Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[0rient] 07/12/2017 11:01

I reckon this has dropped enough now and is an excellent price to buy a few..bought a few today and will buy more on any further weakness 👍🏻

[jonwig] 05/12/2017 16:19

Probably the main reason that this might be a short is that the buildings will lose value sharply once the student market gets overcrowded. (I'm agnostic on this point ... in other words I haven't a clue!)

It could be that they were constructed without the fallback of alternative use. I remember Mark Watkin Jones saying that his earlier student buildings were specially designed for students, but more recent ones are adaptable.

[andyj] 05/12/2017 16:10

Intra day strength today, could be a sign of recovery, tempted now to add more.

[spectoacc] 05/12/2017 14:00

@hannath - reasonable points. I guess if I didn't agree I'd have sold out again.

[hannath] 05/12/2017 12:50

to me its a buy, not sure about screaming though ... NAV 109p ... 5p divi return for a 84p outlay, costs been cut and efficiencies implemented, divi now more affordable, another 1000+ beds in use for next term.

So its money were my mouth is, in for the longer term income stream and topped up at 83.4p, unfortunately average still above 100p.

[andyj] 05/12/2017 12:37

Based on the knowledge that is publicly available, it certainly isn't a screaming short, but if you feel that, then why not short?

[stemis] 05/12/2017 08:30

Ah well, at least everyone's getting a range of opinions to consider...

[stemis] 04/12/2017 21:30

No Joe, you are not alone but the share price reflect the mind set of shareholders and potential shareholders who've lost some confidence in management (or in Horndean's case, all confidence...lol). I think most investors probably saw this as a low risk scenario in which management would buy some properties and net income would rise linearly and quickly to cover the initial dividend and then provide a rising income. It clearly hasn't worked like that. But sometimes business doesn't.

I do disagree with Jonwig to some extent in that it would have been an easy option for management to just give some bland statement about cutting costs. Instead they've nailed their colours to the mast with some pretty firm targets against which the market can assess them. I doubt they'd survive missing them so I assume they are confident they are achievable. If they do the market will be buying the shares again at 110p+.

[jonwig] 04/12/2017 20:41

joe - not worthless, of course. But the attempt by the board to rebase expectations seems to have been fruitless. Objectively, the property sector and this sub-sector should not be posing problems. My own opinion (already stated) is that they should have fallen back on a position from which they could only improve rather than state expectations and targets which were still hopes.

Also, quite a number of new REITs are coming to the market and most of them seem to have a pretty conservative investment policy. Maybe sellers are just switching into propcos which they view as safer?

[joepublic1] 04/12/2017 20:27

So are all these properties now suddenly worthless - now seems to be on a 20% discount to NAV and a target yield of 7.3% in 14 months. Thought for a moment there the CEO might be backing himself with serious money but apparently not. I seem to be alone in seeing this as bargain territory.
Perhaps someone can explain to me where the horrendous risk is here ?

[daveofdevon] 04/12/2017 08:51

Well that at least removes a worry, when I saw the RNS on friday evening I thought he might be jumping ship.

[spectoacc] 04/12/2017 07:38

"Further to our inability to even communicate effectively..."

[chucko1] 01/12/2017 19:17

Jonwig, thanks for the insight. It seems that Worldquant’s short is likely to be technical. They are in and out of their short positions with extreme frequency which is consistent with what a US Quant fund would have expertise in. Seems the clue is in the title!

[spectoacc] 01/12/2017 15:30

That's some list @andyj! Sorry to hear.

Times like these I remind myself of the old adage: "Warning: shares can go down as well as further down".

[andyj] 01/12/2017 14:47

Tbh at the end of an annus horriblis, having invested in CLLN, PFG, BT, CNA, ISAT and INTU, I could do without these supposedly safe investments dropping like a knife.

[horndean eagle] 01/12/2017 10:57

Out of interest did any of you take shares in the placing at 109p. If so can you please message me off board.

[jonwig] 30/11/2017 15:16

chucko - thanks for your post. The short position is detailed here:



It seems they do a lot of this, and it may well be entirely "technical", as you say. Apart from that, the lack of major holdings movements is noteworthy, as I said. It also seems BlackRock were periodically short last year!

My interest in ESP is that I held them once, and am looking to buy again. They just aren't quite a clear upwards bet for me at the moment.

[chucko1] 30/11/2017 14:42

Actually, a new share register has just been published. A hedge fund called Worldquant has taken up a short position of over 3mm shares. The interesting thing about this is that this short was notified on 24th, just after the trading update. All other entries are dated as of November 17th, reflecting activity over the past few months or so.

Worldquant, as far as I can tell, is staffed by supposedly smart PhDs out of the US, which is an anomaly since just about every other interested party is UK based. One might infer that there position is therefore entirely technical as I do not really think they would have much interest in speculating on the sorts of things that will increase/decrease ESP’s fundamental prospects. What I do not know is short position was established some time prior to its date of reporting and was a reaction to the initial sharp sell-off.

Otherwise, I was interested in those holders who had entirely sold out of their positions. The reason I find this interesting is that they will have become true non-believers, and therefore exerted the greatest downwards pressure. The total amount of such sales amounts to about 10mm shares, the largest such seller accounting for 4.4mm.
To me, this does not seem a very large amount given that there was an individual sale of 23mm shares a few months ago that caused a 2 to 3p move only. Therefore, one can deduce that just about all of the recent move is non-technical and reflects fundamental disquiet (which I share, but maybe not as much as others).

[andyj] 30/11/2017 13:14

Thanks jonwig, still trying to decide whether to buy more...

[jonwig] 30/11/2017 12:05

It's xd today (1.5p), which explains all the fall.

Puzzled why there have been no holdings statements since the fundraising (except BlackRock, which seems to have taken a very few).

[andyj] 30/11/2017 10:24

Continuing to tumble. A steady rush for the exit after the results or more bad news coming?

[jonwig] 30/11/2017 06:34

SteMiS - A 91p target would be lower than the previous one (23 Nov) of 94p, but 'hold' would be logical at a share price of 89-90p.