Queen's Walk Investment Share Discussion Threads

[nickcduk] 12/10/2008 17:24

Price spiked sharply in closing auction as someone left a large market order on the sell side. Tried to put in a low ball bid of 1.42 but I got leapfrogged at the last minute. Should bounce back on Monday. Agreed that there are probably some amazing bargains emerging in the market at present. QWIL with relatively low gearing in an ideal position to get in on the action. TRIO who are entirely in cash have said they will return cash to shareholders. Part of me wishes they actually deployed the funds as I imagine returns going forward will be truly exceptional for relatively moderate risk.

[cerrito] 10/10/2008 18:59

Today's weakness may have been prompted by yesterday's news from EET
quote
quote
The Company is also having some problems with its loan exposure in Portugal on the three Lusitano loans. There has been an increase in defaults which may require a provision, although such a provision is not expected to be significant. However, there are also some issues which our manager, Ocean, has noted with regard to payments already received, and we are in discussions with the issuing bank about this. If these discussions are not successful provisions may be necessary although it is not possible to estimate the quantum of provision at this time.
unquote
Of course given Murphy's law I had picked up a few more QWIL the day before this EET notice came out

[atholl91] 07/10/2008 16:35

The Lourie & Fiertz show - You really wanna know why the directors havent been buying any stock?

[zastas] 04/10/2008 11:58

I agree, it continues to look bearish. But there is hardly any volume, at least published. Still, it pays about 50 pence in dividend and that looks very secure, whatever that nowadays means.

[pillion] 03/10/2008 22:32

SP looking well dodgy
imho dyor

[zastas] 29/9/2008 17:39

At least one that goes UP on a 'bad' day!
The only blue one on my screen today.

[zastas] 25/9/2008 12:33

I never thought that advfn banter had any effect on prices but perhaps I'll have to change my mind. This morning the quote had changed from 3.270-3.300 to 3.300-3.400 after a small buy. Did they read our buying plans?

[zastas] 24/9/2008 20:00

Yes. I agree. Good results confirming our expectations. I would prefer QWIL to use the cash to buy bombed-out ABSs and not do buy-backs. But I'll trust their judgement.

Still, as the chart suggested a few weeks ago, the price keeps coming down, albeit on very small volume. These are not 'trading' shares but some to hang on to. They are not or unlikely to give the fabulous returns of the bombed-out splits but should be good eventually in either deflationary or inflationary times ahead.

Cerrito, yes perhaps time to top-up, after a shallow breath in. Donot tell the wife. And EET? The MMs seem to have a belly full of ache with EET. Ten days ago 250.000 on the offer online. Now just 5000 offer, 10000 bid and spread acutely widened to 5.5 and 8.5. Still, another good divi should there also come our way.

[cerrito] 23/9/2008 22:28

Good conference call this morning and good information which can be accessed from the webcast..
Appeared upbeat; low leverage; reminded us that the DB facility has its first repayment in 2011 and then amortizes quarterly till July 2012. Borrowings remain at E40.5m and net leverage of 4.8% so that they are now in a position to buy new assets which as they are one of the few buyers in town they can pick up very attractive deals. My notes tell me E60m odd can be drawn down under the financing facility. No discussion on their ideas on gearing up.
Will be striking a balance between buying back shares (and how much they do of this depends on their share price) and buying new assets. I think one can assume there will be no increase in dividends nor indeed any decrease. At the moment the yield is 17% odd.
Reviewed the continental mortgage portfolio where 77% of the portfolio has a LTV of less than 70%. In Portugal BCP has the option to purchase E10m of the loan portfolio which they will probably do given that is of prime quality yielding 17%. In the UK 31% of the portfolio has an indexed LTV greater than 80% although of course they do have the put which is now in the money. The only problem is that 50% of it is with Lehman International(Europe) which is in liquidation. Too early to say what the value of this put will be. Incidentally they surmised that the 3.9% holding held by Lehman is for a customer's account.
Good news in both the UK and Portugal is that prepayment are falling drastically.
SME portfolio doing well
First time I have seen a projected cash flow of both interest and principal. Cash flows will be decreasing as the portfolio especially the UK one gets smaller . E34m for the rest of this year; down from E46m for the second half of 07.. E36m for next year and E43m for 2010.
NAV at 608 of E6.32 has been pretty resilient over the year at 607 was E7.01; in fact the proforma NAV taking into consideration the sharebuyback was E6.47 at 608.
Strongly tempted to buy more.

[djalan] 23/9/2008 16:15

Guernsey-based fund manager Queen's Walk
Investment Ltd. swung to a net profit of 0.8 million euros for the June quarter
compared with a loss of 17.1 million at the end of March

[timanglin] 22/9/2008 15:08

what a prescient statement by zastas

[zastas] 07/9/2008 21:53

Well, according to a competitor's site, Lehman has indeed reduced its holding by about 50.000.

[zastas] 03/9/2008 06:28

You can spend too much time trying to second guess trades I've learned. Perhaps it's a giant tree shake to flush out sellers and fill the buy-back quota?
At least the online ATS was back to what you would expect after the recent drop: 3000 buy and 1000 sell.
Worry remains why management seem to own so few shares and not piling in either to buy.

[cerrito] 02/9/2008 22:49

For those reading this and with no exposure this is worth investigating and spending the time to understand.
Their investor relations people are good and if you have questions to ask which are serious they will answer them for you.

