Establishment Investment Share Discussion Threads

[mattjos] 11/3/2010 20:42

Davydoo .. yes, i saw this. however, the move was signalled last year when, at the EGM, the articles were changed:

Notice of Extraordinary General Meeting
NOTICE is hereby given pursuant to the articles of association of Et-china.com International Holdings Limited (the "Company") that an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Company will take place at Level 14, Jianhe Centre, 111 Tiyunxi Road Guangzhou, China on 1TH July 2009 at 4 p.m. (Beijing), or at any adjournment thereof, for the purpose of considering and, if thought fit, passing the following resolutions:
SPECIAL BUSINESS
Special Resolution
1. In Article 171.1, the share control limits will be amended so that references to 30% shall be replaced with 33%.
2. In the part of the Articles of Association relating to the Appointment, Retirement and Removal of Directors, a new article shall be inserted permitting any shareholder of the Company to appoint, remove and replace one Director for so long as they hold 25% or more of the issued share capital of the Company and two Directors for so long as they hold 30% or more of the issued share capital of the Company.


This facilitated the exit of GSpan's holding and explains the selling pressure on the stock over the last 9 months whilst Kuoni have taken it on ... it culminated in the final volume sell-off in December, suggesting GSpan wanted out by the year-end & Kuoni took on the balance that had not been traded in the market by that time - simply because it's a low volume stock & they probabkly did not want to drive it too far down (maybe debt conditions are linked to share price in some way, for instance) . Looks like the average was at about 30p for the change of hands over the whole timeframe ... GSpan could not get as much as it wanted for all the shares & ran out of time. The mm's facilitated the final sellout at an agreed price & took a lot of PI's out in the process asd they did not iunderstand what was happening. kuoni has been mopping up the tail since December with the odd large buy and taken the share price back up in the process to where we are now.

However, since GSpan indicated they wanted out, Kuoni wanted in & the articles were changed etc ... it's my belief that the market for ETC in China, MAY have improved as the recovery from the recession takes hold.
IF that is the case then there may be a pleasant surprise coming in the form of the next t/u and/or results.

So, that is why i have taken a small position in this stock .... solely on the basis that they may have turned the corner and if so, the recovery in the share price from this artificial low may be swiftly upwards OR, it could be straight back down the snake to 25 ... hence a speculation only at this stage & not one i would recommend to anybody else.
Today's RNS does not mean that Kuoni 'know' anything more than we do ... it probably just means they were the only willing buyer around (given world events at that time last year) that ETC was happy to have on-board for GSpan's holding.

Time & news only here will prove if i am right or terribly wrong :-)
With the seller now gone, the stock is free to trade under normal buying/selling pressures of the market, imo.

THAT IS NOT TO SAY THAT IT NOW MEANS IT IS A BUY

Thus far ETC has gone for volume at the expense of profit in their business ... my investment here is highly speculative at this stage but i believe the share price should be nearer 35-37 on the information available to the market .. i.e where it was before GSpan decided to become a seller last May/June & which prompted the change in the articles to enable Kuoni to become a buyer to over 30% and not be obliged to bid for the whole company.
however in that timeframe, the Chinese economy has turned

[davydoo] 11/3/2010 10:25

Seen the news re Kuoni Mattjos?

Im taking it as a positive sign that Kuoni have increased their holding as I assume they know the inside track on the performance of the business.

At what point is a full bid necessary? Im invested in another company where a shareholder is staying under 30% otherwise they would have to make a full bid for the company. I'll take a deeper look into this.

[greek islander] 08/3/2010 09:35

Share price seems to have settled now.
I had wondered whether something was in the offing.
Guess it would have shown itself by now.
Have a feeling that the results statement will show that ETC remain chasing turnover rather than profitablility and this can only go on for so long - unless the activities and revenue figures are more transparent.
Don't want to keep repeating myself but I shall keep on watching this one though will not be back in unless I feel totally confident that the Board are on top of a drive to make money not just turn it over.
It's very well selling more and more and expanding but at some stage a fledgling small cap has to show a return for its shareholders and frankly in this burgeoning Chinese travel market if it cannot show a profit on this sort of increased revenue, one wonders whether it ever will.
I have tried to close my investments in fly by night companies and concentrate on those showing substantial information about fundamentals and I see none of this here. All investors (mainly PIs) are gambling on the fact that it is China and this sector holds a huge amount of promise, however the only other positive is the supposed involvement of Kuoni and the silence eminating from that direction is deafening!
Not a stock to gamble ones pension on.

[davydoo] 04/3/2010 16:56

Thanks Mattjos, ive been aboard for a while though, and made some comments on this board back in December.

