Uil Share Discussion Threads

[morton2011] 26/1/2017 22:57

Looking at Bermudan Stock Exchange companies only leads to ulcers.

BFIC is 4.5% of UTL assets so at end of Dec represents £ 22 million of assets on the monthly factsheet, so approx $ 27 million dollars (Bermuda and US 1:1)

BFIC is owned 78% by UTL and BCB has most of the rest. BCB owned 100% by Somers so UTL totally controls BFIC.

Our friends at ICM charge investment fees to all these entities in the chain and have common directors. Shame UTL does not own ICM..

BFIC investments as noted in vacendak post of Keytech and Ascendant represented 91.4% of the investments in 2013 and 86% in 2016. BFIC have rarely traded/ invested in much else and early all the rest of the money invested in Argus Holdings. Argus MD is no other than Alison Hill one of UTL 'independent directors'.

These 3 shares do not trade publicly very much as little trading in Bermuda.

The gross assets of BFIC in the June 2016 report were less than $ 25.7 as of the trading announcement in Dec

so strange how UTL can value BFIC at the levels it does. Nett asset were around $ 2 million... UTL and BCB have a large loan to BFIC but you can't have it both ways as the gross assets are the only thing that is going to pay back a loan. The structure of BFIC I guess relates to some accounting trickery in 2012. At the very least its a very illiquid asset, I believe the last trade of any volume was over a year ago! It has yielded very little in last 5 years and so I write BFIC down significantly in my valuation of UTL from how they value it.

Around 40% of UTL generally is very illiquid and therefore very difficult to value accurately - Somers, Vix, BFIC, ZER. Some of those appear undervalued which does offset BFIC. Other core investments like TCH are embargoed for share sales by UTL into the future and this difficulty to trade a majority its assets is another reason I assume why there is the large discount to the NAV.

Odd for ICM to post Keytech results as what has it got to do with them? Only common point in the report I could find is Charles Jillings is a director.

None of this any threat to the dividend or the overall value if you have followed UTL long enough imho.

On the plus side for UTL Resolute has published a very positive operational update this week and was already up 10% since the last factsheet. Gold price will largely determine the share price short term.

[vacendak] 26/1/2017 15:39

Keytech Ltd has released its six monthly report:


They are a holding company that specialises into cable, wireless, TV, basically communication infrastructure in Bermuda and Cayman. Nope, no gold mining with that one. :)

Keytech wants to change its name to "One Communication Ltd". They have made a lot of money apparently offloading some wireless business. They used it to payback some debt. The earnings per share have jumped to $0.64 for the period compared to $0.03 for the same period last year.

I know, people are going to say "That's not UTL, just go and post about this on the Keytech thread or make one!"

However... Since I have learned about Keytech from the ICM website, it means that we own it through UIL Ltd, we do so through Bermuda First Investment Company Ltd (BFIC Ltd). BFIC's two principal holdings are Keytech and Ascendant (Bermuda main energy generation company). So, technically a twice-removed "UTL news". And no, surpringly I must admit, Mr Saville is neither on the Keytech board, nor listed as an executive.

[edit]
The NAV is up a bit again: 283.64p
Nothing fantastic, but still going in the right direction.

[spectoacc] 20/1/2017 10:09

Quite glad to see it stable lately, even if it hides a tempest beneath. :)

[vacendak] 20/1/2017 09:52

RNS for the NAV:


Slightly up: 278.51p

[vacendak] 18/1/2017 08:49

The Zeta December factsheet is out:


Mostly gloomy (better news happened earlier this month) and the reverse of November: Panoramic down and Resolute up a bit. Debt slightly up, NTA (Net Tangible Assets) down, share price down and discount widening.

Mention is made of the Kupe sale for NZOG, which had been noted in earlier posts.

Odd day yesterday, Sterling up, FTSE down, gold down... and of course UTL down.

Funny stuff found while Googling:

We have a UTL in the UK! Nothing to do with our shares though. It could become confusing for UIL Ltd to loan some money to UTL and have it reported in an RNS. :)

[vacendak] 17/1/2017 10:16

Zeta/ICM related news item:
New Zealand Oil & Gas (NZOG) has now taken control of Cue Energy, going above 50% of share ownership.
According to the following link, they had attempted a hostile take-over two years ago:


Cue Energy... this is where Duncan Saville moved to sometime last year, he is a Non-Independent Director (I love the use of euphemisms) there. I thought Zeta owned ASX:CUE directly, but no, only through NZOG.
(not yet updated from NZOG change of position)

There had been a bit of a SNAFU apparently with an oil-field and it is now back on-line.


