Prelude Trust Share Discussion Threads

[spin doctor] 12/4/2007 22:28

That is the bull case, weatherman - ie that the companies have been developing nicely, whilst the declared NAV has not reflected that.

I am still in for 850ppp for the medium term, based on low risk: moderate reward. Last quarter's NAV return was about 3%; I would be happy with that if it continued, but many would expect - and are expecting - more.

Riv, the investment table above is very helpful. Ta.

[weatherman] 12/4/2007 22:16

The NAV has been stationary now for a couple of years. i.e. it looks like zero growth, this while the rest of the tech sector has staged a recovery.

I still hold a few, but need good reasons to buy some more.

[rivaldo] 12/4/2007 20:09

We have major Oxford Immunotec news:



"Oxford Immunotec Grants License over T-SPOT® technology to sanofi pasteur
for human vaccine research
Oxford, UK; 04 April 2007 – Oxford Immunotec Ltd, the T cell measurement company, today announces that:
· it has licenced its technology to sanofi pasteur, the vaccines business of the sanofi-aventis Group, which offers the broadest range of human vaccines.
· It has settled its patent disputes with sanofi pasteur.
Oxford Immunotec develops and sells clinical diagnostic products based on its patented T-SPOT® technology, the first regulatory approved method for directly quantifying antigen-specific T cells.

T-SPOT is a simple and extremely accurate method of studying a person's cellular immune response to infection. The patent licenced by sanofi pasteur covers the T-SPOT technology developed by Oxford Immunotec to measure antigen-specific effector T cells by detecting cytokine release in vitro using the ELISPOT immunoassay technique. Under the terms of the agreement, sanofi pasteur will have access to the technology under licence in its vaccine programmes. On the other hand, the parties have agreed to settle their patent disputes. Financial terms for the licence were not disclosed.

Commenting on the successful outcome, Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Immunotec said, "We are delighted that the uncertainty caused by sanofi pasteur's opposition to our granted patent has now been fully resolved. We continue to believe that the Company's broad intellectual property estate is a major asset that underpins the wider value of the T-SPOT diagnostic platform, both for the Company's first marketed product, T-SPOT.TB for diagnosing TB and in developing diagnostic products for other disease indications.""

[rivaldo] 12/4/2007 20:07

Done! The header post is sorted now....and there is major Oxford Immunotec news which I'm posting on the new thread!

[hvs] 12/4/2007 17:13

Thank you for the new thread.

Think you need to add Displaylink , please.

[rivaldo] 12/4/2007 16:29

FYI I've started a new thread, but only by setting up the initial table of investments (the bloody table still won't work).

PLEASE keep using this thread till I've sorted out the header on the other one. Ta!

[rivaldo] 12/4/2007 16:27

Prelude Trust plc is an ISAble investment trust which has built a promising portfolio of investments in potentially extremely successful and now relatively mature companies, most of which are now revenue-producing with products in the market and a number of which appear to be world-beating.

PDT's current m/cap is £39.3m at 115p against an NAV of 146p per share - much too large a discount imho. In addition, almost 40% of the m/cap is represented by around £15m of cash as at 31/3/07 - i.e the investment portfolio valued in the accounts at £35.4m is effectively valued at only £24m by the market, when in reality some of the portfolio may be worth far in excess of the valuations placed upon them under present accounting rules..

This is despite:
- PDT's valuation process having been more than validated by the value achieved on the recent sale of Cambridge Positioning Systems
- and excellent news flow now coming through from virtually the entire portfolio

Incidentally, PDT don't pay tax so the discount to NAV is a real discount!

Per the 31/3/07 results just released the NAV was £1.46 per share on 34.156m shares in issue. This comprised:

............................Quarter ended
............................31 March 2007
Unquoted portfolio.........£35.4 million
Net Current Assets.........£14.4 million
NAV........................£49.8 million

NAV per share................£1.46

Some of the stars of the portfolio:

- ZBD are a world leader in point-of-sale electronic display solutions and are selling to Tesco, Dixons, John Lewis, the Co-Op etc:

- Oxford Immunotec have developed and are selling new tests for TB supplanting the 100 year old test currently being used:

- DisplayLink are leading the world in wireless computer connections, having recently been incorporated into products by Toshiba and Samsung

- M-Spatial is the market leader in converged local search, with clients like Vodafone, Orange and O2


This was the investment portfolio and net asset position at 30 September 2006:

Company............................Cost(£m).Valuation(£m)..%PDT portfolio..%owned

ZBD Displays Limited ...................5,584.....5,584.....11.91...27.7
Polatis Inc.............................4,000.....5,544.....11.82...20.0
Cambridge Positioning Systems...........5,818.....5,000......6.40...N/A
Sciona Inc..............................2,809.....2,809......5.99...23.0
Oxford Immunotec Limited................2,750.....2,750......5.86...18.0
Phyworks Limited........................2,553.....2,553......5.44...12.0
m-spatial Limited.......................2,426.....2,426......5.17...31.0
SiConnect Limited.......................2,120.....2,120......4.52...29.2
DisplayLink Inc.........................1,905.....1,905......4.06...13.5
Kiadis BV...............................2,964.....1,679......3.58...24.7
Xanadu BV...............................1,252.....1,252......2.67...19.3
De Novo Pharmaceuticals Limited.........3,224.......973......2.07...16.0
FillFactory NV *...........................98.......758......1.62...N/A
Xmos Limited..............................625.......625......1.33...22.3
Lime Microsystems Limited.................500.......500......1.07...24.0
CeNeS Pharmaceuticals plc+................933......103.......0.22...N/A
------- -------- -------
Total venture capital investments......39,561.....36,581.....73.74
Cash and liquid resources.........................12.317.....26.26
Total.............................................48,898....100.00

