CAKE (Patisserie), Foresight 4 VCT AGM, Payment Companies and Dunelm

More bad news from Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) today – well at least you can’t say the directors are not keeping you informed about their dire situation which is not always the case in such circumstances.

Yesterday the company announced that its major operating company had received a winding-up petition from HMRC, of which the directors had only recently become aware. Today the company said after further investigation the board has reached the conclusion that without an “immediate injection of capital, the Directors are of the view that there is no scope for the business to continue trading in its current form”.

The directors could possibly try to do a quick placing at a deep discount no doubt, borrow a pile of cash at extortionate rates or they could put it into administration. The big risk is that Exec Chairman Luke Johnson will put it through a pre-pack administration. I hope he does not because that won’t do his reputation any good at all. He needs to try and engineer some sensible solution if his reputation in the financial world is to remain intact. That is particularly so after he wrote an article for the Times in September on “a beginner’s guide to tried and tested swindles” suggesting how you can spot them. Clearly he was not taking his own advice. Whatever happens, the outlook for existing shareholders does not look good.

As another commentator said, the Treasury should not reduce the generous tax reliefs on AIM companies because they need to realise that it is a risky market.

But there was some good news on cake yesterday when the Supreme Court decided after all in an appeal from the lower courts that a cakemaker can refuse to bake cakes where the proposed wording in the icing is objectionable to them. A victory for common sense and liberty.

Today I attended the Annual General Meeting of Foresight 4 VCT (FTF). There is one advantage to owning VCT shares. They barely move when the stock market is otherwise in panic mode. They are one of the few “counter-cyclical” investments to public companies as they invest in private equity. There are some disadvantages of course. Illiquidity in the shares, and often disappointing long-term performance as in Foresight 4. But it may be improving.

I won’t cover the meeting in detail but there were a couple of interesting items in fund manager Russell Healey’s presentation. He mentioned they are still having problems with long delays on HMRC pre-approval of new qualifying investments – can still delay deals for a few months it seems. More representations are being made on this.

He also covered the performance of their top few investments. Datapath, the largest, was valued down because EBITDA fell but revenue is still growing and the fall in profits arose from more product development costs. Ixaris, the second largest, is growing strongly (I knew this because I have a direct holding in it and had just read the December 2017 accounts they filed at Companies House). From my recollection that’s the first year they have made a profit since founding 16 years ago. Russell couldn’t remember how many funding rounds the company had launched – was it 6 or 7, and me neither. That’s venture capital in early stage companies for you – you have to be very patient.

However, in response to a question from VCT shareholder Tim Grattan it was disclosed that VISA are tightening up on the rules regarding pre-payment cards. This might affect a significant part of Ixaris’s business. I suspect it will also affect many other pre-payment card offerings by payment companies, some of whom are listed. Particularly those that are using them to enable payments into gaming companies which Visa does not like.

It was another bad day in the market today, although Dunelm (DNLM) picked up after a very positive trading statement with good like-for-like figures. They are moving aggressively into on-line sales but their physical stores also seem to be producing positive figures so perhaps big retail sheds are still viable. They are not in the High Street of course.

While the market is gyrating I am doing the usual in such circumstances having been through past crashes. Will the market continue to go down, or bounce back up? Nobody knows. So I tend to follow the trend. But I also clear out the duds from my portfolio when the market declines – at least that way I can realise some capital gains losses and reinvest the cash in other shares that are now cheaper. I also look carefully at those stocks that seem to be wildly over-valued on fundamentals – those I sell. But those that suddenly have become cheap on fundamentals I buy, or buy more of. In essence I am not of the “hide under the sheets” mentality in the circumstances of a market rout as some are. But neither do I panic and dump shares wholesale. This looks like a short-term market correction to me at present, after shares (particularly in the USA) became adrift from fundamentals and ended up looking very expensive. But we shall no doubt see whether that is so in the new few days or weeks.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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RIT Capital Partners, Foresight 4 VCT and Sepsis

