Northern Bear Share Discussion Threads

[zangdook] 01/10/2019 10:50

Of course, if the directors spent all their time socialising in London they might have a few more PIs on the register. I was simply answering eggandbacon's question about what was untrue. It's untrue that they won't get any investors without going to London and paying to tell people what they do. Besides, I'm not looking for lots of shareholder churn, and I don't think the directors are either. I just want a steady AIM company which will keep on doing its job and paying dividends. That's meat and potatoes to me.

I'm not sure what you really want - you want them to get more investors, but when someone comes along and wants to buy anything between 1% and 29% of the company at a premium you don't seem happy after all.

[davidosh] 01/10/2019 10:33

This is me.....I agree and I am a long term holder too. I even went to see the company in a portakabin base in Newcastle ten years ago. My point is that if directors do not maintain regular contact and meet potential new investors then they will not gain and retain the serious individual (not institutional) investors that we so badly need in a market cap company below £50m.

Clearly investors are not engaging and certainly not buying the shares as we have been sliding away over the last two years since July 2017 and a company on a p/e of 5 on a reasonable forward earnings view has to be in need of some form of better investor engagement or I am a dutchman !?

[this_is_me] 01/10/2019 10:08

David, as I pointed out last week I managed to find our about NTBR 6 years ago and invested a reasonable amount. The fact that the share price is now around 5 times what I paid shows that others have been buying and pushing the share price up. The company gets the occasional mention in Investors Chronicle and some investors use the likes of Sharescope to find likely companies. So you are not correct. I suspect a lot of selling pressure is from retired directors whose companies were taken over in share based deals.

Institutions rarely take any interest in companies as small as NTBR. That will be less so in the future as they have seen what happened to Woodford when the great unwashed invested, not understanding anything about liquidity.

A lot of short term investors is not what we need temporarily pushing the share price up only to get fed up and sell just as quickly trashing the share price.

[eggbaconandbubble] 01/10/2019 07:48

daviddosh, you are correct, but I do feel you're wasting your effort throwing seed onto stony ground!

[davidosh] 30/9/2019 21:06

zangdook......Where are all these investors who simply find NTBR looking at RNS and then buying stock? If lots of them and indeed current shareholders were all buying then it would not have been stuck below 60p on a p/e of below 5 would it?

Which institutional investors have been buying? Surely to meet with serious retail investors is important and has been the missing ingredient if Canadian interest is filling the void now...

[eggbaconandbubble] 30/9/2019 18:07

Exbroker, What parts or facts are factually incorrect?

[exbroker] 30/9/2019 13:35

call me dosh, daviddosh!

[zoolook] 30/9/2019 13:31

Now who’s avoiding the question..! :-)

[exbroker] 30/9/2019 12:26

egg
Its factually inaccurate!

[davidosh] 29/9/2019 22:20

Zangdook......Lots of us as PIs use all the methods you mention but we also like to get to meet the management and understand the company and its way of doing business and the culture within the company. Look what happened at Patisserie Valerie and others ?

Shareholders are the owners and have a right to be able to meet them and a large group of us asked to do exactly that in an efficient way.....initially they said yes but then later cancelled. As far as we know it was nothing to do with a closed period as despite requests it never went back on the agenda for them. Two of the shareholders then sold out as they lost confidence. That is not good but three of us are still here.

Mello events are full of serious investors and a very efficient way to meet owners,ex shareholders and potential owners seeking a value based company investment with a good dividend like this

[davidosh] 29/9/2019 22:10

Exbroker.... If you are an ex broker then I am sure you know none of those are institutional holders? Why do you think institutions are not interested?

If a company is listed then the share price does need to reflect the value of the company. NTBR is currently on a p/e of 5 after the lift up this week....it was on a p/e below 5 and a yield of 5%. If the directors do nothing about it then it should not be a surprise that someone else has done this.

There is an argument for the company to have bought back shares but in reality the liquidity is already quite poor so a bigger dividend would be better with any free cash and the yield would surely then attract more buyers too.

