Foresight Vct Share Discussion Threads

[malay37] 08/6/2004 14:40

If one bought into the share today to take advantage of the special dividend, would one have to buy before the close of business today and hold until the record date or Xd date?

I.e
What is the minimum period that one would have to hold on to the share Xd date or record date
and will it definately be marked down

Will the shareprice plummet by roughly the amount of the special div amt of 52p?

thanks in advance

[mart] 01/4/2004 12:16

Lobbed the ordinaries and warrants because of weakness in YOO and eager to lock in profits. Will consider getting back in later.

[urpo] 23/3/2004 14:40

I flipped the 2.5k I bought the other day - a profit of a whole 5p! Less after costs. Have been thinking to sell some of the other ones I bought on the way up. Assuming I don't get the same argument I had on the buy side I think I'll at least sell some - somewhat like you I think there's not that much upside now unless they clarify exactly what the total consideration is...

Not much downside either but it does no harm to book some profits early.

[rivaldo] 23/3/2004 12:52

I've been selling and am now out, having doubled my money. I decided that the benefit from the ACG sale wouldn't be that much greater than the current price - and also YOO has slipped quite a long way and may slip quite a bit further in this market, which will have impacted the NAV.

Good luck to you urpo, and those still here.

[urpo] 22/3/2004 10:54

Dunno - naturally I like your first explanation more but the alternative is fine too paying staff out for success has to be fair my only complaint then is that I feel it should be included in the results data since 15 to 20% dilution is material.

Maybe we'll get some more info soon - plus an updated NAV would be very nice too.

[rivaldo] 22/3/2004 10:40

Not sure urpo - I have one possible explanation, but it's a long shot. The original cost was £1.6m - could it be that when they say cash consideration they really mean profit (£12.1m-£1.6m)? I can't believe they'd make such a basic error in an RNS I have to say. Seems more likely that ACG had a load of options/warrants etc, so the 27.5% was only of the undiluted share capital.

[urpo] 22/3/2004 10:34

Hmmm - I am a bit concerned though. A substantial a portion of the consideration seems to have gone walkabout even allowing for costs. In August they had 27.5% of the voting rights. For 44.25m cash that would equate to £12.1m. If sale costs were say 5% (seems high but this is private equity) then that would still leave £11.5m.

Where has the other £1.5m gone? It may well be that there are share option/incentive schemes for management that we don't know about and that would be fairly legitimate in so far as without them we wouldn't have had the return we're about to get. Still - I would like some explanation. Or am I wrong?

[rivaldo] 22/3/2004 08:14

RNS out and shares up - here comes an 80p-90p tax-free dividend! Pretty quickly too I hope. But it's the NAV I'm more interested in (I see YOO made a contract announcement as well today):

"Portfolio update

The Board of Foresight Technology VCT plc is pleased to announce that, UMECO
plc, has agreed terms to acquire Advanced Composites Group Limited, an
investment in the Ordinary Shares fund, for a total cash consideration of £44.25 million, to be part funded by a UMECO plc rights issue. The acquisition is expected to be completed in early May 2004.

Upon completion Foresight expects to receive a cash consideration of
approximately £10 million. It is the Board's current intention to distribute
this to shareholders by way of a tax free dividend as soon as practicable
thereafter. A copy of the full text of the UMECO plc announcement, released at
7.00am on Friday 19th March 2004, can be viewed at the attached RNS link."

[urpo] 19/3/2004 12:24

Yup - actually I think I've got enough for now.

I have to post one apology though both for hogging the board and on my earlier post about BVCA. Checking back to the announcement of the current issue, they do refer to 'new BVCA guidelines' providing to a big uplift to NAV the largest element of which was for ACG. I have no idea and haven't been able to find a reference to just how much they added to their interims valuation – I'd hope it was still conservative but till there is a comment by the company then you'd have to hope the NAV is somewhere better than the 174p they posted on the 15th but as you rightly posted Rivaldo - could be anywhere between 5p and 40p.

One benefit of course is that we can expect a capital distribution at some point this year assuming the ACG sale completes. As a holder from 1998 it's a nice way to have capital freed up while letting the managers get on with their jobs.

[rivaldo] 19/3/2004 12:11

Urpo, I've always found FTV shares difficult to get - especially in 5,000 lots! Nice low spread for a change though.

If we get that RNS (and it's showing a decent NAV!) I'll race you to the phone!

[urpo] 19/3/2004 11:58

FWIW I just tried to buy 5000 at 165 and the MM refused... only willing to do 2500 on the offer. This is the first time I've had them do that on this share - the 10p dealing spread has normally given them enough comfort.