[zastas] 02/9/2008 16:40

I can only think that there must be a broker acting on behalf of a large ?forced seller who was unable to wait and gently offload the holding whilst the buy-back is in progress. Lehmans?
If so , there should be an announcement eventually of a reduced shareholding. Looks then like the price could go down further in the medium time.

[zastas] 02/9/2008 13:16

Cerrito,

Thanks for the reply. Strange , when a falling price should mean excess sellers but yet I could only get a buy quote for 1000 online. What's more, my little buy was not reported the same day either. A few 5000 and an 8600 trade were. The former ones seem to have been the bought-back ones reported after market closure.
QWIL does not seem to be traded on PLUS either. Seems to small for CHI-X too.
This morning a few 1000 again, perhaps with delay mine is one of them. Ahh, after many years the mysterious ways of broking and MMing never cease to amaze me.

Dorset64,

I am sorry cannot help much more but it seems rather 'old' story to me. I think reading the recent results and management updates are far more informative. Unless you donot trust them ofcourse......
It seems like we will need to wish ourselves good luck with this one.

Z

[dorset64] 01/9/2008 21:38

I am trying to get my head round this.


Can you guys help me as I am struggling to understand the story here.

[cerrito] 01/9/2008 21:18

zastas
no idea why the drop
bought in a couple of days back..fot taken out by about a third in the tender offer of last month so was light
deepening gloom about Europe and deval of £ against Euro have not helped but do not explain the extent of the fall

[zastas] 01/9/2008 17:05

Interesting. Sudden considerable drop. Hard to explain; at least so far no news, recent tender offer closed days ago and now a share buy-back program already a week in progress.
Don't know what to make of this. Ofcourse always sellers about. Yet I can only buy 1000 on Selftrade, normally very good for above-nms trade sizes. Any clever ideas? Shares being hoovered-up by buy-back broker? But then why the serious drop?
The chart remains bearish.

[cerrito] 12/8/2008 12:09

Does anyone else follow/own these???.
Went into the tender offer with more than my proportional share and am looking to redeploy some of the reduction into EET.
Will probably top up in QWIL again but am waiting to see how the European markets pan out.
Still think this is very worthy of study for people looking for an interesting investment.

[cerrito] 15/3/2008 08:56

andrbea
Just seen your post which made me do something I have been meaning to do and have a look at CLBR.
I do not see much similarity QWIL has only 3% odd of its assets in the USA and the majority are in continental Europe.
QWIL has a different corporate structure and has none of the complications of needing to make subordinated loans to SPV's.
I cannot muster much enthusiasm for Caliber...I guess you can say that its price of 12/14 does reflect the risks and the probability that more subordinated loans need to be made to Crown Woods.
If you look at the company only asset structure at 31 12 07 and ascribe nil value to investment in subs and other assets and just go on the investments you get a NAV of 25 double the current price...but for me not enough of a premium

EET is the one to compare with QWIL; I have a very small amount of EET on which I have a loss...my concern is that EET does not have the financial flexibility, has little cash and a bank line that expires at the end of the year. The next time financial information is released I will make a decision about getting more.
The advantage of QWIL for me is that it has a good if diminishing cash flow which is allowing it to pay a dividend at the moment of 14.5%+ on current sp, buy back shres and repay borrowings., as well as trading at a substantial discount to the 12 07 NAV of 6.93 which compensates for much of the flakiness of these NAV's.
All these companies deserve close research.

[cerrito] 05/3/2008 10:50

Have to say I am pretty comfortable with this having read the last quarter's results and listened to the conference call and with the drop in prices over the last week will be topping up. The company is in a share buy back mode which buttresses prices.
The current price of E4.5m allows for a lot of flakiness in the NAV of around E7; they have modest borrowings on a long term basis.
Did warn that their amortizations which have been in excess of E20m per quarter for the last three quarters will decline; the natural flow of portfolio amortizations is down; there will be no further reserve release from their UK portfolio and also £/FX rate. Indeed their results in E will be impacted by the fact that 35% of their portfolio is in £ and not hedged.
Their exposure to Italian and Portuguese mortgages both prime first lien and with low ltv's which were described as low.
In Italy QWIL has exposure to sestante 1 whereby the prepayments are maintained in the equity pool; EET have exposure to later tranches of Sestante , whereby the prepayments go to the senior bondholders.

[cerrito] 27/1/2008 17:10

Following posted on EET thread
As a holder of QWIL I have found the EET announcement interesting especially as both QWIL and EET have assets in common in their holdings. Both are in Sestante Finance and Lusitano Mortgages( But in different tranches in the latter case)
I have no exposure to EET at the moment but am looking at this as a matter of urgency given the recent price drop. I have reduced my exposure in QWIL and now do not have much; Portugal(see below) is what is making me nervous on QWIL.
Interested that Investec sold out eet as they were gungho on this.
I need to say that EET provide much more info than QWIL on their Italian and Portuguese mortgage holding.
The Achilles heel for both is Portugal where mortgage lending has been as exuberant as anywhere else and competition high as evidenced in the Dec 13 EET investment update and I am delighted that this last week's EET update did not highlight any problems in Portugal. I also took comfort in the LTV ratios in Portugal.
QWIL's Italian mortgage portfolio is 9.1% so they will be less affected by developments in Italy than EET. In the last Nov 28 report and teleconference, QWIL did comment on an increase in prepayments but said that it was within tolerable limits so not sure if this is a recent phenomenon or reflects different tranches in the Sestante pool. Saw that EET made write downs for Italian prepayments in year ending 607. QWIL have not made any write downs.