In QuotedData’s morning briefing 8 February 2024:
- Digital 9’s (DGI9) sale of Verne Global may take longer than expected to close as the Icelandic anti-trust authority wants to look at the transaction. The company warns that this could add between 90 and 135 days to the wait for the final sign off of the deal.
- Invesco Bond Income Plus (BIPS) has raised £13.5m from a placing of almost 8m shares at 168.4p. Dealing in the new shares will start on 12 February.
- Apax Global Alpha (APAX) says its NAV at end 2023 was €2.62 and, helped by a Q4 return of 1.9%, its NAV total return for the year was 4.1%.
- Over the final three months of 2023, Foresight Solar (FSFL) got a boost from the sale of its Lorca portfolio and its share buyback programme that offset the effects of lower power price forecasts and inflation coming in lower than it had expected for 2023. The net of that was that the NAV rose slightly from 118.1p to 118.4p.
- Syncona (SYNC) says that a £43m write down in the value of Anaveon in the final quarter of 2023 was offset by a £111m increase in the value of its stake in Autolus Therapeutics. this helped the fund produce an NAV return of 5.4% over those three months.
- Harmony Energy Income (HEIT) says that people connected with the manager Harmony Energy Advisors Limited have almost doubled their stake, buying 2,850,000 shares at 39p to take their total holding to over 7.6m shares (or 3.35% of the company).
- Tufton Oceanic (SHIP) says that principals and staff of its manager have bought 225,000 shares in the company, taking their holding to 12.17m shares or 4.2% of the company.
- Alternative Income REIT (AIRE) posted a 2.4% drop in NAV to 81.6p per share for the quarter to 31 December 2023 following a 1.4% fall in the like-for-like value of its portfolio to £103.3m. EPRA earnings were up 15.4% to 1.5p per share, fully covering its quarterly dividend of 1.425p. The group’s share price in the quarter was up 20%, perhaps due to a more positive macroeconomic picture, narrowing its discount to NAV to 12.4% at the end of the period.
- Helical (HLCL) has appointed two new independent non-executive directors – Robert Fowlds, who joins the board with immediate effect, and Amanda Aldridge, who will be joining the board from 1 April 2024. Fowlds has over 40 years’ experience in real estate and is a chartered surveyor. He was head of real estate investment banking at J.P. Morgan Cazenove until 2015 and, prior to that an equity analyst at Merrill Lynch. He is a member of the supervisory board of Klepierre S.A., and serves as a non-executive director of FTSE 250 property company LondonMetric Property. Between 2018 and 2021, he was a non-executive director of UK Commercial Property REIT. Aldridge has extensive audit, governance and capital markets experience having worked at KPMG for 33 years until 2017, including 20 years as a partner. She is a non-executive director and audit committee chair of Impact Healthcare REIT, The Brunner Investment Trust, Staffline Group and The Low Carbon Contracts Company. Aldridge will succeed Joe Lister on Helical’s board and become chair of the audit and risk committee following the conclusion of the 2024 AGM. Lister, after six years on the board, has decided not to seek re-election following his appointment as chief executive of Unite Group in January this year.