Ocean Wilsons Holdings (OCN)

[feste]

Interesting intra-day RNS from Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON:OCN) today , some (£60k pa) paid research from Edison.

Interesting for timing (Ist in 2024, after a flurry of 3 research items back in 2022) and content:

OCN has acknowledged a preliminary approach last June from Swiss logistics group MSC - prompting 'a strategic review'- and Bloomberg reported a couple of days ago

"PSA Is Said to Show Interest in Port Operator Wilson Sons
Controlling shareholder Ocean Wilsons is reviewing investment
Ocean Wilsons says it’s received offers for its stake
By Vinicius Andrade and Manuel Baigorri
January 31, 2024 at 1:07 PM GMT

PSA International Pte, the port operator owned by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, has shown interest in acquiring Wilson Sons SA, a Brazilian port and maritime logistics company, according to people familiar with the matter.

Potential buyers in China also have shown interest, said the source......"

The complicated shareholding structure and a poison pill defence* may prove too much, but the Edison write-up hxxps://www.edisongroup.com/research/st ... red/33199/

* I believe anyone unwelcome going over 5% has to dispose of excess...(any hard info welcome!)

looks like a defensive measure to me :

" ‘Another way to highlight OCN’s value (based on the same figures) is to look at the current value of OCN’s 57% stake in PORT3 (£668.8m) and compare it to the current value of OCN (£443.8m). In effect, investors would get a controlling stake in PORT3 at a one-third discount and would receive the rest of OCN’s assets for free."

I hold.

[SalvorHardin]

The 2023 annual results have been published. Dividend increased by 21.4% from 70c to 85c. Investment portfolio increased by 10.1% gross (8.9% net) which unusually beats its underwhelming benchmark, which is American CPI Urban Consumers NSA + 3% (NSA here stands for "Not Seasonally Adjusted", not the National Security Agency!).

The only mention about potential offers for OCN's stake in Wilson Sons is that the strategic review "remains"ongoing":

"We announced in June 2023 that we were performing a strategic review of our Brazilian operations which remains ongoing at the date of this report. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Board and the leadership team at Wilson Sons for maintaining their focus on operations at a time when such a review can be distracting to day-to-day business."

https://www.investegate.co.uk/announcement/rns/ocean-wilsons-holdings-ltd---ocn/preliminary-results-for-the-year-ended-31-dec-2023/8101300

Wilson Sons has been doing well "Our operations at Wilson Sons delivered their best financial performance ever"

Who knows what the share price will do this morning. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see a fall, given that a lot of investors out there will be disappointed because of the lack of anything concrete about offers for the Wilson Sons stake. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see a reasonably large rise, given that Wilson Sons' results are rather good and the portfolio actually beat its benchmark. Wilson Sons' results for 2023 were published after the Brazilian market closed yesterday (link below, in English):

https://ri.wilsonsons.com.br/en/

As always there's a lot of useful stuff on the ADVFN thread. Last of The Mohicans' posts are always worth a read IMHO

https://uk.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=3658818