[UIL Ltd]
Lots of UIL Ltd up overnight on the Australian stock-exchange:
Homeloans, Infratil, Orbital, Panoramic and Resolute up.
Good news for the portfolio as usual translate to bad news for UTL, down 2p right now.
It did go up yesterday despite only having recorded sell orders though.

[vacendak] 13/1/2017 14:39

The December factsheet is out:

Nothing new, same top-ten. Mention of a profit warning for Touchcorp, explaining the 40%+ price collapse for TCH.

Components:
UEM also has its December factsheet out today:


Nothing on Zeta per se, but this slightly older news from NZOG:

Basically, they got paid for the announced deal on the sale of a gas field.

[edit]
NAV at 274.60p, hence still going up.
The share price has been recovering slowly but steadily recently.

[vacendak] 10/1/2017 11:16

@Praipus
The "tsk...tsk..tsk..." about OEX/OEC was for Morton. :)

What would UIL Ltd do with Augean now after all the talk (and walk) of "We ain't no utility company anymore" over the past few years? UIL Ltd needs strategy and focus, it seems to have worked on that over the past year or so, with appreciable results (UIL Ltd had its dog years too). The significant (as a % of portfolio anyway) single company holding in RSG makes sense as their stated policy of a gold hedge. Everything else, they ultimately want it wrapped up under Zeta, Somers, UEM, etc.

I have nothing personally against AUG mind you, it pays a dividend (not much 1.16% yield, but it pays one), but the share price has not done much over the past three years. It also crashed badly between 2007-09, but that is ancient history. That being said, Mr Saville & co. may indeed have their own ideas on how to turn the business around; but will they find the time?

Augean looks like a business with sound foundations and purpose, but not firing on all cylinders. The nature of the activities also has indirect risk linked to politics: Environmental rules, who pays for decomissioning (Private sector, UK as a whole, devolved assemblies); in other words limited market/customer base and uncertainties.

[praipus] 10/1/2017 10:38

I've corrected OEX to OEC in #107 apologies.

Augean trimming interesting watch who buys the shares. Utilico (the F & C Utilities) did this with Cambridge Water many years ago it looked like they were getting out then it became clear they had sold to and made way for a takeover bid. History does repeat itself sometimes...:)

[vacendak] 10/1/2017 10:30

Agree with your views on Augean, not actually a dog, but a lot of dashed hopes. People talking about it on the AUG thread seems to always be very enthusiastic, but it seems that the items of good news about new contracts are usually balanced by litigation issues on older ones.

A couple of months ago, they got pretty excited about oil-platform (and related) decomissionning in the North Sea, but the share price did not flare-up. And when it eventually did jump a bit, it corrected strongly by early December.

A bit fishy for UEM to buy into RSG, Australia is not exactly EM. True, Resolute has the Syama mine in Mali and other options in the Congo but... listening about the investment policy of UEM, gold is neither a utility, nor a proven and safe cash-cow (no yield), viz. the Charles Jillings video (from the main UEM website) when he stresses out that Utilico EM is more defensive in essence than a bog standard EM fund:

Still, if UTL sells high and UEM buys low, I should not complain.

UIL Ltd is releasing more ZDP 2020 to the market today, in essence borrowing on the cheap. With the easing on the RSG holdings and those ZDPs, the temporary overdraft (related to the ZDP 2016 rollover) should look better on the next factsheet.

Yesterday's 2.5p gains might have been related to Sterling tanking majestically again - it also explains why gold went up, I only track its price in £. My non-UK holdings shot-up and my (fewer) UK ones "corrected", I love to use euphemisms. :)

[morton2011] 10/1/2017 09:41

sorry about the H - couple of rns about UTL not on their RNS, selling down their gold a little!

ICM been quite busy with RSG - UTL selling at an average of around $ 1.30 aroybd 4% of their holding. Zeta selling and UEM buying (at $ 1.20) !


UTL also been trimming their holdings in Augean, seems sensible to me as long term follower of Augean and cannot see it growing significantly

[vacendak] 09/1/2017 21:19

@Morton
Try to capitalise the "H" in the "http" or "https", it shall make your links clickable. The internal links, to other ADVFN pages, are not "xx"ed.

We are getting into more gold? Damn... This used to be about electricity, gas, waste management, toll roads, rail and airports you know! :)

[morton2011] 09/1/2017 15:51

@V On CCE the other clever part by that company was to buy (out) the EMC microgrid company
hxxps://carnegiewave.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/161104_CWE-AGM-Pres.pdf
Diversifies the company into a connected area with lots of steady revenue both now and in the future that does not actually need wave power but could do.
It was your post that noted the canny move by UTL to take the shareholding out of the bust renewable company as shares in CCE.
CCE has raised a lot of money over the years in various incarnations (it was/is earning $ 1 milllion per annum approx in gold royalties as was apparently a gold company at one point which is slowly decreasing) and this presumably is why there are so many small shareholders.
CCE a good prospect but at 7 cents valued at $Aus 135 million so already quite fully priced.
Convertibles earning 8% that can be swapped into shares at 8 cents look very enticing.

