Oxford Nanopore Technolo... Share Discussion Threads

[jak1] 19/2/2004 16:09

Carpediem2

Jak1
Surely the share price has been held back by one or more large holders selling, not buying?. If someone was accumulating stock the share price would have been rising not being held back, wouldn't it?

All things being equal that's what you would expect, but alas they are not, and
Market Makers have there own agenda. If they have a big order for a client they will if necessary mark down the price, or even up the price to encourage sellers to get the price they want to fill the order.
Your GNI scenario could be right, but I think it's wrong in my opinion.
Of course, I could be completely wrong as well.

Regards

Jak1....

[ferty] 18/2/2004 22:51

Thats ok i have an interest in these myself.

[johnroger] 18/2/2004 21:42

ferty ..... thanks for posting.

[ferty] 18/2/2004 18:56

Citywire article.
08:24 Wed 18 Feb 2004
Tip Update: shrewdies pile into low cost Online Travel
Citywire tip Online Travel Corp has been a slow burner, but following its recent placing a host of shrewd investors have emerged with a stake and all will be hoping for a re-rating some time soon.


Citywire has been highlighting the company for more than three years and first tipped it last January as one of our top tech tips for 2003 at 23p.


Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that OTC (ONT) continues to be massively cheaper than larger rivals Ebookers and Lastminute, the shares have failed to do much in that year and are currently around 22.75p.


One of the reasons for this was the state of the company's balance sheet, which, after a profits warning in October had got to the point where it needed some serious beefing up if the company were to have enough free cash to satisfy Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) legislation when its licence comes up for renewal in April.


It therefore did a placing of 55.3 million shares at 15p in December, a 12% discount to the closing price on the day before the placing, and raised £8 million in the process.


Shrewd investors who took up the placing include Mrs Judith Licht, wife of former Mercury Asset Management and Jupiter fund manager Leonard, who Citywire spotted buying into the company last September.


Mrs Licht bought 606,667 in the placing to take her holding to 0.38% of the company. Leonard holds 1.52% or 2.7 million shares.


AAA-rated Giles Hargreave also came in at the placing, buying 1.2 million shares or 0.68% for the Marlborough Special Situations fund. A-rated Roger Whiteoak added 3.2 million shares to his Throgmorton Trust's holding, taking it to 4.64% or 8.2 million shares and he added 1.28 million shares to the Framlington UK Smaller Companies fund's holding, taking it to 0.95%.


Finally AAA-rated Henry Maxey, who runs the Ruffer Equity and General fund bought 4 million shares at 15p in the placing but has been taking profits since then and has so far sold 950,000 shares, leaving the fund with a little more than 3 million shares.


Maxey told Citywire: 'The online travel market itself is a massive growth area. You can see it in Ebookers, you can see it in lastminute.com and the US players are desperately looking for a foothold in Europe.'


Nevertheless he plans to hold on to a stake. 'I'm quite happy to hold it. I think it will be taken over,' he said. If it is not taken over, he believes the company's organic growth should be enough to support the share price.


OTC's house broker Altium Capital has a buy rating on the stock. Analyst Jonathan Imlah told Citywire that now that the balance sheet issues have been addressed, investors will want to see the first positive trading results before the shares are re-rated. OTC is due to hold its annual general meeting in the middle of next month and may update investors at that time. It should also put out a trading statement around the close of the year in April.


The scale of the business compared to its larger rivals and its lack of direct retail brand awareness are other factors for the low valuation.


However OTC has always had a different business model to the straight providers of travel websites. The company not only has its own websites but it also provides the technology that powers many well-known third party web sites.


Last October it announced a major deal with Thomas Cook and earlier this month it announced a deal to provide its do it yourself package holiday booking engine to TUI for its Lunnpoly.com web site.


OTC owns brands such as ifyouski, bargainholidays.com, deckchair.com, leisurehunt.com as well as its umbrella site onlinetravel.com.


The company spends most of its marketing dollars in getting its brands optimised in the major Internet search engines rather than marketing directly to the public.


The shares are currently valued at 12.5 times this year's earnings forecasts to April. This compares with Ebookers at 19.1 times and lastminute at 20 times.


Citywire Verdict:


The average private investor did not have the luxury of buying in at 15p. At 22p the shares still ought to be cheap, but you have to believe that OTC has the potential to grow substantially and to be re-rated as a serious contender to Ebookers, Lastminute and the US players like Expedia and Travelocity.


So far the company has failed to quite deliver on its promise, but it may be worth hanging on for the next trading news.

[carpediem2] 18/2/2004 18:05

Jak1
Surely the share price has been held back by one or more large holders selling, not buying?. If someone was accumulating stock the share price would have been rising not being held back, wouldn't it?

