Burford Capital Share Discussion Threads

[henchard] 15/8/2019 23:55

gettingrichslow,

I think the jury remains out on the $15.8m booked from Napo (with all the implications if BUR can't account for it). [edit: see sk's post above]

Today's RNS from BUR was "regarding the evolution of its corporate governance" with BUR noting that "Investors have asked for more clarity and granularity."

My distinct impression from the conference call was that the MAIN thing analysts and investors wanted was more "clarity and granularity" on the FINANCIALS. There were stacks of suggestions on how BUR could improve on this front. All of them were met with the reply "we'll bear that in mind" or suchlike, but there was nothing on this in today's RNS.

Certainly, it's easier to timetable intentions for a listing or personnel changes, but I think this will only carry BUR so far when the central concern of analysts and investors is greater disclosure on financials.

[gettingrichslow] 15/8/2019 23:21

You said a hammerblow was coming from MW - it didn’t. It was pathetic.
You lost the debate with Adnan on Napo comprehensively. He took your argument apart piece by piece then you tried to move the goalposts. That failed too.
You’ve bored everyone to tears with repetitive negative posts full of unsubstantiated innuendo. It hasn’t convinced anyone.
In summary, you’ve failed in your mission and come across as a loser!

[sweet karolina2] 15/8/2019 23:14

Aw bless now you are concerned about my dignity. Same challenge to you: provide the posts that were wrong or you have no dignity.

[gettingrichslow] 15/8/2019 23:12

SweetK - you are outmanoeuvred by everyone you cross swords with! There are a lot of folk on here who are sick of you now, how about you just leave now with whatever dignity you still have?

[sweet karolina2] 15/8/2019 23:11

winsome,

Do you have a link to the Viceroy report on Burford? I would be very happy to do a side by side review of Viceroy and Burford. Obviously the purpose of the Viceroy report on Burford was to inform the client who paid them for it as to whether or not they should make a bid for Burford - they decided not to, and the purpose of the MW report was to create a shock correction in Burford's share price.

As for the other company you mention, I have no knowledge of it or interest in it. However frauds and dogs exhibit many common characteristics. These are colloquially know as red flags (see post 10888 in the header for some examples), individually they do not prove much, but when there are a lot of them, then it is definitely worth avoiding a company. Whether they make it worth launching a short attack is more debatable. But in every analysis of a company that is not worth taking the risk of buying or taking the much greater risk of shorting (something I have not done for over a decade) there will almost certainly be many of the same red flags, hence I think your charge of plagiarism would be hard to substantiate but feel free to have a go yourself, just remember to avoid confirmation bias in your analysis.

Burford has more red flags than May Day in Moscow, today's RNS was the first step in removing some of them. As I have said before, still a very long way to go, but every long journey has to start somewhere.

Anyway looking forward to you providing the link to the Viceroy report on Burford, do let us know if you also stumble across a link to the 2013 case which Napo won and could credibly have provided a $15.8m return to BUR.

[henchard] 15/8/2019 22:37

Devalpha,

I do enjoy reading your posts and your focus on the business, even though I happen to take a different view in this particular case.

I agree with much of what you say in your latest, including on box-ticking corporate governance stuff for the sake of it, but as I've said before, I'm unconvinced Bogart and O'Connell merit the same kind of trust from investors as Buffett and Munger (or firms where there's a multi-generational imperative and record for maintaining integrity, such as Schroders).

But your arguments are coherent and you don't involve yourself in the stupid name-calling and drivel that goes on.

Just one request. Have you ever thought about breaking up your text a bit into paragraphs? ;)

[gettingrichslow] 15/8/2019 21:42

SweetK, have you admitted to getting this completely wrong yet?

I think you can learn from this though. You will become a better investor if you improve your critical analysis skills and learn to be more objective. You are still letting your subjectivity get in the way of independent judgement.

Maybe you Should do a third masters at Wolverhampton Poly?

