Tuesday, December 12, 2006

UEPS rises! And other news...

Net 1 UEPS was up nearly 10% today! There doesn't appear to be any specific reason - no announcements, no news. I can only assume that millions of people read my previous posts analyzing UEPS. Clearly, they were convinced that UEPS is a great buy, and that sent the price straight up.

Williams Controls announced earnings today. They had increased in pretty much every way. Earnings were higher than last year, and higher than expected (by the one analyst that follows them). Sales had increased in the US and Europe, and increased dramatically in Asia. The share price hit a high of +3%, but settled back to +0.3%. Sheesh!

The other shoe dropped for ALNY. They announced how many shares they're going to sell, and that sent the price down 7%. I guess the difference between the situations of ALNY and ARNA was whether they had announced how much they're selling. Now they have been affected similarly by their announcements. Argh. Seems like I should have expected this, and should have profited from it. Oh well - I'll know for next time.

Finally, Walter had some things to say about the spin-off. It turns out that buying WLT will still allow participation in the Mueller spin-off. With a ~$16 price for MWA, and 1.65 shares of MWA per WLT, this means that each share of WLT will be worth ~$23 after the spin-off. Is this a fair value? I need to look into this a little more. Just notice, though, that the Market Cap of MWA is 1.8B, and that of WLT is 2.1B. WLT owns 75% of MWA, so the market is valuing WLT as ~$750M. With 43M shares, WLT is valued at ~$18 per share. Less than the spin-off value. Is this right?

1 comment:

Marsh_Gerda said...

been reading your blog with interest. The LEAPs make sense, though you'll never be able to prove it based upon actual data. UEPS sounds like it was a great investment. I'm thrilled you held your LPMA/PAY. I only kept 30% of mine... I had an excellent gain, but it could have been better.

Have a great new year!