Findel Share Discussion Threads

[sportbilly1976] 06/4/2016 12:51

possibly not the best week to try and "find a loophole" :)

[scapital] 06/4/2016 12:48

That has to be declared as a beneficial stake - but it could always be an under the table kind of deal.

[eastbourne1982] 06/4/2016 12:02

Could if be possible Morgan Stanley were taking the position on behalf of SPD, i.e. finding some kind of loophole that avoids SPD going over the 30% mark ?? Just a thought.

[scapital] 06/4/2016 11:22

There has to be a counterparty, it's strange that they don't have to declare really.

[sportbilly1976] 06/4/2016 11:12

It's a shame that MS increased via CFD's

in effect buying rights over almost 3.5 million shares without the share price budging one bit!

[sportbilly1976] 06/4/2016 10:57

So MA/SPD have 29%, Morgan Stanley now have 10% (both significantly increasing their holdings via CFd's)

interesting times indeed

[eastbourne1982] 06/4/2016 00:18

Took a long position in these at £1.70, it's very volatile and I'm hoping to close out at £2 plus, what SPD's intentions are is hard to second guess, interesting times and the update recently seemed to suggest the business was doing OK.

[scapital] 05/4/2016 22:56

More shares for Morgan Stanley.

[scapital] 05/4/2016 09:30

@DeMelloRetailSpeculation that Sports Direct are going to make an 'ambitious' and 'peculiar' circa £20m acquisition. Wonder who it could be??

[eastbourne1982] 04/4/2016 16:42

This is a really weird one, spiked to £2.25 a week or two ago, now you can buy at under £1.75, what happens next ???

[sportbilly1976] 31/3/2016 16:09

a bit of volume just kicking through...10k bot?

[1gw] 31/3/2016 14:29

I bought some at 1.98 yesterday and 1.89 today. Surprised there isn't more volume going through.

Having said that, if you look at the 11m odd voting rights acquired by SD and the 6m odd acquired by MS, they come uncomfortably close to the 18m holding that Toscafund had at the time of the General Meeting. I find it very difficult to believe that Toscafund would bale at this point, given it looked like they allowed SD in in the first place and I assumed saw a bid by SD as one possible outcome of that move, but I would like to see holdings notices showing that someone other than Toscafund was on the sell side for the majority of the SD/MS voting rights.

[scapital] 31/3/2016 13:00

Bought my first FDL shares at 190 today. Definitely something afoot here.

[1gw] 30/3/2016 10:32

Once you remove the fat-finger/corrected trades, I think you can split Thursday's big volume trades into 2 groups of 9.505m shares, all transacted in the low 170's.

My guess (but as you can see above, I've been wrong with the guesses very recently) is that this would be Sports Direct's CFD counterparty buying shares and an existing shareholder selling them - although that then leaves you a bit short of declared trades to get up to the 10.9m bought by Sports Direct - even if you assume that they or their counter-party were hoovering up the rest of the shares (the 5000-share ATs and the 30k odd in the closing auction). Maybe the missing shares came from a non-LSE platform?

Anyway, I've bought some more at 198p on the basis that either through an outright bid for Findel, or through a commercial marketing/distribution arrangement between Sports Direct and Findel, Sports Direct's increased holding will turn out to be a positive for the Findel share price.

And I note that my purchase (which went through on ICAP according to the contract note) doesn't appear on the advfn trade listing.

My opinions and guesses only - no advice intended.

[sportbilly1976] 30/3/2016 09:50

Given MA's existing holding....imo an approach at 250p would probably be sufficient and that would cost £151mln for the remaining 70.21%

game on imo here

[sportbilly1976] 30/3/2016 09:36

SPD's cfd interest totalled 10,868,367 shares.

The volume from Thursday easily surpasses that. Indeed, excluding the 21mln trades the total of the other amounts also is greater than this.

imo there is a further holdings rns to come

[1gw] 29/3/2016 18:53

The Guardian's take:

"Analysts believe Ashley is keen to get his hands on Findel’s Express Gifts division, which has a well developed financial services operation that could provide potential synergies and new potential avenues of growth."

[1gw] 29/3/2016 18:00

The suggestion at the time they originally bought in was that they might be interested in Findel's distribution capability (a channel for e-tailing) as well as in Kitbag. In fact in the Findel circular ahead of the vote on the Sports Direct-nominated director, Findel said:

"...the Company engaged in preliminary discussions with SDI regarding a possible commercial arrangement with the Company to market SDI's products to Express Gifts' customers..."

Or it could be that they just want to have a better chance of getting their nominated director elected to the board next time. But I would hope they are thinking about the possibility of launching a full takeover and going up to close to the 30% threshold positions them nicely to do that should they choose to do so.

[grantley] 29/3/2016 17:19

What would be SPD's objective? They first bought in apparently as a spoiler because interested in Kitbag, since sold to another company.

[1gw] 29/3/2016 17:01

Indeed not. And was the price (to Sports Direct) even in the 170's since sports direct appears to have acquired the interest by derivative (cfd) instead of buying the shares outright?

I didn't really think anyone was still reading this board - I put a longer post trying to rationalise Thursday's action on the LSE board. Same conclusion though that it probably wasn't Sports Direct buying in the 170's...

[scapital] 29/3/2016 16:35

It wasn't SPD bailing then.

[1gw] 24/3/2016 16:31

And things have started moving again today. Have to wait for the TR-1's to have a better idea of what exactly, but odds on Sports Direct baling out I would have thought (because the large trades were priced in the 170's). However, even if it is SD baling, it will be interesting to see who was buying, given the share price reaction. Was it just Toscafund and Schroders buying them back or is someone else involved? And was the series of 5000-share buys which appeared to drive the price up (before the larger trades appeared on the trade listing) linked to the bigger trades or something else?

Hopefully most will be revealed in forthcoming holdings notices.

[1gw] 04/11/2015 12:04

All seems a bit static here for now. So I've sold a few to free up funds to buy something else (Crest Nicholson) which is looking a bit beaten-down today.

[mike740] 30/9/2015 16:36

Fingers crossed yes.