIDM (EPIC) of FA; what more can one say? Incidentally, I don’t hold a position either long or short in FA/SPRP but at 75p and a fall of 65% in five months, surely a company supplying such worthy products must have a chance even with Captain Calamity & his crew at the helm! Finally, a comment on Versarien (VRS): I don’t hold any VRS but being a scientist I am interested in the potential of the technology. Having said that, being an investor, I am very wary of the stock. There is a bull case as graphene may well prove to be a wonder material. However, the bear case really does put me off the stock with the CEO’s maybe ill-advised use of Twitter, the insignificant RNS’s (we had one recently that smacked of a deal with Trotters Independent Traders) and the warning bell of a mass bulletin board following of experts on the new science. I have simply been around too long and have seen so many similar technological Midas touches: turning softwood into hardwood, new battery technology wonders of the universe, bitcoin. I think the CEO of VRS would be well advised to limit the newsflow to significant milestones and cease to engage so much on social media. VRS is not one for me just yet. If it does take off then I will be happy to get on board for maybe a 40% gain of something rather than full ownership of a stock so heavily ramped on social media and bulletin boards. In a gold rush, the risk-averse guys who make the money are the merchants who sell the picks and shovels to the speculators. If VRS does take off, then there will be plenty of time to make really significant gains “picks & shovel” style rather than being a speculator in these early days. The Summer:
Well, time for me to take some holidays and enjoy the summer months plus of course the World Cup which this time around is providing some great entertainment. Do make sure you enjoy this lovely summer and hope to catch up with the Voyager again at the end of July holidays and general enjoyment permitting. Cheers for now.
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