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| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volvere Plc | VLE | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 0.00% | 1,225.00 | 01:00:00 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,225.00 | 1,225.00 | 1,225.00 | 1,225.00 | 1,225.00 |
| Industry Sector |
|---|
| GENERAL FINANCIAL |
| Top Posts |
|---|
Posted at 13/3/2024 20:17 by elsa7878 Could buy any amount on trading update day. So good to see an investor and a noble one picking up some stock as well as the company. Crazy not to. Look forward to seeing who the seller is as between the buyback and the investor increasing their stake that constitutes about 5% of the company.Just need to remind yourself of the longer term returns achieved. Indulgence a horror bought at completely the wrong time (unfortunate). With oodles of cash the opportunities for acquisitions must be endless. Naughty vegan on the naughty step. Discount to NAV is too much. Surprised if the buy backs are not accelerated. Should be. Far too much cash even if the interest pays the corporate overheads. |
Posted at 13/12/2023 15:27 by zoolook I’ve been doing a bit of speculating too about where we go from here. The company’s future is to all intents and purposes solely in Nick Lander’s hands now. So what are his options and likely alternatives?My only contact with him once on an investor zoom call. Most of the questions were fielded by Jonathan. The nature of their partnership was that Jonathan was mainly focussed on the deals and Nick was mainly focussed on executing the turnarounds. Although Nick trained as an Accountant he then went on to run Manufacturing businesses compared to his brother who looks to have only held city jobs. On the zoom call it was obvious that he was very excited by the opportunities at Shire and in particular with the ‘Naughty Vegan’ brand (I got the impression that he is a vegan). He’s only 57 so unlikely to want to retire yet. Will he seek someone to replace Jonathan? That seems unlikely as he was irreplaceable insofar as they had a unique relationship (“Jonathan was not only my business partner for more than 23 years but also my brother and best friend”). Also I’m not sure how a new Investment Director would add much as Nick AFAIK has always been fully involved with identifying and assessing acquisitions. The only Board change following Jonathan’s death is the addition of Michael Tzirki as an NED who is the MD of Shire. The Chairman’s comment was: “He has been a trusted colleague within the Group for many years, often supporting the executive directors in considering acquisition targets and I know he will provide useful continuing input as we execute our forward strategy.”Not sure what to read into this appointment other than maybe signalling a stronger intent to chase further acquisitions in the food sector. On the subject of acquisitions Nick had this to say in September’s interim results “We have continued to review an encouraging level of investment proposals throughout the period. However, there has been a distinct shortage of potential transactions that we considered to be worthy of potential investment. Such opportunities have not presented themselves, which had been somewhat frustrating for both Jonathan and me. Whilst these things are a matter of judgement, we have invested only when we believed we had a reasonable prospect of delivering an improved, sustainable performance and we will continue to assess opportunities in this context. I would like to thank shareholders for the support over many years afforded to Jonathan and me and to reassure them that my focus will continue to be on growing the value of our investment in Shire Foods, which I have chaired for more than 12 years. An increasing, cash-generative performance from Shire will be pivotal to enhancing shareholder value in Volvere. Whilst we will continue to seek investment opportunities pursuant to our investing strategy, maximising shareholder returns remains at the forefront of the Board’s strategy” Volvere has lost its way in terms of fulfilling its stated purpose. The investment strategy is they pick up distressed businesses, turn them around and flip them back into the market for good profit. This hasn’t happened for several years. Shire is still on the books after 12 years of ownership and Volvere is sitting on a mountain of unspent cash because what the market in distressed businesses is offering doesn’t meet their investment criteria. It’s laudable that they had the conviction to stick to their guns but increasingly it looks like a lost cause and a review of their strategy is overdue. I seem to recall that Buffett wound up an early investment fund because the market wasn’t offering investments that met its value criteria and there’s a strong argument that Volvere should do the same perhaps with Nick buying out Shire as he seems to like it and prospective buyers aren’t falling over themselves. |
