Prelude Trust Share Discussion Threads

[timtom2] 31/7/2007 20:34

I gather from what I have read that the management didn't exhibit much frustration with the discount to NAV, or not as much as the rest of us probably feel?

It is a little too cosy for the management but there is nothing that can be done by the likes of use to reduce complacency.

If you can get close to 7% in the bank PDT need to show some return greater than this in the next 12-months, even if low risk at these levels, else why the hell bother?

How I wish someone like Hanover would see some value here and kick some backsides like they have done at Plasmon in the past 6-months. That has given a decent return and flushed the management away.

[spin doctor] 31/7/2007 20:19

Useful, thanks.
Key quote from the Fool commentary; "For example, there are a number of businesses they own which are valued at cost but which have clearly moved on and "hit a number of targets and milestones" but cannot be sensibly revalued at the moment, or in fact until they are sold."

[hvs] 31/7/2007 18:07

Thank you Cerrito and greenleaf.

I was looking to top up but you said Cerrito, best to wait a little longer.

[cerrito] 31/7/2007 17:13

AGM
Not terribly illuminating and with very few shareholders.
Co not moved to do buy backs even at the levels of the last few days. The fact that last year's operation had limited success was cited and correctly said that the best way to reduce the discount was to encourage people to buy shares. However the dynamics of the meeting was such that there was no discussion as to how this could be done. They said that buy backs had been reviewed regularly; the bottom line is that it seems this is not going to happen.
Dr Hook robustly defended the logic of the Cambridge Consultants deal which will be signed this week.
A lot of discussion on valuation. They refused to discuss individual cases. The example of Phyworks who as per their website has had triple digit revenue growth for three years and whose valuation was constant last year was mentioned. Confirmed that valuation would only change if there was clearly bad news or there had been a corporate action, which had established a benchmark (ie Kiadis). I have taken this to mean that there is some undervaluation here. Audit committee chairman Quysner played a leading part in drawing up the BVCA guidelines.
My main mistake was not to get clarity into the big picture of where the company is going. This was a pity because there is a big infrastructure here to support a portfolio of just £35m.
I am comfortable with my holding but have no urge to buy more certainly until I understand the dynamics a bit better.

[greenleaf] 31/7/2007 14:41

AGM report over on the Fool:

[hvs] 31/7/2007 14:13

Good to see a bit of BLUE

[hvs] 27/7/2007 13:53

TimTom2

Thank you for your views. Pity the share price is till drifting .Most frustrating.

[timtom2] 26/7/2007 08:43

Unless there is a cluster towards the end of the 18 month t/frame for disposals then it should be a yes. Read tech may be turning a corner else more likely a trade sale or 2?

[hvs] 26/7/2007 07:33

Will we have some IPO news before Xmas on one or more of our holdings ?

[rivaldo] 25/7/2007 07:48

ZBD stirring the pot on shelf labelling :o))



"Letter to Editors published in Retail Week
June 25 2007

Cadbury's admission of its breach of food hygiene regulations does nothing to quash consumers' concerns about the safety of food on supermarket shelves. What the public needs to see is action, not words.

Shoppers need a practical illustration of how the retail industry in general is learning from food scares. The information available at the point of purchase, be it a shelf, fridge or deli counter, needs to reassure the buyer that the product is fresh, safe and free from contamination. If a product is nearing its sell by date, retailers must be able to give consumers a choice about what they are buying. If a production problem is spotted, they must be able to demonstrate the processes are in place to make consumers aware instantly.

Consumer confidence is critical. Retailers cannot risk damaging their reputation, as shoppers will quickly take their custom elsewhere.

David Rogers"

[rivaldo] 24/7/2007 12:52

Kiadis news:



"Groningen, 21 July 2007 – Oncology focused pharmaceutical product development company Kiadis Pharma announced today that the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) has granted the company the SME (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) status. This status for medical companies provides access to provisions for administrative and financial assistance. Kiadis Pharma will use this status to support the development of novel treatments for significant unmet medical needs in the field of bone marrow transplants and the treatment of aggressive cancers.

The SME program is an EMEA initiative to address the needs of small and medium sized companies who are developing medicinal products in Europe. Companies with SME status can receive assistance, information and training from dedicated EMEA employees. These companies are also eligible for reduced or deferred fees associated with regulatory submissions, scientific advice and inspections.

The SME status will immediately benefit Kiadis Pharma by facilitating the regulatory filing processes for the companies most advanced products in clinical development. Kiadis Pharma's lead products include ATIR™ under development for a treatment that may enable end stage blood cancer patients to receive bone marrow transplants, including donor immune cells from mismatched donors. ATIR selectively eliminates cells from donors graft that can cause acute Graft-versus-Host-Disease. Rhitol™ under development for treatment of severe, steroid resistant chronic Graft-versus-Host-Disease and Reviroc™ for elimination of blood cancer cells from autologous grafts."

[fse] 23/7/2007 18:36

I understand they are paying people to teach prospective employees who are unavailable for recruitment through regular channels.
Bit like the old apprenticeship days ?

[hvs] 23/7/2007 18:32

Am sure they will find a solution though.

[fse] 23/7/2007 17:12

>fft... they are as you put it constarined by personnel shortage , its a huge problem !

[rivaldo] 23/7/2007 08:57

Perhaps DisplayLink can recruit from their Palo Alto office in California - I'm sure loads of Americans would love to relocate to rainy old Britain...

