Uil Share Discussion Threads

[russman] 29/7/2018 08:58

ZDP GRY about 5%
Not the cheapest finance with all the admin.

[spectoacc] 12/7/2018 11:29

Now Saville (Duncan, not Jimmy) bought 100k at 175p.

[spectoacc] 12/7/2018 10:34

NAV being back above £3 is certainly striking - have released a few on the way up but still in some. Hard to sell a divi payer on such a discount.

[ceaserxzy] 09/7/2018 18:16

NAV up significantly, now nearly 300P. See through NAV must be north of 330p now.

A good dividend, good NAV performance, large Dirs. buying and portfolio holdings like apt, rsg, ift all performing well.

All look positive.

[russman] 09/7/2018 15:28

As long as I keep getting a divi; I will give them the benefit of the doubt. R

[topvest] 30/6/2018 18:38

Yes, it’s a shame on the new investment trust, but happy following their other investments. Mr Saville is a good custodian and has lots of skin in the game. Bit of a Buffett character I presume, and enjoys his value investing. Why not?
It’s surprising that they haven’t got their technology platform away yet, as they are pretty good on that side of things. They have set up the platform, but not yet managed to list it. They are definitely eclectic, but good for c10% per annum in my view.

[spectoacc] 28/6/2018 07:13

Still in for the divi here, fwiw. Compensates for some opaqueness.

[morton2011] 27/6/2018 23:25

SP also goes up whenever I sell!
Why Mr Saville needs to have so many companies remains a mystery.
A quick look tonight and see ICM have failed to raise the money for their new fund at same time as these disclosures
hxxp://www.hl.co.uk/shares/ipos-and-new-issues/utilico-global-income-plc
ZETA also 'reorganised' in last month so Mr Saville 'controls' 91% of that via UIL and various other entities.

[vacendak] 27/6/2018 21:23

@Morton
I no longer have the time to be much voluble nowadays but I still enjoy reading this thread. Sad to see you drop out. There weren't many shareholders to start with, now it will soon be down to Duncan and myself. :)

Talking about Mr Saville and his fellow directors, they are buying again, as usual slabs of 50,000 shares. They may bleed the company with fees via ICM but they definitely have some skin in it, more than 64% of it in fact.

Funny how they seem to always buy when the share price is on the way up. Unless I am mistaken then never appear to sell.

Well, now that I have said it and jinxed it, expect a -10 correction next week. :(

[morton2011] 30/5/2018 21:21

@vacendak

I sold out of UIL in last month.

ICM latest plan is to launch Utilico Global Income and using UEM as a way to part fund that. In the prospectus UIL now described a few times like this:
"UEM, Somers, Zeta and Allectus invest predominantly in, respectively, the emerging market utilities,financial services, resources and technology sectors and UIL invests in undervalued companies worldwide."

So the days of platform investing are presumably behind UIL albeit little sign of it yet.

The debt was the reason I got out. If interest rates tick up much further then going to be difficult to sell the £ 34 million of their own ZDP (2024 and 2026) they hold as they will trade at a discount and think they can only sell at a premium. Its always been odd to me that they can hold so much of their own debt anyway. Total debt in the April 18 factsheet £ 270 million and was £ 237 million a year ago in the April 17 factsheet. All available on their website.

On the plus side Assetco is going to court this month and may produce some cash if it wins and Afterpay launched in the US and could grow further. Zeta may do better after its various corporate transactions as well but UIL remain very large holder in it and it rarely trades.

They will easily pay back the 2018 ZDP it just might affect the share price if they have to sell the liquid assets and keep all the illiquid investments as they cannot find buyers (Somers, Zeta, First Bermuda, Optal, Vix x 2).

I will still follow UIL like a moth drawn to light and may well buy back in but if its yet more debt later this year then the ZDP seem the place to be for a simple and safer investment.

[russman] 25/4/2018 13:46

There is a lot of leverage.In a dull market; static performance.

[vacendak] 24/4/2018 19:49

@Morton
Funny, as the last dividend was the last one I chose to reinvest too. I am now just going to be milking my investment in UIL Ltd. I took the decision to rebalance my portfolio, but now it is reinforced by having had a good look at the share price for the past YTD... and it is going nowhere. Well, it is not going strongly down per se either, just nowhere.

I guess I am also getting tired of trying to continually see a glass half-full when it is not even filled up to a third.

[russman] 24/4/2018 17:53

Think utl should hedge more interest risk.Dont think taking zdp on their own book is a good idea.

[morton2011] 24/4/2018 09:04

Poor result for UIL today placing less than 50% of their £ 25 million 2026 ZDP. Does not say much about UIL 'financial platform' when it cannot place the ZDP.
Despite claiming funds needed to pay down bank debt always seemed to me to be more about keeping the fees flowing for ICM. They place it all by UIL buying their own debt 'the remaining 14,383,240 new 2026 ZDP Shares are being acquired by UIL at a price of 100 pence per 2026 ZDP Share and will be held by UIL for investment purposes in accordance with its investment policy.'
the advisers still earn their fees..
Little wonder the share price is at such a discount and will remain that way until they start to pay down the debt and realise their investments. Shareholders still get the dividend but nowt in UIL at moment to make me want to reinvest them as they get paid.