Posted at 01/10/2023 07:25 by rivaldo Lovely obituary for Jonathan Lander:Brief extract: "With an initial capital of around £3million, Volvere would buy businesses in distress and turn them around. The Lander brothers had a real passion for people-businesses, where Jonathan’s incisive mind could unnerve and inspire staff in equal measure. The successes over the next 20 years would see more than £34million returned to shareholders. Tears were often shed when Volvere sold an investment and staff knew a special period of ownership was coming to an end." |
Posted at 08/9/2023 08:26 by rivaldo Just back from hols and learnt the terrible news. My thoughts are also with Jonathan's family, particularly Nick, and friends. To be taken at the age of just 55 is just inconceivable.I talked with Jonathan in person and on the phone a number of times, and he was always a pleasure to discuss matters Volvere-related and anything else with, being as honest and forthcoming as he could be. He had a fine, dry sense of humour and was obviously an extremely capable businessman. He and Nick have done a fine job with VLE. For the record Evil Knievil on Master Investor had this to say: "I invested successfully in Volvere (VLE) several years ago and sold out. I thought no more about it. It was and remains a very successful investment/trading company run by Jonathan and Nick Lander. It is chaired by David Buchler, a distinguished small company assessor. Last Monday, Jonathan died very suddenly aged 55. As an enquiry on Google will show there was nothing gross about Jonathan Lander. Thus Nick is in the driving seat and one wonders what will happen now. TNAV is about £14 a share and one can buy stock (not much) at about £11.50. VLE is highly solvent and loaded with cash. Curiously, the Lander brothers were shown as being paid just £19,000 p.a. between them. But, slightly unusually, they were also taking £650,000 p.a. into their management company, D2L. Perhaps Nick will take just £325,000 p.a. now. I do not know. I also do not know what Nick intends to do with his time or why or where. But he might take VLE on to new heights of sensible achievement. Or he might accept an offer for the lot. If the latter, it must surely be above £11.50 a share. Here is an opportunity for patient investors." |
Posted at 29/8/2023 11:50 by davidosh This tragic news was shocking to receive this morning and my thoughts are with Nick and all the close friends and family plus all the employees who regularly came into contact with Jonathan.I met Jonathan on three occasions including two attendances at our Mello conferences as he was a great supporter of engagement with investors and wanting us to fully understand the Volvere strategy. I admired what he and Nick were achieving and shareholders have done well backing them. Taken far too early at 55 years young. |
Posted at 26/5/2023 09:03 by rivaldo Nice commentary just emailed out from Investors' Champion - "compelling value":"Compelling value Volvere (AIM: VLE), the growth and turnaround investment company, announced results for the year ended 31 December 2022. This proven performer certainly looks compelling value at current levels. Volvere identifies and invests in undervalued and/or distressed businesses, as well as businesses that are complementary to existing Group companies. The sole activity of the Group's continuing trading subsidiary, Shire Foods, is food manufacturing. Shire, in which the Group has an 80% stake, was acquired in 2011 and manufactures frozen pies, pasties and other pastry products for food retailers and food service customers from its factory in Royal Leamington Spa. Volvere originally invested £500,000 in Shire for a 54% stake - it appears to have worked out rather well. Group revenue from continuing operations (all Shire Foods) in the year rose 24% to £38.03m and the profit before tax from continuing operations more than doubled to £2.33m (2021 restated: £1.07m). The closure of Indulgence Patisserie in the period was the first unsuccessful turnaround in Volvere's 20+ year history with the resulting loss for the year from discontinued operations £2.4m. We commend Volvere for not mentioning the fairy tale EBITDA anywhere in its results! Following share buy-backs, Volvere's total net assets at the year end were £35.75m, largely made up of cash and available for sale investments of £20.79m. Net assets per share of £13.90 compares to the current share price of £11.50 and market capitalisation of £27m, implying a 17% discount to the net asset value alone. Exclude the cash and available for sale investments from the current market capitalisation assigns a value of only £6.2m for the Group’s 80% stake in the Shire Foods business. This seems very low for a business delivering excellent growth and profits (4 year CAGR: 38%) and c£2m of free cash flow in the most recent financial year. Put differently, we assume Volvere management would want a great deal more than £6.2m for the Shire business! As a very rough guide, speciality bakery manufacturer Finsbury Food Group (AIM:FINS) trades at 8.9x forecast ‘adjusted&rsqu Volvere shares are unfortunately extremely illiquid with its share buybacks not helping matters." |
