- Patrick Vaughan top-slices holding at 271p
- Market value of chairman’s holding still up over a decade
One of the past week’s largest director sell orders came from the brokerage account of Patrick Vaughan, non-executive chair of LondonMetric (LMP), who banked £1.1m from the sale of 400,000 shares on 23 November.
The sale followed a busy few days for the commercial landlord. On 18 November, LondonMetric posted an expectation-beating total accounting return of 14.5 per cent for the six months to September. On the same day, the Reit announced and completed a £175m share placing to help fund £282m-worth of property purchases.
That fundraising was struck at 260p. Although half-year results revealed a 12 per cent jump in net assets to 214.4p a share – thanks to strong rental income growth, canny capital recycling and swelling investor appetite for the warehouses and urban logistics assets LondonMetric specialises in – that still leaves the shares at a chunky premium to forecast book value growth.
Might Vaughan have concluded the shares are overvalued?
Past trading activity suggests not. While the chairman has gradually trimmed his absolute holding by 44 per cent over the past decade, he still owns 10.3m shares after last week’s disposal. And while historic sales have netted around £13.8m gross, the market value of Vaughan’s stake has increased from £25m to £28m over the period, thanks to the 8.9 per cent average annual return for the shares, before dividends.
His recent share sales, which are understood to be to meet tax obligations, have also consistently occurred at the end or slightly after each calendar year end. A LondonMetric spokesperson declined to comment.
At 274p, the premium to book value (and smaller peers like Urban Logistics (SHED) and Warehouse Reit (WHR)) has started to widen, but investors should weigh Vaughan’s disposal against the £175m of investor capital that just poured in. Prospects remain bright, though fairly priced. Hold. AN
The pandemic accelerated companies’ need for digital capabilities, which has been a boon for digital transformation consultant Kin and Carta. The potential to profit from companies' digital drives led to the company selling off all of its non-core assets to focus solely on helping them.
Since August last year, Kin and Carta has sold almost all non-core businesses, along with three of its subsidiaries, for a combined £30.6m. The remaining core has performed well, with revenue from continuing operations increasing 13 per cent to £141m, while pre-tax profit jumped 61 per cent to £13m during the 12 months to 31 July.
The group added 11 new clients through the period, with the effect that it now boasts 30 clients that each spend upwards of £1m a year on its services. Significant clients include the UK government’s Home Office, Santander and The Economist. Kin and Carta’s biggest issue is a lack of talented workers to tackle its record pipeline of £135m.
On the back of these promising results published at the end of October, the share price initially jumped 25 per cent.
This bullish rise was short-lived, though, as on 23 November Marie James Capital, a private holding company for CEO John James Schwan III, announced its intention to sell £15.05m worth of shares – approximately 2.9 per cent of the company’s issued capital.
The announcement said the “sale has been made as a prudent diversification of Mr Schwan's children's estate”. However, this reassurance did little to assuage the market, with the share price dropping 6 per cent in subsequent days.
Given that Kin and Carta is trading at a pricey forward PEratio of 41, any sniff of trouble was always going to have an impact on the share price. Mr Schwan's estate's diversification plan provided just enough bad news to have that effect. AS
Buys | ||||
