Woodford Patient Capital Share Discussion Threads

[chucko1] 01/5/2018 17:33

Trollwatch, I am intrigued regarding the “forensic̶1; analysis whereby myself, ltcm1, daffyjones, rackers et al. are dead-cert monikers for TW. Perhaps you used the same semi stable elliptic curves conjecture that Andrew Wyles used to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Or have you been spending too much time with your Cluedo set?

In any event, could you be so indulgent as to explain your thinking on this?

Many thanks.

[chinahere] 01/5/2018 14:41

How's the Income Fund doing?

[wantage] 01/5/2018 13:32

Roll on 50p pursued by a brexit bear.

[orinocor] 01/5/2018 13:31

thanks @ jonwig
It's been a terrible trust to date. Sometimes when a trust has performed this badly at least you can console yourself with regular dividend payments. Not in this case!

[fpladdict] 01/5/2018 12:38

How can they turn this around? They need to perform a miracle now but instead we will no doubt get another blog on brexit.

[ltcm1] 01/5/2018 12:16

Down again today I see.

[jonwig] 01/5/2018 12:10

@ orinocor. You can check it here:



Sort by 3-yr ascending. For some reason WPCT isn't included (maybe not in AIC?), but its 3-yr performance is -24%, so it would be 15th worst.

I suppose that's a disappointment for some holders on this thread ... just think, they could have done a lot better, by losing even more money.

[orinocor] 01/5/2018 11:53

How does this compare performance wise with the other investment trusts?

In a rising market since 2015 the NAV is down 18% and the share price is down 24%. Importantly no dividends have been paid.

You'd have to imagine this is in the bottom 10% in terms of shareholder return?

[jonwig] 01/5/2018 09:57

Sphere Medical was formed in 2002 with seed capital from a couple of ITs (Herald and Prelude, I think), Sagentia and Woodford, so he's held through the lifetime.

I remember there was a lot of excitement in the early days (I held it through Sagentia), but the IPO in 2011 (?) was a bit of a damp squib, and it's gone downhill since.

So folks who advise patience about Sphere are coming late to the party, which has had sixteen years to get going! Old dogs are best put down.

[ltcm1] 01/5/2018 09:34

The market must be wrong then.

It's the 'crowded consensus' (TM Woodford) at work again. Neil's seen it a thousand times before and this is where he makes his money!

[dusseldorf] 01/5/2018 09:13

saltraider - maybe your memory doesn't stretch back that far, but Woodfood was already in for £3.7m (@16p a share) fundraise prior to the 2017 cash injection of £4m at 2.8p/share. Given the number of shares they held prior to 2017 injection, Woodword also bought all the way down from 16p to circa 5p for another 20m shares, which is least another £1/2m. It's fair value right now is £0.

So Woodfood has sunk £10m into Sphere that burns £5m+ a year, made £3k revenue last year, needs another £5m just to survive a year paying the Directors and senior management (about 15 staff) £1.5m/year and the balance of 49 staff about £1.5m a year. They were supposed to be cost cutting.

Pull the plug on Sphere Medical(!) BTW I hold shares in it - I just know poor management when I see it. I can't sell them, and I'd rather see the shares burn than that shambles continue burning investors cash for another year.

[ltcm1] 01/5/2018 08:43

saltraider you have the right idea re patience but as Jonwig has stated, the risk is far higher than the original investors may be aware of, many having bought via IFA's. The level of unquoted is very high, nothing in the portfolio generates cash, a lot of further funding is required and there is a 170m overdraft in play.

It isn't difficult to see a massive liquidity problem emerging, especially when you factor in WIM holds very high percentage holdings in some of the underlying companies.

I wonder if investors really are aware how subjective some of the unquoted valuations are. Like the BenAI valuation is wildly different in WPCT and the IP Group, who hold quite a bit of BenAI.

Then there are all the cross holdings eg Purp between WPCT and the other Woodford funds. Redemption selling could hammer some of these stocks if the market got tricky and spreads were to widen etc.

All in all WIM does feel like a Jenga arrangement or a stack of dominoes. I'm sure Neil didn't plan it this way but by dealing with a number of smaller problems he seems to be creating systemic risk.

[saltraider] 01/5/2018 01:26

@ Dusseldorf Woodford put in £4m (not £8m, the balance was invested by others) in September 2017. At the time it was acknowledged that without the financial injection, Sphere Medical would have been unable to carry on trading after just one month.

So the company was in very serious financial trouble at the time WPCT invested, something all the parties agreed and understood at the time. Sphere delisted from AIM as part of the refinancing agreement. It's scarcely a surprise that the year to December 2017 results are not very pretty. That will have been fully expected at the time WPCT money was invested.

Sphere does, apparently, have a blood gas monitoring product that could turn out to be very lucrative. Maybe, though, it will turn out to be a turkey. WPCT will probably have to inject a few more million for it to be developed at commercial scale, even if it is not. So there's plenty that can go wrong here. But a huge potential gain in prospect if things go right.

We'll probably have to wait patiently for a few years to find out. That's the point of WPCT.

[wantage] 01/5/2018 00:39

Onward and downward - every little fall helps.new lows on the horizon?

[dusseldorf] 01/5/2018 00:22

Sphere Medical in which the fund has ploughed £8m+ has produced another horrendous set of results. All management given pay rises after Woodford bailed them out and zero progress at the company. 64 people twiddling their thumbs until retirement at the expense of your hard earned cash. Make your voice heard to block any further funding for Sphere by Woodford.

[saltraider] 30/4/2018 20:25

@LiquidKid "Something smelly attracts flies" just like "no smoke without fire" really doesn't hold up in the fake news era. You need evidence.

What evidence can you get in the short-term that a fund targeted on delivering gains over the long-term is failing?

Today's closing price (@ ltcm1) is a complete irrelevancy. WPCT is the sort of stock you should maybe take a look at once in a couple of months ... and then only out of mild curiosity. If you are uncomfortable with that, you shouldn't hold the stock.

[saltraider] 30/4/2018 20:06

@ ltcm1. I have some sympathy with that position. But, as long as TW is waging such an energetically negative public campaign on Woodford in general and WPCT in particular, he is hard to ignore.

Is he trashing Woodford just to create a better shorting opportunity? Or is he the knight in shining armour come to rescue us all from Woodford's folly? Or does he just like to be the centre of attention (in which case, he must love this thread)?

[jonwig] 30/4/2018 18:49

@ saltraider. Interesting, but it is three years old so if any of the content was questionable the site would have been taken down. In any case, there doesn't appear to be anything which isn't already in the public domain.

The site is devalued, to my mind, by being anonymous.

As for TW and Share Prophets, he and his pals do have a knack of spotting duds - Quindell, where he challenged them to sue him, for example - but I wouldn't touch his tips with a bargepole. (Nor anyone else's - I DMOR.) Perhaps he knows all the dodgy tricks, so spots them pretty easily in the hands of others?