Posted at 14/4/2023 12:01 by rivaldo Deferred shares are irrelevant - meaningless and valueless - and are usually cancelled eventually.9degrees, the current shareholdings are here - almost exactly 50% of the shares in issue are held by 3%+ institutional holders and directors: |
Posted at 13/4/2023 14:25 by zangdook They also have five trillion deferred shares. |
Posted at 25/5/2022 11:56 by elsa7878 I was an investor but sold sometime ago.Shire is a decent business and could be worth £15 million plus even in this environment. Cash £22 million. Indulgence is a dud. The sooner they admit it the better. Close it / sell it (who would want it?) and share price would jump 25%+ immediately despite the closure costs and loans write offs. Even turnaround specialist need to admit they got it wrong sometimes. |
Posted at 07/4/2021 12:08 by rivaldo FYI here's a recent write-up from a new holder here:"Volvere Volvere is an interesting business, quite unlike any of my other investments. It is essentially an investment vehicle that invests in small undervalued and distressed businesses and then tries to turn them around before selling them again. I’ve been aware of Volvere for a long time, have been to several investor presentations over the years and many of the other private investors I know have invested. I’ve always seen the attraction but have eschewed it up till now, preferring to stick to my favoured hunting ground in more growth-oriented quality businesses. Volvere is very small (only £36m market cap). It owns two operating businesses at the moment, Shire Foods (Volvere owns 80%) and Indulgence Patisserie, both in food production. However, most of Volvere’s assets (about £24m) are currently held as cash. With so much of its assets in cash my normal framework for assessing the quality of prospective investments is less relevant. I see an investment in Volvere as essentially a bet on two things: a) that you are getting good value on Volvere’s existing investments and b) more importantly, that Volvere is going to invest the cash pile it is sitting on wisely. There is not a huge amount of information to go on (at least without some serious digging), but it seems pretty clear regardless that Shire and Indulgence are collectively worth quite a bit more than the £(11-12)m of market capitalisation they account for. Shire was a beneficiary of the pandemic, growing revenues by 18% to £27.2m in 2020 and making £1.6m in profit before tax. Volvere seems to have had quite a bit of success in turning around Shire since it acquired it and its revenues have been consistently growing for several years. Profits have not been growing quite as much but it seems that this is partly due to the costs of imported ingredients being inflated by a weaker pound. This seems promising as the pound has strengthened a lot more recently. Indulgence, which is more geared towards foodservice, has suffered from the pandemic. It is much smaller than Shire with £3.6m in revenues and a loss before tax of £1m in 2020. Of course, Volvere’s business is to ‘turn around’ Indulgence and return it to profitability. I have no idea how successful Volvere will be in doing so and consequently how much Indulgence is worth but it seems that Shire on its own is sufficient to make Volvere’s overall valuation relative to its current assets seem cheap. Assessing whether Volvere is going to do something useful with its large pile of cash is largely a question of faith in the management. This is not something I typically feel well-equipped to judge, but I am reassured by Volvere’s track record. At least I am very reassured that they are not going to do something stupid, as they have historically been very cautious in making investments. The investments they have made have have tended to be very successful. The risk is more that they are perhaps too cautious and prone to letting their cash pile accumulate dust. This is a risk I am comfortable with. Overall I think this investment gives me some safe diversification from my other investments and the outside chance of some serious upside if they find a great opportunity. The one drawback is possibly that the shares are extremely illiquid so probably suited for a long holding period (but equally this may present an opportunity for small private investors who are prepared to be patient)." |
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