[mattjos] 04/3/2010 16:04

welcome aboard Davy to what i hope might prove to be a profitable ride ... or not as the case maybe :-)

[davydoo] 04/3/2010 15:23

The small rise mustve been due to my small purchase, as it seems to be the only trade today.

[mattjos] 04/3/2010 12:21

GI .... it wants to be back to this level, imo & the 3:3 MM position confirms that in my mind now.
selling on that chart, as you did, was not necessarily a bad decision. it was not pretty, lets be honest and if you were nursing a loss i don't blame you at all. Preservation of your capital is critical if things turn against you - then you live to fight another day so to speak.

My buy was oportunistic on what i saw of the engineered drop in December and the only partial recovery of the share price from that point. I've seen it before and felt it had only partially recovered. I was also curious to see that there was clearly a new party wanting to hold these & hardly surprising there was willing seller given the historical performance. What the new holder sees in these is the intriguing point & will only become apparent with more patience.

Buying back in at a higher level, once an uptrend in the chart looks like being confirmed & after some more +ve news from the company is not at all a bad thing and might confirm that you have picked the right stock but simply mistimed your entry to it.
This one has bags of potential & has yet to make any recovery from the recession inspired drop .. whether it has turned some sort of corner now is a complete unknown but the chart sugests that IF they have and the share price trends upwards the recovery to 40p could be achieved in the next 2-3 months now & then I'd be looking for a C&H pattern to start to emerge, running on to mid 50's by the end of this year & then a further run to 73 by spring 2011.
However the big prize would those events being confirmed and then the chart would suggest a possible run to 227 by the end of 2011 & i dread to think where next after that .. potentially nearer 450 the year after.

Of course i could simply have lost the plot here and they could just as easily end up back down the snake to new lower lows after the next newsitem from the company! but on the chart & on the recovery in china and the fundamentals of the market sector in china long term I felt it was worth picking some up now on the basis of a possible 10 bagger over 2 year or a 30% loss over 3 months.
so i wouldn't get too disheartened .. they'll be time enough to back on-board here if the bottom has been reached and recovery is now starting here.

Hope you keep up with events here as otherwise i may be talking to my echo for a bit yet! GL with whatever you have done with the funds in the meantime

[greek islander] 04/3/2010 11:50

Another small rise today.
Well done

I am going to regret selling out here

[mattjos] 03/3/2010 10:50

GI .. let's see .. may just be noise at this stage but i do not believe there not to be much stock about at this level & feel it should really be nearer 34.5 which is where the mm's started taking it down from to facilitate the change of hands in Decmeber ... since then there has not been enough volume to take the stock back to where it probably ought to be at this stage. Total lack of interest is the main reason i think.

Another 100k net buys and i believe we'll be back to a more representative share price but it will depend on to what extent this little run flushes out sellers or not.

Next week or so should prove me right or wrong in the short term but it is very much the longer term that i am interested in

[greek islander] 03/3/2010 10:34

You see Mattjos I sell and the share price rises. Is that not typical?

[mattjos] 03/3/2010 10:03

2 rather pleasing ticks up on the Bid now and, by ETC standards, a positive flurry of trades over the last 3 days :-)

[mattjos] 01/3/2010 20:08

cheers GI .... appreciate your post. Sorry you've taken a hit here - never a nice feeling.
a speculative nibble for me at the mo in the hope of catching a rise on trading and some greater kuoni influence & therefore a swing in the tide here. time and news will prove it either way.
Apart from you here it feels like the Marie Celeste at the mo :-)

[greek islander] 01/3/2010 18:14

Mattjos

My sale was of a very small holding too as I had already sold two thirds of my remaining holding at a much higher price (still at a loss though). My sale must have gone through on PLUS, because it isn't showing on ADVFN - sale of 2,132 at 27p.
Would have liked 28p but no. Must have been a buy.
The worry leaving here is that something (Kuoni related maybe) will be announced and some attention created. I still feel now in my bones that this company is one of those puffs of wind that come along every now and again in a sector which has everything going for it yet so badly run that it gets larger and larger borrows more and more but still fails to make real profits at the end of the day.
I had hoped like you that the Kuoni influence would change all this and had considered going back in but I am getting too experienced to fall for that one ie catching a falling blade - something I was prone to during the Dot Com bubble. My new more stable approach has served me very well indeed of late.
Good luck here Mattjos hope I am proven wrong.

