 Happy to help quick thinker. Rather than the chart I am looking at the numerical trade data. Whilst small investors can, to a degree, choose their entry and exit point, and just decide to deal in the moment, larger investors have to work in and out of a position with orders over a number of days, weeks or months. Large investors are the ones that set the price, and smaller ones are the noise around that price. There are exceptions, for very active PI stocks like Tesla then options traffic dominates, and for small illiquid stocks large investors are often not active at all.
What looking at actual trades can tells us is where larger investors are setting their buy and sell levels. Normally if there are both sides at scale they will agree a trade off the market, so it tends to be just one active buyer or seller in size. At least in a small cap like GMS.
A median day for GMS sees about £200k of trades done; the market cap now is a convenient £200mn. So about 0.1% of the stock turns over per day, not a lot. A party that owns or would like to own 1% or £2mn of stock is going to have to sell or buy that position over a couple of weeks at least. For a seller who is trying to maximise the amount of money they get, they will need to put orders on the book that will attract buyers, and keep refilling those, but without making it too obvious. They also have to be prepared to make deal lower when there are a lot of buy orders on the book within their target range.
What you can see in the day is a drip drip of sales at a particular level, say 18.50, and occasional flurry where all the buy orders down to a certain level will be taken out. There will be times in the day where that seller isn't supplying any shares but testing where the buyers are prepared to go when they aren't offering stock. This helps them in setting the levels thay can load the book.
Last Friday, 21 March, was a big volume day, £1.2m traded, because Simon Thompson featured GMS in his small cap report in Investors' Chronicle. That cleared a lot of stock from one particular seller who I will call the 18.15 because that is where a large closing aution ended up. Through the day there was healthy demand which was supplied at 18.4 - 18.5. Could be the same party, it's difficult to tell. There was clearly a substantial buyer happy to take the 18.15 line btw.
What do we see yesterday and today? Very low volume yesterday, but there is clearly a buyer at 18.60 as that level on the buy has been refreshed plenty. The 18.15 or 18.40 parties are absent because they would be selling into that. Either they are out, or have sold what they wanted to and have stopped selling or, set a higher level for future sales. The next selling level is 18.90, and stubbornly so. Trades today have been small market maker deals driven by PIs at just above 18.6 and just below 18.9. Indeed that an MM will offer more than is on the book shows that there is no stock for sale; as brokers they know what is going on within the market.
Sorry for the length of the reply, hope this helps. |
hpcg _ I'm not sure I follow your post re today's trades. Could you elaborate? I'm relatively new to investing so keen to learn on the patterns you see within the day to day trades that I can the use to make more effective purchases and sales myself. Thank you. |
That's a healthy closing auction. The 18.15 seller has clearly bee closed out, and the 18.5 seller had plenty of opportunity the whole afternoon to offload more if they wanted to. A progressive day all round. |
There is no point second guessing - the high volume is good, the new owners of those shares are not looking to flip at 20p.
Mike - I'm not sure what you mean, "I think the warrants will get bought out via the company through a placing". The words make sense individually, but not in the sequence you have put them. Why would the company tender shares from one shareholder preferentially over all the others? Why would a shareholder sell to the company when it can sell for higher in the market?
The company could easily afford to do it given notice as it is producing so much cash that it could hold debt repayments to the minimum quarterly amortisation ($12mn) and have enough in the balance. Indeed debt reduction is so far ahead of the structure announced last August it might not need any notice. It still doesn't make sense though. It already established a returns policy, as announced in the same RNS, so it should just enact that. I note that at that time the backlog was $414mn, versus $558mn a week ago. |
Today is index tracking day. So funds (that are benchmarked or track the funds in a weighting fashion) need to rebalance their holdings in line with the weighting of the indexes. Volumes are always up on the third Friday of every final month in the quarter. Nothing unusual. Plus, given GMS fully issued share count went up by 8% this q (as all warrants were issued), technically any tracker must add 8% to their own holding to remain in balance. Granted, it's never quite that perfect or simple , but that explains the post close reported volumes. There will have been warehousing all week that gets reported at the Friday close. Very common practice. |
Price firming all day agreed looked strong.But the MMs know what they are doing and will hook punters into buying to clear the iceberg trade. This will be volatile for a few weeks yet.My honest opinion... I think the warrants will get bought out via the company through a placing |
I would suggest Seafox is more likely. I can't see Meryll Lynch lobbing a load into the closing auction like that when the price has been firming all day. Also from what we know those are being held. Seafox had 53 million shares on 6 Feb so 4.4m would be close to a 10th of that. They, or at least their shareholders telling them what to do, seem to simply not care what price they get for their shares. 6.8 million traded today, the same as 10 Feb. Value more or less the same too. Volume since then would be just about enough to see them out, taking account that others will be trading too. |
Warrant dump? |
There were 263k @18.65 on the book this morning and these have gradually been taken up. Smaller sellers tend to jump inside if they are able to see that. The supply is gradually but surely being taken up and the level at which stock is available is moving up. Buyers will be trying to hoover up what they can below 19p whilst there is still any available. |
Master Investor still very keen (subscription-only):
"Gulf Marine Services – Looking Appealing Ahead Of Finals
After touching 19.25p on yesterday’s good news, its shares fell back on profit-taking to 18.40p.
