Foresight Enterprise Vct Share Discussion Threads

[miavoce] 29/12/2002 19:15

Cliveden will buy for £230m plus debts (totalling £370m). This gives £2 per share - a 60p (or 40%) premium on current price. Interesting to see what the markup is tomorrow. if it is less that 5p up at the open I may be tempted to try to make a quick buck !

[leeshindig] 29/12/2002 19:10

what about debt tony?

[tonyx] 29/12/2002 19:08

With 115m shares in circulation (according to ADVFN), a buyout at £370m is over £3 a share.

[leeshindig] 29/12/2002 18:51

so what price for the shares you reckon?

[reetus] 29/12/2002 18:34

Top Stories UK
12/29 10:33
Fitness First to Be Bought by Cinven, Sunday Times Reports
By Richard Blackden


London, Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Fitness First Plc, a U.K. health-club operator, will be acquired by buyout firm Cinven Ltd. for as much as 370 million pounds ($593 million) in cash and assumed debt, the Sunday Times said, without citing anyone.

London-based Cinven is supporting a bid by Fitness First Chief Executive Mike Balfour, the newspaper said. Shares in the Poole, England-based company have fallen 70 percent this year.

Fitness First, which in October scaled back expectations for profit in fiscal 2002, last month appointed advisers to look into its options.

U.K. fitness operators such as Esporta Plc and Holmes Place Plc have sought takeovers after their share prices declined on concern growth may be slowing. Esporta was bought by Duke Street Capital in July. An offer for Holmes Place from Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's buyout unit fell through in October.

(Sunday Times 12-29 Business 3)

[reetus] 29/12/2002 18:33

Bloomberg
Top Stories UK
12/29 10:33
Fitness First to Be Bought by Cinven, Sunday Times Reports
By Richard Blackden


London, Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Fitness First Plc, a U.K. health-club operator, will be acquired by buyout firm Cinven Ltd. for as much as 370 million pounds ($593 million) in cash and assumed debt, the Sunday Times said, without citing anyone.

London-based Cinven is supporting a bid by Fitness First Chief Executive Mike Balfour, the newspaper said. Shares in the Poole, England-based company have fallen 70 percent this year.

Fitness First, which in October scaled back expectations for profit in fiscal 2002, last month appointed advisers to look into its options.

U.K. fitness operators such as Esporta Plc and Holmes Place Plc have sought takeovers after their share prices declined on concern growth may be slowing. Esporta was bought by Duke Street Capital in July. An offer for Holmes Place from Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's buyout unit fell through in October.

(Sunday Times 12-29 Business 3)

[l2e] 21/11/2002 12:00

no one buying this stock then?

[forethought] 18/11/2002 11:20

No i'm not yet. It's stuck in a tight range at the moment. Will watch and see which way it goes. In the meantime, have gone into LMC - results out Friday. Should be a nice ride up to some good looking figures. LMC are looking at a tiny loss to break-even - which is nice!
T'ra for a bit.

[haystack] 15/11/2002 11:22

It is on the move again. Are you back in?

[forethought] 14/11/2002 10:27

Don't we all mate!
Anyway, it looked like we were gonna fail the break out towards the end of trading yesterday so I sold out at 125p. Will keep a watch so I may be back.
Asti Spur Manti, baby!

[haystack] 13/11/2002 16:13

I think that the big trade of 300k+ may have been a sell. I noticed that Fidelity reduced their holding the other day. However there are plenty of large buys so there are probably other institutions building up their holdings. Fidelity has been egtting out of a few stocks recently. I wonder if they are having liquidity problems with some of the ISAs, Unit Trusts and other investment vehicles that they maintain. They have been selling across the board and not buying much. This suggests that they have a need for cash.

[bellars] 13/11/2002 14:03

rumour suggests buying coming from 1 or 2 houses...interesting

[haystack] 13/11/2002 13:49

The volume is building up nicely today. Lots of delayed trades being reported over an hour late whcih all seem to be buys. There is some serious interest coming from somewhere.

[forethought] 13/11/2002 09:40

I'm with you Haystack on the future price but I thought I would make a conservative prediction given the current climate ;-)

[haystack] 13/11/2002 09:34

I am looking for the price to get to close to 200p. There may be a few ups and downs on the way. The volume of trades has been very good over the last few days. Every time the price has dropped there has been concerted buying almost immediately.

[forethought] 13/11/2002 09:32

FTF is about to break thru to retrace higher by my reckoning. Good support from a couple of days ago and a steady stream of buying. Could rise by at least 50% over the next month or two (IMHO).

[haystack] 13/11/2002 09:22

There are two trades of 21,228 each that look like sells. They seem to be a rollover of a T+ long trade. The are very close together in time and for prices that are just slightly different, which is the norm. for a rollover.

[haystack] 13/11/2002 08:48

There was a good rise yesterday and now there two 10,000 buy trades today already. The volume yesterday was 1.3m plus. Someone is buying regularly into this. The 6 month chart looks good. We should see another good rise today. Just look at the trades today.

[forethought] 09/11/2002 00:26

The profit warning was clarified. I for one believe the explanation to be satsifactory and the subsequent drop in share price over done and exaggerated due to overall market sentiment at the time.
A Fitness First club as just opened near me, which I've joined, and I can tell you it is a VERY popular place. Much better than some of the other health clubs I've been to over the years.

[forethought] 08/11/2002 16:07

In theory, regardless of market conditions FTF should have a nice run up from here right into early 2003. As a contributor mentioned earlier, there is the Xmas and New Year new memberships and renewals to take into account. Coupled with a natural recovery from an oversold position. If we can break above this 125p level, which looks likely based on volume and momentum, then we're away!

[haystack] 08/11/2002 13:24

There are some huge trades going through. It looks like someone is taking advantage of the low price to buy quite a slice of these. It looks like an institution buying in or topping up. Here are the major shareholders as of yesterday and Directors.

Executive C D J Pearce (ch) M W Balfour (ce), T Newman (fd), C C Child (coo), S V Phillips (sd), N R Cartwright

Non-Executive E J Denning [RA], W K Goldsmith [RA]


Major Shareholders (7 Nov 02):
115.22m shares in issue
Henderson Global Inv Ltd 10.01%
Capital Group Companies Inc 7.46%
Aviva PLC 6.72%
State Street Nominees A/C 6B11 5.13%
Simon Ware-Lane 4.99%
Fidelity Investments 4.89%
Legal & General 3.03%
C D J Pearce 6.16%
M W Balfour 5.47%
Other Dirs 0.33%.

So major shareholders have 53.86%

[benson] 08/11/2002 11:55

Profit warnings rarely come only once. Waiting for the next one.

[reetus] 07/11/2002 22:39

Share price starting to limber up ready for the post Xmas work out!

[tally] 07/11/2002 14:18

agree - have some understanding/knowledge of the management of the company and feel they are in a position to do well from herein.

[forethought] 07/11/2002 09:56

Chart looks pretty good here. I expect to see some good gains. The fall was most certainly over done but probably understandable in the context of the market as a whole. FTF has been a bit of a lagger in terms of recovery but is now the moment to get in ? Oh, most definately! (IMHO, DYOR etc).