Volvere Share Discussion Threads

[9degrees] 28/7/2023 13:26

Rivaldo if you had 20 minutes would you be able to update the header? Thanks

[9degrees] 28/7/2023 13:24

Do they buy them back so they can reissue them as payment for the purchase of another business? Or is it just to increase shareholder value in absence of any other uses for cash??

[rivaldo] 28/7/2023 13:13

Another £24,000 of shares just bought back at 1200p, in addition to the £27,875 bought back on 11th July:



Also, on 20th June FG Nominees based via Intertrust in Nassau (very nice) declared they'd been tipped over the 3% holding mark by the buybacks:



There's more info as to FG Nominees in the Panama Papers (!) here, but not sure it yields much:

[rivaldo] 06/6/2023 13:50

RNS - that's a chunky £90,000 buyback of 7,500 shares at 1200p. That's another 10,000 shares off the books including the one four days ago.

[rivaldo] 26/5/2023 08:03

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’ earnings. Finsbury also carries some debt with the market capitalisation £122m and enterprise value £149m. There are also mercifully no adjustments in the Volvere numbers.

Volvere shares are unfortunately extremely illiquid with its share buybacks not helping matters."

[rivaldo] 25/5/2023 06:22

Full results for 2022 are out and in line with the trading statement.

Shire Foods had a stellar year, with PBT before intra-group charges etc at £2.78m up hugely from £2.14m (edited). Such a shame that the small (at the time) Indulgence acquisition proved to be VLE's first failure.

At the year end there was £20.8m net cash and £35.75m net assets against the current £28.2m m/cap (with 2.35m shares in issue).

The commentary re Shire going forward remains optimistic, with energy and raw material prices abating, increased capacity etc.

VLE have confirmed that one of Indulgence's properties was sold post year end (from memory around £750k?) and the other property, worth £1.635m, is to be split into two - the two can now be seen here:

[rivaldo] 03/5/2023 06:44

Shire's's new ad for a Weekend Maintenance Engineer notes that:

"Shire Foods has successfully expanded its business; We are now running on a 24/7 rotating shift pattern"....

[rivaldo] 14/4/2023 11:01

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:

[zangdook] 13/4/2023 13:25

They also have five trillion deferred shares.

[papy02] 13/4/2023 13:24

9deg. 61% + 49% = 110%
So who’s holding all the rest ? ;-)

[9degrees] 13/4/2023 13:18

I think it is about 17%?so there is only 32% in public hands and most of this is held by Instis

[9degrees] 13/4/2023 13:12

of the 49% how much is held by the directors ? Rivaldo

[9degrees] 13/4/2023 13:08

approx 61% now held in treasury ! Are they going to take it private ??

[rivaldo] 11/4/2023 21:50

Another £24,300 bought back at 1215p:

[rivaldo] 03/4/2023 14:36

Almost £66,000 more shares just bought back at 1199p:

[rivaldo] 27/3/2023 12:32

For the record, another £17,000 of shares just bought back at 1130p:

[rivaldo] 22/3/2023 11:36

There's been no share consolidation NewKid. The shares have done rather well over time, though the share price has been in consolidation mode for, erm, some time.

Perhaps you should consider topping up to a nice round 100 shares :o))

[newkid] 22/3/2023 11:06

I have recently gone back and looked at shares I have or had. I found I had 61 shares at £1.27 per share in 2007. I can't believe the current price. I have looked through the RNS's can't see anything that say's we have had a consolidation of the share. Has there been one?

[rivaldo] 22/3/2023 10:54

Good to see the consistent rises this week.

The spread is unusually inviting for VLE at a mere 20p with 1130p-1150p.

[rivaldo] 15/3/2023 22:17

Shire's true historic PBT is £2.78m - the difference down to £2.14m is only internal "intra-group interest and management charges".

Any outside purchaser would therefore use the £2.78m PBT as their reference. As VLE themselves say:

"profit before intra-group interest and management charges is considered to be a relevant, useful interpretation of the trading results of the business such that its performance can be understood on a basis which is independent of its ownership by the Group"

The CT rate is only rising to 25% for part of this coming year and will probably reverse prior to the next election - one would hope anyway that Shire's profits will continue to rise to contra this given the terrific way it's traded over recent years.

The Indulgence loans will undoubtedly be written off, along with the other impairments already noted in the trading statement, but obviously this is all historic now and will be kitchen-sinked in the 2022 numbers.

[elsa7878] 15/3/2023 17:42

Thanks but the directors take 600k, you can’t just ignore it, and the tax rate is now 25%. So net is about £1.3 million. Does anyone know about the loans to Patisserie. At one point they were £7 million from memory. Presumably they need to be written off minus whatever they can recover from the site sales. Guessing the write off though will be non- cash.

[rivaldo] 15/3/2023 07:07

Shire's PBT last year was £2.78m, so if you tax at 19% CT for 2022 and then times 80% for VLE's ownership - then the net is exactly £1.8m.

Give that a conservative P/E of say 7 and it's worth £12.6m (and of course there's the freehold property and other PPE to consider as well). Given Shire's growth a higher P/E of 10 would bring in £18m.

When VLE acquired Shire it was making annual losses of £0.3m.

[elsa7878] 15/3/2023 06:44

The Shire figures are 100% is that right? So a profit of 2.14 million needs to be reduced by 20% to around 1.7 then taxed at 25%. Thanks

[zoolook] 14/3/2023 23:28

On the face of it they have sat on too much cash for too long but it’s a difficult place to be if you stick to your guns on what you are prepared to £offer for businesses is lower than what businesses are prepared to accept or alternative buyers are prepared to offer. Didn’t Buffett wind up an earlier investment vehicle because there was no longer value in the market? Also most of the cash was raised on an offering 1350p IIRC and they have been buying back below that which is arguably an excellent use of capital.