[urpo] 19/3/2004 11:05

The warrants are for exercise at the end of April (it used to be end of Jan but the accounting date was changed). Given that the ACG deal is reckoned to complete in 'early May' then they should still benefit - though I'd like some guidance on that.

The plus side on ACG is that it is a realisation and full exit - the -ve though is that it seems well short of the £50m talked about some time ago. Still, assuming they had not increased their valuation for ACG from the interims (this is a big assumption - I tend to think it's correct as they follow BVCA guidelines and have given no explicit statement that they have revalued unlisted stock) then it adds around 37p to the NAV posted a few days ago. That'd put us just north of 200p.

If that is the case then I absolutely believe they should close out the current new shares issue now. The only people it is doing any favours to is the C share holders.

[rivaldo] 19/3/2004 10:21

Redrocks, no idea! Logically, there's (I think) around 13.7m shares now in issue, having issued around 800k shares recently at NAV, so £12.16m sale proceeds could give rise to an 80p per share divi?

Small point - there were press reports of a £50m flotation, so the sale price doesn't seem particularly good, esp.as ACG were making £3.8m op.profits. Perhaps the immediate offer of cash was too tempting...

The price has ticked up I see. FTV should issue an RNS to clarify the current NAV - IMO there will be an uplift, but it could be anything from 5p to 40p...

[hotdollar] 19/3/2004 10:17

Anyone have any idea when the FTV warrants can be exercised?

[redrocks] 19/3/2004 09:47

any idea what sort of distribution to shareholders in special dividend
that might lead to?
redrocks

[rivaldo] 19/3/2004 08:58

Well, well - Umeco are buying ACG - for cash. So FTV will get 27.5%, or £12.16m. The last NAV was 175p, but it's unclear if that fully includes the ACG uplift - I would doubt it as this would surely put the cart before the horse? Question is, how much more uplift does this give?



UMECO plc
Proposed £44.25 million acquisition of Advanced Composites Group Holdings Limited

[urpo] 10/3/2004 10:51

Interesting to finally get a move on this. It's now bid above the offer price of the new tranche for the 1st time.

Could it be that at last they have pulled it? I'd certainly hope so as that would allow convergence to NAV - whatever that is now. Even so it's still nice to see it finally bid.

[redrocks] 21/1/2004 12:54

Having checked kout the nav for dec and ljaon I reckon the increase of 23p is probablky due to upgrading price o acg as result of proposed sale and increase iin price of yoo. The warrrants look a good buy at the mopment but I hold some and wont sell!
redrocks

[urpo] 21/1/2004 12:53

interesting... one way or another it's overall favourable. A full exit at a £50m would equate to around 100p of Nav and presumably would trigger a special dividend by way of distributing the funds.

[redrocks] 21/1/2004 12:46

In understand that the company have settled for a private sale somewhere aroound the value suggested earlier. They are expecting lthis to go through around febuary. I also gather there has already been some uplift in valuation of acg so lI ldont knopw lhow lmuch sale will add to nav of ftv.
redrocks

[urpo] 21/1/2004 10:34

Oh and by the way, by my reckoning the most recent Nav would have been calculated with YOO at 50p. With it 57 bid (and assuming you could actually exit there) that would add another 10p to FTV's value.

rgds

[urpo] 21/1/2004 09:34

In fact, and of course not wanting to talk it up, I don't think the ACG valuation will have been changed from the time of the current placing round or the start of this thread. I did look at the results which seemed to confirm this.

That valued the ACG holding at £6.7ish million. FTV's holding is 27% of ACG and a float was talked about way back in August at £50m which would add another 50p to NAV.

As I say I don't know that the ACG valn hasn't been changed, but some back of envelope calculations would say not. I think most of the change in NAV since last time comes from things like YOO and Telecom Plus. YOO up around 20p since last NAV revision which equates to 30p in FTV nav and Telecom Plus up around 120p or about 8p in NAV terms.

I think the only reason we're not moving up at the moment is the overhang of the placing. As I posted earlier I'd hope if the discount gets any sillier they will pull the balance or work out a way to change the pricing on it.

[rivaldo] 21/1/2004 09:09

Hi Joekoe. I suspect that the FMLX reference is to the proposed ACG float rather than a separate placing.

I actually spoke to FTV last week, and was told that the ACG float was still on for the next couple of months and everything was looking good. I seem to remember ACG's year end was 31st December, and they wanted to get that out of the way first (the figures would look pretty good if projections were met).

Did you notice that the RNS on 9 January stated NAV was 185p, compared to the current 145p share price?! This probably includes some ACG uplift under BVCA rules, but with the market the way it is the float could go very well indeed and FTV's NAV could look extremely healthy.