RIT Capital Partners (RCP) is an investment trust that recently issued its interim report. As one of my longer standing holdings, first purchased in 2003 although I have reduced my holding of late, I read the report with interest. RCP has been a long-standing favourite of private investors having traditionally taken a somewhat defensive investment approach. But the portfolio is now most peculiar. It contains 8.8% of “quoted equities” but many of them are held as “swaps”, 27.7% in “long-only funds”, 19.7% in hedge funds and 0.6% in derivatives. There is 9.1% in direct private investments, 13.2% in private investment funds, 23.1% in “absolute return and credit funds”, 3.0% in “real assets” (which includes gold, silver, corn and soyabean futures) and 2.0% in Government bonds (with more swaps in there also). This is certainly an unusual portfolio to say the least.

Personally when I invest in a fund or an investment trust, I prefer them to invest directly – not pass the buck to some other fund manager. This trust has effectively become a “fund of funds” of late with a large proportion of its investments placed into other funds. Otherwise it appears to be hedging against armageddon.

The Chairman of the company is long-standing Lord Rothschild who is aged 82. When I have attended the AGM of this company I have never been very impressed by the way he handled the meeting or the responses to questions.

The total return net asset value performance in the half year was 3.2%, but 6.2% on share price. The current share price discount to NAV is actually at a premium of 6.8% according to the AIC and the dividend yield is 1.6%. Over ten years the total return (NAV) has been 103% when sector performance was 135%. So it’s not exactly been a great performer. I sold the remainder of my holding after reading the interim report.

Foresight 4 VCT

Another investment trust but of a very different nature is Foresight 4 VCT (FTF) which is of course a venture capital trust. It recently issued its Annual Report for the AGM due on the 11th October. I may attend it although my holding is very small.

The Annual Report does make interesting reading although it fails to mention a past complaint by some shareholders about the over-statement of reserves in the years 2013-2015 which resulted in an illegal dividend allegedly being paid. The auditor, KPMG, who still audits this company make no comment on this and neither do the directors in the Annual Report. But the Audit Committee report does mention that the company has received a letter from the FRC questioning the accounting policy for performance related incentive fees. The company has responded. Both issues are likely to be the subject of questions at the AGM no doubt.

This company has two very large holdings in its portfolio – Datapath and Ixaris. I have been very dubious about the valuations put on the latter company by this and other VCTs as I know quite a lot about the business. I used to be a director and still have a direct holding. This is particularly so after the disclosure by the Ixaris Chairman of the latest business challenges at the recent Oxford Technology VCT meeting.

I will be voting against the reappointment of KPMG as auditors at this company, against the sole director who is standing for re-election (is it not recommended that all directors of fully listed companies stand for re-election?), and against approval of the Report & Accounts.

But FTF did raise some more money this year and is investing in what appear to be interesting companies. One of their new investments has been in Mologic which is a medical diagnostic company. What sparked by particular interest was their product for rapid diagnosis of sepsis which I only narrowly survived a few years ago. Up to 50% of people who develop sepsis die from multiple organ failure, even though it can be treated with antibiotics. It is often misdiagnosed or treatment commenced too late, so a rapid diagnostic tool will be of great use.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock from sepsis but subsequently challenged being struck of the medical register. She won the latter legal case this week after a big campaign by doctors and a major crowdfunding exercise. Bearing in mind the other contributory factors, and the difficulty in spotting sepsis I consider the original conviction a gross miscarriage of justice. You can feel just slightly under the weather and next minute you are unconscious and in the intensive care unit as I know very well. Jack Adcock had other medical conditions that will not have helped.

There are 44,000 deaths from sepsis every year in the UK, and children are particularly at risk. It appears that cases of sepsis are rapidly rising although that might be due to better diagnosis. Even surviving it can mean life changing injuries. See https://sepsistrust.org/ for more information or if you wish to support a charity that is raising awareness of this deadly disease.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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