Mark Watson-Mitchell
Mar 20, 2025
Yesterday saw analysts upping their estimates for the current year, following news from Gulf Marine Services (LON:GMS) that it had secured yet another contract win in the Middle East. a leading provider of self-propelled, self-elevating support vessels to the offshore energy industry,
Last Thursday morning saw the group announce that two of its vessels had secured three-year contract extensions with a major National Oil Company in the Middle East.
etc" |
Yes gen_romer, seem to still be more sellers than buyers once it goes over 19p.
For now .... |
Anyone know if seafox is done with selling their holdings?Thought they were to go to 4% and rather quiet since they reached 5% on Feb 6
Climbing that 19 or 20 looks difficult these days despite the two solid RNS |
Agreed hpcg, and it might even be an "operating lease" (we will have to wait and see) in which case nothing added to the debt. |
Leasing in is a standard process in shipping, if less so in more specialist equipment. There are owners that would rather not be operators. Both require scale of differing requirements, expertise and capital. This is much preferable to increasing the owned fleet size - non-standard gear, nothing on the books bar lease debt, contract in co-terminus with operating contract. |
Great to see the stream of new contracts continuing - particularly via the sourcing of new vessels.
Zeus have retained their 30p valuation, and have raised their forecasts for this year slightly to 4.4c EPS (from 4.3c EPS).
Greenwood Capital Partners have also updated and have a 29p target price. |
PB, agreed. |
It depends how forward looking you are John.
Whether it adds 10p or 10 grand now, it's a slightly new stream that we haven't seen prior. "Just in Time" style accommodation like this is like dropping sand in a jar of stones. In my eyes anyway. |
Morning all - nice news indeed. I never thought I'd be positioning GMS as a 'capital light' model, but there we go! Shows that even the customer relationships are valuable if they can make a pass through profit just on sourcing another vessel - even better. You'd imagine this now could be a feature for the company - nice capex light, margin accretive contracts on leased vessels. Given the increase in FCF coming through, this might make sense as a use for some of the money not being paid on debt?
In terms of numbers, this from my man at Zeus this AM, "Morning - nice contract from GMS - now 14 vessels with one leased.....interesting way to leverage relationships and customer contracts with the capex. EBITDA 2025 moves from $104.0 to $106.5m" |
That's how I read it -
"This additional vessel, sourced to meet the demands of this project," |
Reading between the lines, this is big news in that is appears not to be a contract for one of GMS existing vessels but rather GMS has "sourced" an additional vessel for this client.
This paves the way for revenue growth without utilization or rate rises which is why I say it´s big news, whatever the numbers are for this contract. |
PB, no numbers in the new contract. |
Do we see the March to 20p today after a further contract announcement?In more bullish markets I suspect we would have seen that milestone weeks ago. |
The chart is nicely constructive, as was the probe higher today. In the morning buyers were trying to make hay below 18.5. Eventually that supply ran out, and more only turned up once the US opened and has not thus far convincingly pushed higher. It is just good to grind through these available shares. This latest higher low will make for an excellent narrative when this finally breaks out from 20p. |
A thin volume day so far, however we are on the rise.We know the upcoming newsflow, and we seem to have a stalled / exhausted seller.All looking good for a rerating of the share price prior to results. Would be good to get back in to the 20s. |
Bought another 100k today.Seems a decent point to top up. |
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