[mattjos] 01/3/2010 17:40

ok GI. Thanks for your honesty. I'll sit it out for a while yet i think on the basis that there was a willing buyer of a chunk here recently and i'm curious to know why that was, over a 12 month timeline.
The price went up today & so I'm assuming that the 10k after hours trade at 28 was actualy a buy entered onto the order book at just after 12pm today or if it was you getting out then i thnk you got a good price for them ... .will you let me know if that was your trade pls?

The fundamentals & metrics of the market that ETC operate in look good in the long term & I am, in part, relying on the Kuoni influence to add some extra visibility and stability here going forward ... time will tell though & it is only a small base holding for me which may or may not grow during the course of 2010/2011

[greek islander] 01/3/2010 17:16

Mattjos

It was good to see you in here as it was getting very lonely.
However after seeing a 50% loss I took the opportunity today to get out.
I am a very patient investor but all my other stocks are surging at a rate of knots and this one continues along with Tanfield to get nowhere and frankly I see no reason why matters will change.
Serious reservations about the management here and the total lack of visibility.
Glad to cash in while there was something left and I have invested the dosh in AYM and MTT today with good reward.
Good luck if you are staying in here - you may need it.

[mattjos] 01/3/2010 16:50

anybody else here today?

[mattjos] 22/2/2010 14:48

i've dipped a very speculative toe in today ...... the New Year holiday season is over now and the chinese economy is much healthier this year than last ... the recent travel figures coming out of China are showing sings of large increases.
ETC have hisorically RNS'd there trading performance v shortly after the major chinese holidays and the trend has been +ve after each event. Rather than risk being mugged by the MM's on the spread on a busy day I took 5k at the mid-price today .. enough to keep me motivated to keep up to date with events from now on but not enough to cry over if there is no such good news from ETC.

the last intraday drop looks, to me anyway, like it was engineered by the MM's to facilitate a change of hands

It's by no means a cert and there is the Bond to be considered as Davydoo points out in post 311



This March 2008 note from SEYP is also a useful read .... although glad i didn't buy then.



I suspect i'll find out the news later this week

[davydoo] 23/12/2009 17:29

I agree with earlier posters about this being illiquid and market makers just pricing to demand, so if someone wants to sell for 22p, which i think happened the other day, causing the big fall, then they'll do the deal, the fact that one tiny deal lowers the market price doesnt alter the business value. I hope.

[davydoo] 23/12/2009 17:24

This is an interesting stock, every other number invloved in this business dwarfs the market cap, so its a high risk play, but i like that for a proportion of my investments.

Looking through it today, the stock seems to be valued at the level of their Grandbuy stake, which has risen considerably since the last annual results. Therefore a shareholder is getting the travel business for free, well kind of in my simple mind.

I re-read the annual results, they have a credit line of 2bn RMB, almost £200m i think, on a market cap of under £10m. the co has a rapidly rising turnover, in a rapidly rising market, of a rapidly rising country, if they can just keep this going, and deal with the bond maturity in May 2010, then this could be a great one long term.

[greek islander] 22/12/2009 22:15

GHF, explorer,

Yes this is a nervy stock! I agree it looks ominous.
I went in and cashed up a while ago taking my 40% or so profit and then made the fateful mistake (?) of buying back in in a much smaller way lower down. Mainly because of the Kuoni factor.
Never really like this specific company or the management as they are maverick with news and figures but then this IS China. Things are different here and one usually makes allowances. I must go back to the old principles and yardstick. This was a punt but surprised overall at the way the share price has just withered despite supposed continual good news statements.
My holding is so small now I'll stick with it all the way down to nothing (maybe) and take a CGT loss for later useage.
On the other hand GHF you might be right and who knows what is ib store.............

[glasshalfull] 22/12/2009 16:40

Yep good luck GI.
Unannounced fall often a precursor to disappointing news. Then again I've seen holders panicked out in similar situations when it is simply marked down on small sells in what are essentially illiquid shares. MM's simply don't want to hold any stock.

I'd voiced my concerns earlier on the thread so won't rehash. It's all there.

Best wishes,
GHF

[explorer88] 22/12/2009 15:48

GI - looks ominous :-(

[greek islander] 22/12/2009 08:32

Anyone know what happened this morning?

[greek islander] 17/11/2009 22:38

Jonny

I used to hold WCC. Took a small profit to my everlasting regret, though I put a lot of dosh on CHNS which has now served me very well though only half as well as WCC would have. However CHNS closing the gap fast.
Emerald Energy and WCC remain my worst nightmares - having mad and taken small gains only to see them both quadruple afterwards.
ETC a bit of a mystery. Know that most "sensible" punters won't touch them with a bargepole. It really is a punt stock!