[vacendak] 09/1/2017 14:29

@Morton: Happy New Year to you too.
Totally forgot about that, how rude of me.

The latest NAV (January 6th) was up indeed: 261.72p (prior was 252.76p and dropping)

About the mid-November events, there was some kind of perfect storm:
* RSG was raising money (Morton mentioned it I think, just too lazy to read a few pages back, sorry) at the same time that gold was dropping. Bad for the image of the stock of course.
* There was one or more mystery sellers and those trades were usually reported a day or two after they had happened.
* ICM was kind of late for one NAV update and we saw the various NAV estimates (from different sites) predicting a catastrophic drop. In the end the drop was not too bad and the share price jumped back up by 10p in a matter of hours after the NAV related RNS.
* It looked to me as if people were equating UTL with RSG from August to October, buying UIL Ltd as a proxy for Resolute on the LSE or something... They got over-excited then potentially panicked when gold went in for a dive.

Things were going fine during the Summer as far as the spread was concerned, as UTL market cap was closing-in on joining the FTSE 250 (when the NAV was above 300p), at least figuratively as it somehow does not seem to qualify as a FTSE fledgling or FTSE "anything" for that matter. I was following out of curiosity.

What I found extremely annoying is that we never really had any bad news from any of the companies in the portfolio. In fact, we picked up mostly good news! The only drawback was a no-show for a planned IPO for Ascott Lloyd on AIM (a Somers holding).

[CCE convertible]
UIL Ltd / Mr Saville et al. are all about convertibles, loans secured on equity (Zeta if I am right) and other fancy agreements/derivatives.
I bet they were on this one too. :)

The odd thing about CCE is that the biggest shareholder has only 5% of it, UIL is second with around 5% too, and the remaining 90% seem distributed evenly in very small holdings. We own 20+% of Augean for instance, same for Resolute, i.e. substantial share-holdings that give seats on the board. I wilfully ignore the "platforms" as those are part of the ICM family.

As an engineer, I must admit I like the wave generation bit, this is a very clever idea. It would be nice if it became the Google of electricity generation if they play their cards right; and if they can keep the current momentum, those few shares could become very valuable soon.

[Latest RNS]
Some PDMRs/Directors buying a few shares today. Must be part of a remuneration package of sorts.

[morton2011] 09/1/2017 13:24

Belated Happy New Year

UTL seem to be doing well across the portfolio with exception of TCH. So agree next NAV should be up
CCE been really motoring since @v mentioned it before Xmas. Up around 40% but still quite a small investment, heading towards 1% of gross assets. Let's hope UTL in on the convertibles announced today


The share price and spread is a mystery. I noticed last week I could buy up to £ 3000 approx at 150 but if I wanted £ 5,000 at same time was being quoted 155. To sell was offered 142 but for £ 3000 max only. 1pm today then could buy £ 10,000 at same price as lower amounts (159) while I could sell in excess of that for 151. So @specto probably right in that there was a persistent seller before xmas which was why the spreads so wide. They seem to have disappeared as easier to sell now. Generally not enough liquidity to allow the MM to narrow the spreads.

@Specto - hope it goes well for you at SVR. I sold out at a loss in the summer ):

[spectoacc] 09/1/2017 09:36

Thank @v; the tank & widening of the spread was odd, but perhaps just a reasonable-sized seller in the market before Christmas. Fingers crossed for onwards & upwards.

[vacendak] 09/1/2017 09:05

UTL is getting slowly back on track, up a point or so on average per trading day since Christmas past. The NAV is going North again. It may all be down to the quiet recovery for gold over the same period though, which means UTL is again in synch with RSG.
Gold is in fact rallying very strongly at time of typing: +12 £/oz. tr.

Resolute mentioned three days ago:


Good news about Emerging Markets today in the FT:

So UEM should tick-up again soon. I made a bet buying some UEMS last year and 'twould be nice if the share price went back up a bit for me to convert in February. :)

[vacendak] 05/1/2017 09:57

Orbital Corp is ASX:OEC not ASX:OEX, tsk tsk tsk... :)

We cannot track the Bermudan shares from ADVFN, only from the BSX website and it is not really user friendly.

@Praipus
I had forgotten about post #107. Yes, I know, it is highlighted at the top...

