Morson Share Discussion Threads

[rena] 21/5/2003 09:47

Price creeping up slowly? Anyone know why?

[goodgrief] 16/5/2003 17:39

Nice move up on significant volume.

[mac] 13/5/2003 15:17

Something is up.

2.5million share buy. Also recent big buying from the Emp trustee's. I wonder who is selling & whether we are about to see things get moving, after all.

[johnv] 11/4/2003 17:24

more director buying today

[goodgrief] 11/4/2003 10:54

Citywire comment :-

Software business Merant (MRN) attracted the attention of three directors earlier this week as its share price continues to enjoy a strong run.

The biggest spender was non-executive chairman Michael Gillard who snapped up 50,801 shares on Tuesday at 124p per share, a total cost of £63,000. This almost doubled his holding in the £126 million company to 126,774 shares.

He was joined by two fellow non-executives, Don Watters and Michael Berty who each bought 12,091 shares at 124p per share, each spending £15,000 in the process. Watters and Berty have now have 24,758 shares each.

Merant has returned to favour with investors impressively over recent months. In October it dipped as low as 70.5p but has since been on a steady upward curve, hitting 123p in recent days. Last night it closed unchanged on 122p.

Its share price improvement is linked to its improved performance. It moved into quarterly profit in the middle of last year and has since sweetened up investors with a £35 million return of cash.

[goodgrief] 10/4/2003 17:15

Expecting next set of results towards the end of May, given that the last lot were on 27th Feb. Reassuring to see 3 directors spending over £90,000 on shares. I was expecting the shares to trade sideways until the next set of results, but looks the directors have confidence at least.

[mart the bluenose] 10/4/2003 11:31

Great to see some Director buying today.

Should give the share price a boost. Any idea when Q1 results are announced?

[goodgrief] 03/3/2003 15:12

Someone likes these. 3 trades of 500,000 gone through today. Haven't seen any comment in the press or on Citywire. Perhaps Techinvest might comment next month on their latest results.

[johnv] 10/12/2002 14:08

Talk on mrn site on yahoo about takeover of one of merant competitors by IBM. On same takeover conditions(2.5x sales) means merant equivialent would be 240p.

[tonyfleming] 10/12/2002 09:32

Certainly something interesting going on - low volume but big moves!

[goodgrief] 09/12/2002 15:59

Just seen on Citywire that Collins Stewart have issued a BUY recommendation on Merant (and NHP). I see from the weekend press that IBM spent a billion or two buying out Rationale. They ought to have a few hundred million to spare to pick up a morsel like Merant.

I

[gorwel] 06/11/2002 00:05

GoodGrief,

I see Schroders have just announced they now hold 16%.
Techinvest have indeed stuck by these and say they "are more conviced than ever that Merant will be one of the leaders at the start of the next bull market".

If the tech rally continues this might be a steady riser towards the AGM, which is on Dec 5th.

[goodgrief] 18/10/2002 14:28

Not much interest in these on ADVFN.

Techinvest pretty keen on them though.
Talk of Merant winning contract for change control software
on Joint Strike Force project from the Pentagon.

[a2336418] 13/9/2002 10:49

Breakout from last 6 months consolidation.....target anyone please?

[johnv] 02/5/2002 15:28

loads more sellers today. ratio 10:1 and yet the price hangs on. News today about the EGM for the next buy back.

[welshanalyst] 23/4/2002 20:38

That will be dwarfed by the next buy-back of about 30m shares.

[johnv] 23/4/2002 14:08

its most probably been mentioned before but the trading for last seven days, with the price steady approx 8k buys & something like 1200k sells.

[welshanalyst] 15/4/2002 22:30

From last October's Techinvest:-
'The company is now planning to return excess capital of at least £56m (43.6p per share) to shareholders'.
Assuming around £23m has been spent on the buybacks, so far, there is still £33m to be spent on more buybacks, or a special dividend.

[welshanalyst] 10/4/2002 21:27

'Merant intends seeking shareholder approval to buyback a further 15% of theshares for cancellation. By the time all the formalities are completed, this programme is unlikely to be activated until around the 2nd week of June.'
There is also the possibility of a special dividend.
Equityinvestigator forecast earnings per share of 4.2p for next year followed by 9.8p for the following year, when all the costs of the reorganization will be completed. Take out the cash in the bank, and the latter forecast would leave a PE ratio of about only 4.
This is why Merant is being tipped and the Directors are buying.

[logica2me] 26/3/2002 08:26

Brilliant! LOL!

[mog] 13/3/2002 15:38

Fidelity have just announced they've upped their stake from 9.2% to 10.8%

[welshanalyst] 10/3/2002 16:42

Tipped by the Sunday Times, today.

[dan_bach] 06/3/2002 19:15

6 March 2002

MERANT plc

Analyst meeting

Merant plc ('Merant'), a leading provider of software solutions for enterprise change management, announces that it will be holding a lunch-time meeting for analysts at which Gerry Perkel, CEO, and Scott Hildebrandt, CFO, will be making a background presentation on the company and the enterprise change management market on which its activities are focused. Management will not be commenting on current trading and no new material information will be provided.

Slides from the presentation will be available on Merant's website from 12.45pm today.