[eggbaconandbubble] 29/9/2019 20:02

So, tell us what you consider to be wrong about that statement.

[exbroker] 29/9/2019 19:24

"As far as I know four of them are employed by the company or ex directors so absolutely no City institutions on the list. If directors are not prepared to go round the City doing presentations or do the same with individual investors then nothing happens to get new shareholders interested in the company or old shareholders to invest more and then in comes a raider to try and get the cookies in the cookie jar!"
davidosh there is so much wrong about this statement, you know nothing!

[davidosh] 29/9/2019 18:17

Here is the list of major shareholders

Radmat Building Products 11.6%
Graham Jennings 7.2%
Nicholas Beaumont-Dark 4.8%
Jon Pither 4.7%
Steve Roberts 4.4%
Keith Soulsby 4.2%

As far as I know four of them are employed by the company or ex directors so absolutely no City institutions on the list. If directors are not prepared to go round the City doing presentations or do the same with individual investors then nothing happens to get new shareholders interested in the company or old shareholders to invest more and then in comes a raider to try and get the cookies in the cookie jar!

[zangdook] 29/9/2019 15:54

£1 might do it. Then again it might not.

[ed_derby] 29/9/2019 08:40

"....are tendered Jeff Baryshnik may just dump his existing 81,500 holding in the Market and move on." ... ... ... ... ... not sure if Jeff and his gang are reading this thread ... but if you are ... i'll sell all my shares at 85p - and i've got quite a few ... can anyone else give Jeff an indication of their price ;-)

[exbroker] 27/9/2019 10:33

We don’t know what his plans are but it could be that this is the easiest route to getting a decent shareholding given how little this stock turns over.
Agree I am not a seller at 72 there is more value here than the price suggests.

[3800] 27/9/2019 09:23

well if he gets less than a 1% take up the whole tender offer gets pulled. The whole thing must be costing him a fortune compared with the size of the company I cannot imagine why someone with no background or connection with this area of business would go to all this trouble. 72p is of no interest to me personally I'm staying a holder for now the share price has been higher than that in the last couple of years with the dividend quadrupling in the last 4 years. I know it's a very cyclical business but it's worth more than that.

[exbroker] 26/9/2019 23:57

The code is watertight, he can only bid for the whole company with the agreement of the board or if a third party launches a bid. This lasts 6 months. I don’t expect him to get more than a few percent given the feelings expressed here and the tight makeup of the shareholders register. It may be that he brings new skills and contacts to the company as well as a higher profile who knows.

[zangdook] 26/9/2019 22:20

I wouldn't have thought it would be difficult because it says that he doesn't intend to make an offer, not that he won't make one.

[3800] 26/9/2019 21:57

ed_derby I don't think anyone knows the answer to that. However when you read the RNS it doe's state
"The Tender Offer will be conditional on the receipt of tenders representing 1% of the issued share capital of Northern Bear on the date that the Tender Offer is made. This condition may not be waived. Accordingly, if this condition is not satisfied by the Closing Date, the Tender Offer will be void. Subject to this condition, any tender forms submitted by Shareholders of Northern Bear shall be irrevocable."
so if few shares are tendered Jeff Baryshnik may just dump his existing 81,500 holding in the Market and move on.
the RNS also states
"Cedarvale does not intend to make an offer to acquire the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of Northern Bear pursuant to Rule 2.7 of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers (the "Code")."
so a full takeover isn't expected, However how legally difficult it would be to get round this statement if that is what he wanted I have no idea.

[this_is_me] 26/9/2019 21:53

I am on the share register, so is my wife and we both have shares in ISAs all purchased more than 6 years ago, like zangdook I found the company by doing research. It is our biggest holding, being currently about 5 times what I paid and yielding around 30% of our purchase price.

It has featured in the IC e.g. Twenty Piotroski plays early this year; so anyone doing regular research should have seen something about it.

[ed_derby] 26/9/2019 21:25

Does anyone have a view on how the aspiration to buy the 5,400,000 at 72p could play out ... immediate impact is the share price has increased ... and maybe Northern Bear has a little more profile ... but where could we be this time next week?