[russman] 03/4/2018 10:09

The ZDP repayments make cashflow a bit lumpy.
Fine if they can roll over the ZDPs at lower rates.
UTL are retiring expensive debt before rates go up.

[vacendak] 01/4/2018 21:21

They seem to have revamped the website a bit lately.
The capital structure is now clearer and there is now a section for "Substantial Share Interests" where we actually see GPLPF (62.1%) and Permanent Mutual Ltd (7%).



Same info as before, but now less "behind the curtain" than it used to be.
They have added some new photos for the slides on top of the pages.

[vacendak] 23/3/2018 20:31

Well, Morton was right, they are loading up on debt... they talk about raising ZDPs to pay back debt; still zeroes ARE debt!


Basically, if I understand, there will already be some ZDPs 2016 around when they roll-over the 2020s. To be fair, debt is still cheap at the moment as they say, so it is a viable move to make.

The equivalent gross redemption yield will be 5.0%, which slightly more than for the 2024, which were at 4.75%. I assume they have factored in the likely hike in rates by the Bank of England in May.

[russman] 18/3/2018 09:27

As long as they can keep rolling the ZDPs over should be long term value.

[vacendak] 17/3/2018 12:47

The UIL Ltd report has always interesting bits near the end, under "related party transactions" basically all the incestuous relations between the companies managed by ICM. From the amount of dividend payments, there is indeed a lot of skin in the game for the main actors (alternating directors/chairmen/non-exec/etc.).

We now own £1.8m (for 2.8 million shares) of a company called "Coldharbour Technology", the British English spelling hints at it being based in the UK:

Oh... and with the usual play on warrants issued 2.8m of them (one-to-one share) if I understand the statement right (page 30 of the report).

A bit more time on Bing/Google unearthed this link:
this one is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coldharbour Technology as noted at the bottom of the page.

The last serious foray of UIL Ltd/Utilico into waste management was with Augean, which we sold last year.
Hopefully this one will turn out more profitable.

[vacendak] 12/3/2018 21:11

@Morton

Thanks.

We do not hold for the money, we hold UTL for love. :)

I should refrain talking up Zeta, it was down this morning.
Back above 165 for UTL, there is a lot of lost ground to recover over three years indeed.

[morton2011] 12/3/2018 14:34

@v Good luck with the new job

Results from UIL not very exciting. They use NAV as their key criteria when quoting returns and its where the performance fees are assessed against. The share price total return is pretty ordinary however. FT has them both providing a total return of 35% for share price and NAV over 5 yrs while FTSE up 70%. Talking of more ZDP was disappointing to me as would like to see the debt down.

Zeta's major investment is panoramic resources whose main asset is a nickel mine that was mothballed. Money being raised to reopen they hope and no doubt ICM and UIL will be providing some of this funding.

[vacendak] 11/3/2018 20:10

New job, more money, less time to read about UIL Ltd, even less to post about it.

Trying to catch up with the recent flow of information, but I have only partly read the Somers one.
Fun bit: The chairman, Warren McLeland, appears to moan about Somers having had to repay UIL Ltd, the same Warren McLeland who is a director of UIL Ltd. :)
The relation is duly noted in the UIL Ltd and Somers reports, so is above board, but it is always funny to read what he says, the way he says it.

UIL Ltd Half-year report:


The same for UIL Finance:


And for the holdings:

Somers:


Resolute:


Zeta:

I have noticed that Zeta got traded several times of late and the price has gone up. There seem to be gold there, pun intended, if only it traded more and the price adjusted accordingly.

Homeloans:


Bermuda Commercial Bank.


The UIL Ltd NAV is again heading in the right direction. From the various RNS, we have off-loaded some UEM, with a juicy profit for certain. Not sure though if UIL Ltd paid for the conversion of its subscription shares or if it cashed in through the trustee. Now that the UEM subs are all gone, the structure is simpler, cum- or ex-income NAVs only for UEM. The big plus in the medium term being the re-shoring to the UK.

[eeza] 15/2/2018 21:05

Would think that would be a 'plus' for the share price

[vacendak] 15/2/2018 20:49

I have posted the following on the UEM thread.
Is UIL Ltd going to follow in its sister fund's footsteps?

__________________________________________________
I would like to bow my head in shame and eat crows about my post at 162.
I had read the statement about looking to relocate the way most people would have read it: Paying too much tax, looking for a place to pay less. Even though we were talking about leaving Bermuda!

And now this, from yesterday:


They now want to move back to the UK.

Maybe the whiff of tax avoidance - despite being above board and legal - now proves costlier with regards to image concerns than the lower tax bill.

I am certainly not complaining this time.