A summary of the major shareholder list is instructive - almost 86% of the shares are owned by this lot, so any good news or investor interest should be quickly rewarded with a decent share price rise:

Major Shareholders..........Amount..... %Holding
HBOS PLC...............................3,413,384....9.99
Insight Asset Management...............3,600,000....9.51
Walkers SPV Limited....................3,177,926....8.39
Overseas Asset Mngmt (Cayman) Ltd......2,623,105....6.93
M&G Inv Mgmt Ltd.......................2,324,163....6.14
New Star Asset Management Ltd..........2,000,000....5.86
Apollo Fund PLC...........1,825,000....5.34
European Investment Fund..2,000,000....5.28
Merseyside Pension Fund...1,862,500....4.92
Dow Chemical Company Ltd..1,800,000....4.75
Rickerby's Soliciters.....1,603,387....4.24
Advance UK Trust PLC......1,300,000....3.43
Spread Trustee Co Ltd.....1,196,602....3.16
EFGHA clients.............1,340,000....3.92

Other Directors Amount % Holding
Robert Charles Hook...702,824....2.058
Michael John Brooke....51,656....0.141
Marion Jane Sears......20,000....0.055

Links to PDT web page with links to portfolio web sites:

[hvs] 11/4/2007 22:04

Orange1,

Sounds very encouraging indeed.

They must be growing revenues very qickly to expand from 50 to 80 and also
must see the future with very high confidence.

Could be the next IPO

[orange1] 11/4/2007 20:36

Displaylink staff could grow this year from 50 to 80.

[timtom2] 11/4/2007 17:40

FSE - agreed about the out of favour dogs outperforming. Have seen the same myself. Literally, every dog has its day. A buy now is not a bad idea.

[fse] 11/4/2007 17:16

The last 10 years underperformance is present holders gain IMHO.

Oh how true that is.
I remember doing a survey years ago (since replicated by many !)
Look at the worst performing Inv Trusts for a given period and then the best.
Then BUY and hold the worst performing ones.
Historically they will hugely outperform...


Maybe thats a bit of a trite remark here and the fears with PDT is that they inject funds into early time frame investments rather than just using the funds to support what they have plus any later time frame investments.
They have actually been doing that of late..... so I am slightly more relaxed about the investment.

[hvs] 11/4/2007 17:10

Nicely put FSE,

I also understand its frustrating for long term holders, but how many of them are PI's not many I would say.

The last 10 years underperformance is present holders gain IMHO.

[fse] 11/4/2007 16:54

The trouble with comparing PDT on a 10yrs period is that we went through the worst tech collapse in History and the NASDAQ is till under half what it used to be !
The other problem is that the Trust contains largely unlisted companies and is a long way advanced on timeframes to IPO or management sale of much of the portfolio.
None of this is refelcted in the price so the NAV and share price are misleading.
This should all finally come good...... still I accept peoples frustrations...

[timtom2] 11/4/2007 15:45

hvs - it is different, yes, but the whole reason for a comopany to exist (unless non-profit making org) is to make money and the best way to rank companies is on how much money they make over what timeframe.

The only way to benchmark PDT would be to use the above criteria compared to the results of any similar company.

Lets hope for some fireworks in the next 2 years or perhaps PDT are just operating in a not very profitable sector of the economy and we should all sell and move on unless purely in love with the "start-up mode" idea.

I like the idea of the start-up mode but not so much that I see my money losing ground compared to having invested elsewhere in slightly less "start-up" conditions. By rights the rewards to PDT and you/me should be higher than average given the above average risk associated with start-ups.

If PDT was valued on reward/risk basis it mght look even sicker.

[hvs] 11/4/2007 15:17

TimTiom2

I agree with you but when you are in start ups its a different ball game and
different risk scenario.

Hopefully we will get a good showing in the next 2 years, good old riv, seems
positive enough.

[timtom2] 11/4/2007 15:14

Management can be blamed for not extracting maximum value at minimm cost however.

That is their primary function in a publicly listed company with private shareholders.

Over what timeframe the result is achieved is however a large variable but the simple benchmark is inflation adjusted total return divided by # of years to see how they do relative to their peers.

PDT need to put a good show on in the next 2 years to gain real credibilty.

[hvs] 11/4/2007 13:51

You cannot blame the management for making a wrong call on which share you buy and do not buy.

Life is not a straight line.

[hvs] 11/4/2007 12:13

JIMCAR,

PDT is not an aim company and is not a VCT in the normal sense. You do not
get tax advantages by investing in PDT.

What these article writers do not realise is that the future is no reflection of the PAST. Did they go to the trouble of finding out which companies PDT is
invested in and how well they are doing ? The firtune has already changed, it
now needs a few IPO's and that will happen in the not too distant future.

They also missed the fact that PDT had a rights issue @ £ 2.00

[jimcar] 11/4/2007 12:08

It certainly needs a change of fortune. It was included in a table of UK private equity companies in the Business magazine. It has the second worst performance over 2 years (to Dunedin Enterprise) and the worst over 10 years. Over 10 years it has turned £100 into £100.40.

This is a link to the article though the table is not shown and PDT isn't mentioned.

[hvs] 11/4/2007 11:57

Thank you riv,

Slight change , but you can ignore, upto you mate.

"PRELUDE TRUST :NAV 146p(40% CASH) investment in (enter number) world-leading technology companies maturing nicely for IPO's CURRENT PRICE :116p

[rivaldo] 11/4/2007 11:44

Go on then, what about the title? Do we keep the same one, or use something like:

"PRELUDE TRUST:NAV 146p,price 116p,40% cash and world-leading technologies coming to fruition"

[hvs] 11/4/2007 10:43

Just a little, we need a bit more.

How about the new thread riv ?, it will help liven things up.