[2016]
With hindsight, the year had not been too bad for UTL. Taking the share price at January 1st and final one at December 30th, we got 33.5% gains. Sure it had been better at one point (and worse, with a nadir at 95.25p), but pretty decent overall. And we got some dividends on top of that; surely beats a cash ISA.

[morton2011] 30/12/2016 23:23

Praipus

ASX:OEX Orbital Corporation - 28.09% owned by UIL (as of march 16)

ASX:HOM 49.4% owned by Somers
LON:PCF 75% owned by BCB which is itself 100% owned by Somers

don't bother trying to chart any bermudan shares imho
Somers is 49% owned by UIL for anyone new here who wants to understand what size stake UIL has

HNY

[praipus] 30/12/2016 22:16

Vacendak, thanks for posting CWE > CCE I've added to post 107 which I try to keep charts of the unerlying holdings in. If you know any other codes for the underlying please post them and I will add them.

Happy New Year.

[vacendak] 30/12/2016 21:08

@Morton
If you put a capital H in your copied/pasted URLs, they will appear as clickable, if not, most of the time ADVFN will default to "hxxp". It is a trick I have been told earlier. :)

No real explanation why TCH got whacked, apart from raising more money of course, but at least it is regularly traded, usually daily. Somers is indeed looking good, shame that the share price is barely "discovered" by the market, since as we all know very few want to buy or sell. Oddly enough Somers gathers some regular hits on Google/Bing, usually in the Bermudan press.

We have not had an RNS about the NAV for UIL due to Christmas and soon NYE leading to very short trading weeks, but I think the move should be upwards. With all that talk of good dividends (RSG before the correction, Somers now paying out a bit more) it would be nice to have an extra half a penny more per share on UIL too...

[spectoacc] 30/12/2016 09:43

Thanks @Morton & @vacendak.

[morton2011] 30/12/2016 09:35

@V CCE does look interesting as you noted. 30 May 16 ASX announcement 101,330,192 shares 'bought' from REH. 6 dec 16 ASX shows this as 4.42% of total (same amount of shares). Voluntary escrow until 30 May 2017 so UIL cannot sell until then. Worth around $AUS 6 million at 6 cents.

Been plodding away looking into the other bits of UIL and clearly my hope for a share price at 200 p at end of 2016 is not going to happen!

Somers posted some good results Dec 23
hxxp://www.somers.limited/files/9814/8237/5425/2016_Q4_Somers_Q4_2015-16_announcement_of_results.pdf
but remains very difficult to value being based in Bermuda with its only listing being on the weird Bermudan stock 'exchange'. UK investments performing well and Homeloans in Australia deal all complete so is presumably the financial investment 'platform'.
Reading the link above Mr Saville/ICM seems to have switched his plans. Instead of UIL taking his stake in Somers, Somers acquires (more accurately perhaps is transferred) the ICM stake in Homeloans. In return ICM has a convertible loan note which will dilute UIL % stake in Somers when exercised 'upon the receipt of certain regulatory approvals'. Overall it will tighten ICM grip on Somers but they were in control before so no real change.

Touchcorp ASX:TCH has collapsed in last couple of weeks. At $AUS 1.10 per share around a $AUS 20 million dollar fall since $AUS 2 end of November which will feed into the NAV shortly. UIL locked into this investment until 2018. Mr Saville and his 'entities' bought into the recent fund raising on 17 Nov
UOL bought 2.4 million shares at $AUS 2 which are not part of the lockin. The sell off seems overdone and I liked the diversification into fintech and TCH Investment generally but experience suggests no smoke without fire. Mr Saville is a director of Touchcorp so presume he knows better.

RSG as noted is up around 20% since last NAV so may offset the TCH falls but all quite volatile down under at moment.

[vacendak] 29/12/2016 15:34

I have noticed that ASX:CWE (Carnegie Wave Energy) had been delisted, it had disappeared from my ADVFN watchlist. It is now known as ASX:CCE (Carnegie Clean Energy).



They have just received a juicy grant from the Australian Government.


Oh, and the share price was hovering around 3.7 AU$ cents and is now at 6 cents. They have added the business (acquisition of EMC):


As of the AR published in October UIL Ltd own 5.07% of CCE, second biggest shareholder behind Log Creek Pty Ltd. (5.85%).
This time UIL Ltd did get in at the low ebb - pun intended considering the wave energy bit - the around 3 cents valuation when they raided the dead carcass of REH.

I am not actually a fan of renewables, the past forays of Utilico/UIL Ltd in these did not really send the share price skywards; but this one seems promising indeed.

In conclusion: Another company held by UIL Ltd that gathers good press/awards/grants/etc., so expect another 10p drop in UTL! :(

[spectoacc] 28/12/2016 14:42

Volatility upwards I don't mind ;)