Company | Director/PDMR | Date | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) |
Anglo Asian Mining | Khosrow Zamani (ch) | 17-19 Nov 21 | 117 | 46,213 |
Anglo Asian Mining | John Monhemius | 23 Nov 21 | 113 | 28,225 |
Bank of Georgia | Alasdair Breach * | 17-19 Nov 21 | 1,633 | 447,141 |
Aston Martin Lagonda | Anne Stevens | 23 Nov 21 | 1,581 | 110,670 |
Aviva | Martin Strobel | 24 Nov 21 | 394 | 157,760 |
Bank of Ireland | Ian Buchanan | 22 Nov 21 | 421 | 21,047 |
Carclo | Nick Sanders (ch) | 23 Nov 21 | 39 | 49,552 |
Checkit | Keith Daley (ch) ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 2,800,000 |
Checkit | Kit Kyte (ce) ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 50,000 |
Checkit | Greg Price (cfo) ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 25,001 |
Checkit | John Wilson ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 100,000 |
Checkit | Simon Greenman ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 25,000 |
Checkit | William Maunder-Taylor (PDMR) ** | 26 Nov 21 | 46 | 20,700 |
Coats Group | Jacqueline Callaway (cfo) | 25 Nov 21 | 65 | 49,552 |
Cranswick | Adam Hartley Couch (ce) | 24 Nov 21 | 3,547 | 49,739 |
CVS | Richard Connell (ch) | 25 Nov 21 | 2,202 | 92,500 |
EnQuest | Amjad Bseisu (ce) * | 18-23 Nov 21 | 19 | 706,772 |
Eurowag | Paul Manduca (ch) | 23 Nov 21 | 120 | 30,025 |
Genus | Iain Ferguson (ch) * | 24 Nov 21 | 4,480 | 224,016 |
Genus | Stephen Wilson (ce) * | 24 Nov 21 | 4,711 | 94,227 |
GlaxoSmithKline | Dr H Barron (PDMR) | 22 Nov 21 | 3,102 (ADRs) † | 37,560 † |
Greatland Gold | Shaun Day (ce) ** | 24 Nov 21 | 15 | 54,375 |
Harbour Energy | Anne Stevens | 22 Nov 21 | 400 | 120,016 |
Hill & Smith | Alan Giddins (ch) | 25 Nov 21 | 1,744 | 36,975 |
Literacy Capital | Jeroen Sibia (PDMR) | 19 Nov 21 | 310 | 24,003 |
M&G | Massimo Tosato | 18 Nov 21 | 200 | 199,940 |
Merit Group | David Beck (ce) | 18 Nov 21 | 51 | 38,500 |
MJ Hudson | Matthew Hudson (ce) | 25 Nov 21 | 47 | 48,750 |
MJ Hudson | Geoff Miller | 25 Nov 21 | 47 | 26,814 |
musicMagpie | Martin Hellawell (ch) | 24 Nov 21 | 170 | 74,990 |
NB Private Equity Partners | Wilken von Hodenberg * | 23 Nov 21 | 1,818 | 299,068 |
NB Private Equity Partners | William Maltby (ch) * | 24 Nov 21 | 1,825 | 99,744 |
PayPoint | Nick Wiles (ce) | 26 Nov 21 | 617 | 61,679 |
Petershill Partners | Naguib Kheraj (ch) | 25 Nov 21 | 307 | 230,250 |
Record | Krystyna Nowak | 24 Nov 21 | 83 | 24,574 |
Royal Mail | Simon Thompson (ce) | 18 Nov 21 | 472 | 98,631 |
Royal Mail | Mark Amsden (PDMR) * | 18 Nov 21 | 463 | 99,252 |
Ryanair | Geoff Doherty | 19 Nov 21 | 1,329 † | 39,870 † |
Seeing Machines | Kate Hill (ch) | 25 Nov 21 | 12 | 27,599 |
Triad Group | James McDonald (cfo) | 19 Nov 21 | 125 | 34,500 |
Van Elle | Mark Cutler (ce) * | 19 Nov 21 | 46 | 161,000 |
Virgin Money | David Duffy (ce) | 26 Nov 21 | 168 | 62,986 |
Virgin Money | Clifford Abrahams (cfo) | 25-26 Nov 21 | 172 | 103,290 |
WH Smith | Nicky Dulieu | 25 Nov 21 | 1,532 | 38,300 |
Sells | ||||
Company | Director/PDMR | Date | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) |
Atalaya Mining | Harry Liu | 19 Nov 21 | 406 | 24,360 |
Cake Box Holdings | Sukh Chamdal (ce) * | 25 Nov 21 | 350 | 10,500,000 |
Cerillion | Mark Nicholls (coo) * | 24-25 Nov 21 | 836 | 117,010 |
Cranswick | Christopher Aldersley (coo) | 23 Nov 21 | 3,660 | 218,392 |
Croda International | Tom Brophy (PDMR) | 22 Nov 21 | 10,099 | 201,986 |
Kin and Carta | J Schwan** | 24 Nov 21 | 301 | 15,050,000 |
LondonMetric Property | Patrick Vaughan (ch) | 23 Nov 21 | 271 | 1,084,000 |
National Grid | David Wright (PDMR) | 22 Nov 21 | 984 | 137,719 |
TBC Bank Group | Nino Masurashvili (PDMR) | 18 Nov 21 | 1,600 | 80,000 |
TBC Bank Group | Nikoloz Kurdiani (PDMR) | 25 Nov 21 | 1,556 | 112,670 |
*Spouse/Family/Close Associate. ** Placing / Subscription / Open Offer † Converted from € / $ |