😂😂😂😂8514;😂ԅ14;😂

[yidarmytom] 15/8/2019 21:31

I assume sk aka Tom the Yid is still banging on about napo or sharemuppets lol

[pal44] 15/8/2019 21:31

wholly agree with you epo001 MW kind of entered a tigers/BUR cage dressed in Lady gaga's meaty dress now the big question is are the Tigers toothless .. only time would tell . GLA

[epo001] 15/8/2019 21:18

There is a particularly vacuous argument going around that we should somehow be grateful for MW's 'intervention'. MW engineered a price crash for their own profit and they are vermin.

If any good comes out of it that was not their purpose or intention and they certainly do not deserve any credit just as a shoplifter does not deserve credit for inadvertently reducing a shop's stocktaking burden. The side effects are unintended consequences.

However, talk is cheap. I want to see action and changes at Burford, not just RNSs.

[sweet karolina2] 15/8/2019 21:15

Indeed but if you are looking to tap up bond holders for more cash you really need to listen to them. Bonds up a bit today. It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow with the bonds, will they recover to near par or are bond holders still seeing a material risk of insolvency?

[compo62] 15/8/2019 21:15

@Henchard - I am not able to give you a real "thumb up" but a virtual thumb up from me. You capture precisely my sentiment on this whole sorry episode.

[henchard] 15/8/2019 20:29

Companies are owned by their shareholders, and when the SHAREHOLDERS speak, it is the role of boards and management to ignore them, until a short-seller comes along and makes it no longer possible to do so :)

[tsmith2] 15/8/2019 20:24

I think the clue is here:Companies are owned by their shareholders, and when the SHAREHOLDERS speak, it is the role of boards and management to listen.

[dsmith57] 15/8/2019 20:09

I think the institutional bondholders laid it on the line to Burford at yesterday's call. It is a pity that it looks like their arm had to have been twisted up their back to make them reconsider. As I said earlier, if they had listened to shareholders' concerns this would have been done months, perhaps years ago. It was the Achilles heel that scavengers like Muddy Waters look for. If they can make one or two criticisms stand up then they pile on a whole load of rubbish to frighten investors into selling. A lot did and have suffered huge losses. Like me, a lot held on,are still well underwater,and have had a lot of sleepless nights. All of this could have been easily avoided. Anyway, better late than never. Still a long haul back to normality. Tomorrow will be interesting.

[winsome] 15/8/2019 20:07

sk, as you are interested in what posters have to say on here, in the interests of balanced reporting, how about writing another article seeing things from the other side? I can suggest an outline as follows:

Headline: "Have Muddy Waters Just Cut & Pasted From A Discredited Viceroy Report?"

Outline: After having successfully exposed serious fraud at Steinhoff in South Africa, Viceroy short sellers moved on to attacking SA's fifth largest bank and best performing JSE stock from the last 10 yrs - Capitec. Viceroy accused Capitec of being 'a loan shark masquerading as a community finance provider' (the same catchphrase MW used to describe Burford')

Viceroy then went on to claim that Capitec couldn't possibly outstrip the returns made by their rivals and would have to in fact make large rightdowns on their loans and that they massively overstated their financial assets and income. They claimed that Capitec were 'seemingly insolvent'. They also accused them of having a non-independent and incestuous board that could'nt be trusted. They then accused them of hiding losses and disguising loans gone bad.

The Muddy Waters report is similar in style and content to the Viceroy report, using comparable accusations and innuendo such as 'masquerading' and 'seemingly insolvent' and readers must wonder if this was a cut and paste job to fit with an attack on Burford. Note that Viceroy previously researched Burford but didn't act on any of their findings.

The Viceroy report was immediately taken seriously by South Africa's National Bank who investigated Capitec and found no wrong. Then the SA regulator also acted and gave Capitec a clean bill of health months later. Viceroy's report (much more detailed than MW's) was discredited and Capitec's share price recovered. And for the avoidance of doubt, SA's banks are highly regulated and thus did not suffer consequences from the 2008 credit crunch. This begs the question - just how reliable are these short selling reports?

So why not, sk? DYOR and publish. It would be more balanced than, for example, "IMF Bentham Slates Burford Accounts." That was shareprophets fake headline.