DisplayLink looks like a near-term biggie, but the rest of the protfolio looks great too at present. XMOS for example - is this another world-leading technology? There's a long new article here - some snippets:



"XMOS tips software-defined silicon
Peter Clarke
EE Times Europe
07/09/2007 10:42 AM
LONDON - Fabless semiconductor startup XMOS Semiconductor Ltd. (Bristol, England) is the latest company trying to deploy a multiprocessing architecture, but if pedigree is anything to go by it has more chance of success than many others."

The company is the route to market for the ideas of its chief technology officer David May. Back in the 1980s May was the architect of the transputer - a processor designed specifically for parallel processing - and the author of its accompanying Occam programming language. Before founding XMOS in July 2005, May was the head of computer science at Bristol University having spent a number of years in academia, prior to which he spent 16 years in the semiconductor industry with STMicroelectronics and Inmos. Inmos was where May did his transputer work.

Not surprisingly the XMOS architecture has similarities to the transputer but recast in an approach designed to make use of what 20 years of Moore's Law have made possible - multicore single-chip implementation."

"James Foster, chief executive officer of XMOS, said he expects the company's chips to be successful in areas where FPGAs have found success due to their configurability, such as communications basestations and switching fabrics, but Foster added that XMOS silicon would also get design wins in consumer electronics goods and even in such high volume devices as mobile phone handsets.

XMOS describes its approach as "software-defined silicon" and reckons it will provide consumer electronics system designers with the unit cost advantage of the SoC - but without the development time and costs - combined with the flexibility of the FPGA - but with far better silicon efficiency. The developer can write code to dynamically partition resources between: control processing, DSP processing, and I/O processing, all on mass-produced chip of silicon. "Around $1 for complete flexibility," is the boast on the company's presentation materials."

"Having developed its architecture in System C and demoed it on an FPGA, XMOS has just taped out its first product design which is being made for XMOS by foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in 90-nm CMOS. The company will be offering chips, software IP and development tools and its first product is due to be announced during the first quarter of 2008."

[fft] 21/7/2007 00:59

That is a lot of people for a company that had a team of only 20 doing all the work required for the drivers for VISTA. It is effectively a whole new team.

Makes me think that they could be severely constrained by personnel shortage. I know people can work overtime, but as someone who used to be in the industry, you can only work so many 60-70 hour weeks before it takes it toll. And a person working on more than one project concurrently is rarely effective.

oherwise, this is the big one. lets hope that PDT dont do an Alpha with it....

[fse] 20/7/2007 23:48

Displaylink recruitment !

The people we need...
Specific technical skills are important - but you can learn those at DisplayLink, or of course you may already have them. The tasks are going to change rapidly over time, so we need people who are SMART, and GET THINGS DONE.

To find out more about our current opportunities, please click the links below to expand the job description at the bottom of the page. These positions are based in Cambridge, UK unless otherwise stated.

We are always looking for exceptional people to join our growing team. If a specific role you are interested in is not be listed here, we would still be happy to review your CV and contact you if a suitable position becomes available in the future. Click here to contact us.

Click the links below to expand each individual job description:

Senior C++ Development Engineer (Permanent) - ref: GEN_SW_2
C++ Development Engineer (Permanent) - ref: GEN_SW_1
Team Leader / Technical Leader - Software (permanent) - ref: TL_SW_1
Embedded Senior Software Engineer (permanent) - ref: EBD_SW_1
Senior ASIC Verification Engineers (permanent) - ref: SEN_ASIC_VERIF_1
Software Test Engineer (permanent) - ref: SW_TEST_2
Field Applications Engineer (permanent) - ref: GEN_FAE_1
Graduate Engineers (permanent) - ref: GRAD_GEN_1
Graduate ASIC Verification Engineer (permanent) - ref: GRAD_ASIC_VERIF_1
ASIC Engineer (permanent) - ref: GEN_ASIC_1
Hardware Design Engineer (permanent) - ref: HW_DES_1
Software Liaison Engineer (permanent) - ref: REDMOND_SW_1
Product Manager (permanent) - ref: PROD_MAN_1
Patent Writer (permanent) - ref: PW_1
Standardisation Engineer (permanent) - ref: STND_ENG_1

[fse] 20/7/2007 20:53

Displaylink does indeed appear to be a winner. I gather the largest problem is that they can not recruit the staff they need.

ZBD have a new web site which does better demonstrate why they should finally have success with electronic signage which has been around for ages and has seen many false dawns.

PDT as a whole are starting look like ludicrous valuation for a trust that is now holding so many advanced time frame investments.

[spin doctor] 20/7/2007 20:45

Stating the obvious, but future DisplayLink fundraising(s) likely to be at premium to previous; therefore dilution but PDT valuation uplift.
Given the last year's (years'?!) history, many would take that....

[hvs] 20/7/2007 15:03

riv,

I would think so. There is going to be a very good pay back from DisplayLink.

ZBD loooks very good to follow suit.

[rivaldo] 20/7/2007 14:38

:o)) Absolutely tiltonboy, bound to be a fundraising or two along the way. But it's nice to be able to fantasise a little for a change where PDT is concerned!

The point is that in the upside on DisplayLink is potentially huge. Given the tone of the language used (by a marketing man admittedly!), but more importantly the apparent size of the LG order alone, and the Samsung, Toshiba orders etc, it would seem DisplayLink may be already worth considerably more than in PDT's books.

[hvs] 20/7/2007 14:24

I will settle for half a Billion company

[tiltonboy] 20/7/2007 14:20

riv,

Re the 100m valuation you attribute to PDT if DisplayLink becomes a billion pound company. There is a big assumption therein that there will be little dilution in reaching that goal. Somehow I think that will be difficult to achieve.

tilonboy