BHAFC
Don't forget the 55 Million new share placing announced in December. GNI's holding has increased but there % holding is reduced because they have a smaller holding of the increased total shares in circulation.

The new shares were meant to have been placed with institutions at 0.15p. I would have thought that GNI would have been offered some of this allocation?!? Therefore you could possibly have the situation where GNI are allowed to buy 4M shares at 15 pence, sell 3 Million shares at 20 pence (holding back the share price? - Jak1), making a profit of £150k....which pays for the 1 Million shares they have added to their overall holding declared today!?

[bhafc] 18/2/2004 15:38

Nope but it looks a positive read


"Shrewdies pile into low cost Online Travel
Citywire tip Online Travel Corp has been a slow burner, but following its recent placing a host of shrewd investors have emerged with a stake and all will be hoping for a re-rating some time soon"

[johnroger] 18/2/2004 14:40

Anybody got access to today's Citywire article?

[i_need_help] 18/2/2004 13:44

I am not sure you can read too much into the GNI holding. From what I understand it is just hedging its CFD positions in the real market. Some bad news and they would dump thier position as CFD positions were closed.

[bhafc] 18/2/2004 13:24

GNI have actually bought another 1m shares from when they last notified an interest last November.

Funnily enough with the increased number of share in issue now it looks like they have reduced their stake from 8% to 5%. That's misleading - they are buyers !

[jak1] 18/2/2004 13:21

Also if you have been following ONT you will have seen that it's been held back for a few weeks now while someone has been collecting stock.
Now we know who....

[jak1] 18/2/2004 13:18

Well, you only have to look at ONT compaired to it's rivals to see at this price they are way undervalued, as has been pointed out on various financial web sites. And at this price they look very attractive for a bid.
Has GNI heard something??????

[nilip] 18/2/2004 12:47

Flipping heck !

That's a large holding - GNI certainly rate ONT as a significant BUY !

5.52 % of the shares in issue ... anyone have any thoughts on such a massive holding ???

[nilip] 18/2/2004 12:45

Online Travel Corporation PLC
18 February 2004

18 February 2004

Online Travel Corporation plc ('OTC')

Holding in Company

On 18 February 2004, OTC received notification that GNI Limited have a
notifiable interest in 9,790,000 ordinary shares of 1p each in OTC, representing
5.52% of OTC's issued shares.

[jak1] 18/2/2004 12:08

This stock, very soon I hope....

[polythene] 18/2/2004 12:01

ADVN spread is 22.5 - 24. Stocktrade has 23.75 bid to 23.81 offer. Something up?

[cubabuckley] 16/2/2004 17:59

Someone just gave me this link which maybe of interest

[jak1] 16/2/2004 17:51

No end of day seller!!!!!!

[bhafc] 16/2/2004 17:50

and brave !

[spud] 16/2/2004 13:35

Wise words cuba.

spud

[cubabuckley] 16/2/2004 08:31

There is no question in my mind that ONT will end up with an overseas buyer. Whilst ONT is much smaller than it's two other independent UK based online travel businesses it continues to be leaner and has got to where it has with a fraction of funding that LMC/EBR have had.

The cultures of both EBR ad LMC are very different from ONT.

In November Cendant spent many man weeks doing due diligence at ONT down to the minutest detail..it must have cost them a fortune.

Like most large U.S. multinationals they won't be rushed into a bid until they are confident that their offer will be accepted.

Someone told me that US corporations cannot buy shares in AIM?????

As a foreign company they would possibly also worry about any offer being gazumped by a rival...this is particularly likely in the case of ONT as the share price is way undervalued and there are several U.S. internet travel companies that have shown big interest in UK/European online travel businesses.

Some pundits have expressed a view that based on their predicted P/E that a price of 60-70p range is more realistic for ONT???

My advice is to sit tight, wait for the trading statement for the first quarter which could then perhaps lead to some bidding activity.

[bhafc] 15/2/2004 18:26

cir

Agree and that's why I am looking forward to a trading update.

However a weak dollar results in US businesses paying more for their foreign counterparts.

[jak1] 15/2/2004 11:10

Well we know Ebookers are on the look out.

Addison Smith said the downturn of the past two years had created exciting opportunities in Europe for potential acquisitions, particularly in owner-managed, call centre travel businesses.

"Certainly we're looking at a number of opportunities, albeit none of them are being actively progressed at the moment," he said.

He said any acquisitions would likely be up to three-quarters of the size of the firm's Travelbag acquisition, which had over 200 million pounds in annual gross sales.

Ebookers bought independent travel firm Travelbag in January for about 55 million pounds. (additional reporting by Quentin Webb)

[cir] 15/2/2004 10:52

Dollar weakness is a boom for travellers to the US and many parts of Asia.