I reported a week ago on a “Capital Markets Day” at Cloudcall (CALL) – see https://roliscon.blog/2019/01/18/cloudcall-investor-meeting-sophos-rpi-and-brexit/ . There was much discussion on whether the company should raise more finance, via debt or equity. I suggested they needed more equity. This morning they announced a placing of 2.4 million shares at 100p to raise (the share price last night was 109p. It represents about 10% dilution for other shareholders. The placing was completed in minutes so they had clearly lined up existing investors in advance. The cash will be invested (i.e. spent) on sales and marketing.
But they are also refinancing and extending their debt facility. Let us hope they don’t have to use it.
More bad news from Patisserie (CAKE). A report in the Guardian, based on sight of the information sent to bidders by the administrator, suggests that the accounts were false as far back as 2014. That’s when the IPO on AIM took place. In addition, sales in established stores had fallen by 4% in the last two years and the remaining 122 stores were on course to make a £2 million loss in the year to September 2019.
The Guardian report mentioned a number of possible bidders for some of the outlets, but generally few of them. So the chance of a major realisation for the benefit of creditors in such a “fire sale” process seems unlikely.
Brexit. After last night’s votes in the Commons, the battle lines between Theresa May and the EU look to be drawn up. She is getting near a clear mandate from Parliament which will help in the battle with EU bureaucrats and politicians who are adamant they won’t renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. But they will have to if they don’t want the UK to exit without one, which would threaten a lot of EU country exports. Come March 28th, it will be time for a face-saving compromise – no change to the Withdrawal Agreement – just the addition of a codicil providing alternatives to the Backstop.
Momentum Investing. Are investors falling out of love with Momentum Investing? Momentum investing has been one of the most attractive investing strategies in the last few years. If a share price was going up, you just bought more, regardless of fundamentals. There were many academic studies showing that it was a very effective strategy. In ten years of rising shares prices, it was relatively foolproof. But when share prices are going down, as in the last part of 2018, it does of course work in reverse. You have to sell shares as the prices drop.
Just reviewing a few model portfolios run by investment magazines and on-line portals suggests to me that momentum investing is no longer working as the 5 year and longer returns generated are worse than the market as a whole. The moral is that there are no simple solutions to achieving superior investment returns. Once everyone is aware of a successful strategy, its benefits disappear as they are traded away.
It looks like we will have to revert to the hard work of doing financial and business analysis of companies rather than simply following shooting stars.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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