St. Peter Port Capital has just published results for the year ended 31 March 2015 that show the NAV falling by 37.5% on the year as they wrote down the values of some investments. Sales from the portfolio generated cash proceeds of £3.36m and they had £4m in cash at the end of June 2015.
Additions to the portfolio just related to a few follow-on investments totalling just £218,000. Sales were of their entire holdings in Tower Resources, Tuscany Energy and Halosource, Inc. Plus the sale of St Peter Port’s entire holding in Western Uranium, a company which completed a reverse takeover of Homeland Uranium Limited, the Canadian company in which St Peter Port had a c24 per cent interest. The sale of its interest in Western Uranium released cash proceeds in excess of C$270,000. They also sold just under a million shares in Brazil Potash to Broughton Limited (“Broughton”). The monies realised from this sale of Brazil Potash were used to acquire from Broughton its shares in St Peter Port.
Most of the writedowns relate to commodity companies that they have invested in.
They have one potentially significant disposal opportunity in the form of Union Agriculture, a diversified agribusiness firm that owns and manages over 180,000 hectares of farmland in Uruguay. This company attempted to conduct an IPO in 2011 but the timing was bad and despite a positive initial response the proposed float was pulled. In common with a number of fellow-shareholders, St Peter Port has lobbied the company over the last year to renew its attempts to list. The board finally agreed to put the matter to shareholders and shareholders voted in favour of the company pursuing a “going public transaction” in April. A listing is now being pursued and is expected to take place in the Autumn of 2015.
SPPC : Commodity markets not kind to St Peter Port Capital