Viewpoint: Bullish
NIC -4.75%: briefly traded to a 4 month low early in the session before the ASX halted trading in the shares just before 11AM. Major shareholder Tsingshan has been short at least 200koz of nickel forcing the price significantly higher in the recent sessions with fears it would send the company into default and cause a significant overhang on Nickel Mines shares. Tsingshan is also a customer and joint venture…
ALL +4.02%: provided an update on it’s operations in Ukraine where it has around 1000 people working there in its Pixel United business which produces mobile first video games. They were working to relocate these employees however now material impact on the business was expected. They also said they were suspending video games into Russia and considering what to do with their Russian operations / employees. The stock has been weak over the past few months, today it bounced back.
The car leasing & salary packaging business traded ex-dividend for 49c yesterday which is equal to 70c grossed for franking. On our entry price of $6.92, this dividend alone equated to a 10% payout. While the stock declined by a slightly greater margin yesterday, the outlook for SIG remains a positive one. Technology can drive scale in this business and this we think is why private equity bid $10.35 a share…
US stocks experienced a very volatile night with the S&P500 ultimately closing down 0.6% as war news dominated proceedings, investors appear hyper aware of sentiment changes that could force the next stage of sector rotation – MM is predicting it will be away from commodities.
CXL -2.08%: a small win for the environmental tech company with Calix receiving regulatory approval in Australia for its BOOSTER-Mag product. The insecticide product suppresses a highly destructive mite with trials showing it can vastly reduce the need for other insecticide products on crops. It’s a small win but further validates just one application of Calix’s calcination technology.
US stocks came under renewed pressure overnight on the back of concerns around rising energy prices as investors attempted to weigh up the impact on inflation and economic growth – the answer is it’s clearly bad with the core issue being just how bad. The more prolonged the Ukraine problem becomes the greater the “buy the dip” attitude is likely to be absent from equities as an “if in doubt sell” mantra becomes far more…
Yesterday MM followed our previously flagged plan to increase our VUK holding from 4% to 6% around $3. Our logic is as follows:
The ASX200 closed down 1% yesterday as the escalating Ukraine conflict continued to panic markets although we significantly outperformed other indices in the region due to our large resources exposure e.g. Japan, Hong Kong, India, and Korea all fell between 2% & 4%. We saw over 75% of stocks on the ASX200 decline on the day but when the influential energy and resource stocks rally strongly it undoubtedly helps shore up the local index.
WHC +4.76%: while the bulk of commodities have been moving higher since the Ukraine conflict started, coal has seen a more leveraged move than most. Whitehaven kicked off their on market buyback with the stock already more than 30% higher than when it was announced at the half year results. Shares have rallied so strongly over the past few sessions that they were unable to buy a share back today…
AGL -1.75%: Over the weekend, the Cannon-Brookes / Brookfield consortium increased their bid for AGL from $7.50 to $8.25 before the AGL board formally rejected the offer, saying it still undervalued the group. A few whispers circulating (not sure of accuracy) that they sounded out AGL at $9.00 and not even that was going to get the job down. Cannon-Brookes said the consortium have put their ‘pens down’ implying…
