Baillie Gifford China Gr... Share Discussion Threads

[vacendak] 20/10/2020 16:29

"On 20 October 2020, owing to demand in the market, the Company announces the issuance of 1,275,000 Ordinary Shares of 25p each fully paid from Treasury."

It is now a daily occurence but this one was a serious dump! More than a million...
And yet, the price closed up by another 0.5%.

From the factsheet the total assets now clock at: £240.44m.
The last WPC factsheet (August) had £231m in total assets.

I think they are counting the shares in treasury because I do not see how they could have shrunk by 23% (to pay for the cash exit) and grow the total assets by another £10m all within a month.

[uapatel] 20/10/2020 16:28

Thanks for clarifying.

[vacendak] 20/10/2020 16:25

The net liquid assets are indeed likely whatever was left of WPC (either cash or indeed "liquid assets" like big Japanese names easily sold and whatnots) at the cut off date of September 30th. From my earlier post, it is also possible that they are not yet "all in" either.

We may have to wait for the first pure BGCG Annual Report for a longer list of portfolio assets. Baillie Gifford are also like BMO, the monthly factsheet will need to be caught/downloaded during the month because they do not seem to provide a factsheet archive for their other ITs.

Talking about Annual/Half-Year reports, they have the WPC archive but have yet to upload HY2020 for WPC (the very last one). I got it through the RNS but no PDF version so far.

[uapatel] 20/10/2020 16:16

Thanks for the link to the Factsheet and top 10 holdings. Notice it mentions Net Liquid Assets are approx 31.4% - not sure this relates to the unlisted companies or just the uninvested element

Hopefully all be clearer next month when hopefully we might get a fuller list of investments held.

[vacendak] 20/10/2020 16:08

@uapatel

The first ever factsheet is up.


The factsheet is "numbers only" and does not provide a running commentary.

The top three holdings (about 20% of portfolio) are well known: Alibaba, Tencent, Ping An Insurance.

Per sector 40+% is in Consumer discretionary, Healthcare and Comms.

I am a bit surprised because this looks pretty conservative, but works surprisingly well.


[edit]

"On 20 October 2020, owing to demand in the market, the Company announces the issuance of 1,275,000 Ordinary Shares of 25p each fully paid from Treasury."

It is now a daily occurence but this one was a serious dump! More than a million...
And yet, the price closed up by another 0.5%.

[vacendak] 20/10/2020 16:01

The NAV has been plateauing for a week now but the premium is still rising (6.3% yesterday). The share price is still up of course.

Maybe the cash from the sale of the treasury shares has yet to be invested but Mr Market expects it to be invested well.

[uapatel] 19/10/2020 16:34

Vacendak, no doubts it will at some point.

Difficult to gauge anything without understanding what’s the actual holding/ percentage and how much of it is unlisted. Still not complaining.

[vacendak] 19/10/2020 16:21

Doing "only" half a percent today, but then they have dropped another 570,000 shares on the market, so all good.

I wonder when this will stop to catch a breath. It has gone up by more than 10% in roughly a month since the handover.

[uapatel] 15/10/2020 19:35

CHINA’S CHAMPIONS

What is it about Chinese firms that helps them blossom? Sophie Earnshaw and Roderick Snell, joint managers of the new Baillie Gifford China Growth Trust, pick the best of the bunch for




Interesting article in that it covers 4 companies the Trust holds

[vacendak] 15/10/2020 19:33

Yep, good read. They say the portfolio switch happened on September 16th.

[vacendak] 14/10/2020 16:55

Another 150K shares put back on the market today. Nice.

Down to 21,750,011 kept in treasury.

[vacendak] 12/10/2020 18:39

... and they have dumped another 366,750 shares on the market today, more than three times the amount on Friday.

The premium was a comfortable 5.7% at close on Friday.

There are still nearly 22 millions shares to release (21,985,011 at pixel time), so this could make a dent in the premium in the short term, but I would not bet on it.

[uapatel] 12/10/2020 17:25

Also recently took a starting position. Was looking to add more when the initial fact sheet and holdings list comes out.

Will wait to see if the NAV premium drops a bit before buying more. Probably just to my Pacific Fund in the interim.

Liked the potential for unlisted companies as per SMT. Early days though

[vacendak] 12/10/2020 11:47

To be honest, I only read about things and do not claim any analysis skills.

My personal view is that the likelihood of something with "growth" and "Baillie Gifford" written on the tin going out of fashion anytime soon is close to zero.
Baillie Gifford are the stars of "growth" at the moment, they run SMT after all.
I expect BGCG to do at least as good as USA (Their USA tech/growth investment trust).

BGCG seems to already be too expensive (premium) but as things go, it will be even more expensive tomorrow.

I have made a big bet by letting the whole of my WPC holdings (which I held because it was very diversified) transfer to BGCG. So far so good for me then; but I do not think I will ever add to it. Not that I do not trust them, I just like spreading my bets geographically.

As for buying at a premium, I also hate doing so. Yet, I did it a couple of years back by buying into commercial property; and yes, this was a stupid idea - with hindsight of course. Back then, I was convinced that things could only go up or at least stay where they were and enjoy the divi.

I also topped up in a Japanese trust (AJOT) at a very slight premium before the plague. Again, not a great move, but this one is recovering slowly.

So, for me, buying at a premium has always turned out to be a bad idea in the long run even if I had felt vindicated in the short term at the start.

[ali47fish] 12/10/2020 08:49

vacendak i have taken a position recently but i would like to add when the opprtunity arises- when do you think that might happen- or should one add even at a premium if things prove positive?

[vacendak] 09/10/2020 19:55

Good news, they are already taking advantage of the premium and are unloading the treasury shares:


There are still a LOT to flush, but releasing batches of 100,000 every now and then should slowly eat into that pile.

[vacendak] 09/10/2020 11:20

This might explain the recent share price taking off:


Since we are "all-in" already.

[vacendak] 09/10/2020 09:28

A bit of clarification about the name, the ticker and the dates things have happened or will happen.

Interesting bit:
"Since assuming management of the Company's portfolio, Baillie Gifford have completed the reorganisation of the Company's portfolio of holdings into a portfolio of Chinese companies to align with the Company's revised investment policy."

So this has already been a Chinese Growth only portfolio for a little while then (days? weeks?). September 21st was the date the BGCG ticker began to appear and as posted earlier the date the discount switched to a premium to NAV.

I was waiting for the first actual Baillie Gifford factsheet for confirmation; but I guess this will do.

Oddly enough it still shows as Witan Pacific on www.londonstockexchange.com at pixel time.

[vacendak] 07/10/2020 16:13

The right time to add would have been before the announcement during the Summer that WPC was going to be switched to China Growth. :)

Seriously, when the announcement was made, they mentioned that the major shareholders were onboard, which meant the resolution was 99% sure to pass. From then on, the discount began to narrow seriously.

From my data, BGCG/WPC turned from discount to premium on September 21st.
We are now arounf 5% premium... so it is already too late to "get in cheap".

This is a Baillie Gifford "growth" trust, so I expect the premium to remain until BG makes a big mistake and lose their mojo. The latest RNS has reminded us that they can issue shares, so hopefully they will do so to take advantage of the premium and bring the trust beyond the couple of hundred mils in market cap it is only worth right now.

[ali47fish] 07/10/2020 14:38

i have already bought into this a few week ago under the witan ticker- what poeple think here -is this the right time to add before the overhaul is completed

[vacendak] 01/10/2020 13:40

Indeed, but that was what they were paid to do unless I am mistaken. Or are you saying that JP Morgan will keep them?

My understanding was that they would just act as a transitional buffer when they reorganise the portfolio gradually instead of dumping everything on the market in one go. I could be wrong mind you.

[getscenic] 01/10/2020 13:23

think you'll find JP Morgan hoovered them up

[vacendak] 01/10/2020 11:18

Good results from the tender offer I guess: Only 26.38% of the company shares total have been tendered for cash, this is only slightly more than half of the 40% allocated for conversion.

These shares will not be cancelled but held in treasury. It is likely they expect BGCG to be trading at a premium, so they might just drip them back onto the market when the time comes.

They now need to liquidate - or borrow? - £67.5 mils to pay those who have exited.

Not sure if it is related (markets are up anyway at pixel time) but a nice jump of 1.21% right now.

[vacendak] 22/9/2020 14:27

XLON:BGCG is still not valid on MSN money, this is messing up my Excel spreadsheet. :(
It shows up on the LSE website though.