I do not know how good Pantheon Resources Plc (LON:PANR) is at exploring for oil and gas but it is pretty good at saving bacon.
The stock was the only one to survive from last week’s “Bombed Out but Bouncing Back” recovery stocks virtual portfolio, and small wonder with the shares up 23% since we bought them, with the shares rising on the back of the square root of beggar-all news flow.
Ours is not to reason why when it comes to momentum stocks; people buy them because people are buying them, and the share price appreciation made up for a disappointing performance by Carillion and a bit of water-treading by Dixons Carphone and Igas, all of which have now been ejected from the portfolio.
The sales left us with £5,880 cash to invest, but the Bombed Out stock screen gave us six stocks to plough it into.
We learnt in the first iteration of this virtual portfolio to set a minimum purchase level of £1,000 per stock, otherwise the bid/offer spread really starts to bite, so one of the candidates had to miss out.
The tie-breaker is the width of the bid/offer spread, which is all very well, but this proved to be a bit of a lottery with the spreads changing from second to second. The loser of this particular lottery was Indian power generator OPG Power Ventures PLC (LON:OPG), and knowing the way our luck has been going on this portfolio that probably means it will double in share price this week.
Anyway, with OPG missing out, let’s look at the other stocks we ended up buying.
Newcomers and not so new
Allied Minds PLC (LON:ALM)
A familiar name … we sold this only a week ago (losing £233 in the process) so it is galling to see it reappear on the radar.
Allied Minds is involved in the commercialisation of intellectual property (IP) – in this case clever wheezes thought up by US universities.
The shares have halved over the last year, largely due to a US$146mln write-down on the value of its subsidiaries back in April.
Since then the share price has stabilised but started picking up in recent days after one of its subsidiaries, Federated Wireless, raised U$42mln in a funding round, while another, STT, secured a US$22.8mln convertible bridging loan.
I was dubious about this last time as a momentum play, as the share price performance of IP companies tends to go in fits and starts, as “value crystallisation” events happen, and I am even more dubious the second time around but computer says yes, so in it goes.
Bought 650 @ 178p each at a total cost of £1,172
ANGLE PLC (LON:AGL)
ANGLE’s founder and chief executive officer Andrew Newland is a frequent visitor to Proactive Investors’ Stocktube studio and we are unashamed fans of the company’s Parsortix technology – although we hope we never need to use it.
Parsortix allows researchers to isolate and capture cancer cells that are then harvested for analysis.
Like a lot of small cap biotechs, it could probably do with a few more bob in the bank to really push its technology but it has soldiered on and recent news flow has been very encouraging.
‘House’ broker finnCap is targeting a 100p share price for revenue-generating medical diagnostics company ANGLE PLC (LON:ANG), which would be two-and-a-half times its current share price. We’ll settle for that.
Bought 2,840 shares @ 41p each at a total cost of £1,179
Atlantis Resources Ltd (LON:ARL)
This is another company that Proactive Investors has followed for a long time.
It’s a renewable energy specialist, which is rapidly becoming a hot sector, though most of the attention seems to be on wind power, when, as the company name suggests, Atlantis’s speciality is tidal wave power.
This is probably not the place to go into a “contrast and compare” piece on the benefits of the rival technology, save to mention in passing that so far as Britain is concerned, we are a country surrounded by sea with a very unreliable weather system.
Atlantis is best known for its Meygen tidal stream power project in the Pentland Firth, Scotland, but it is not just the British Isles the company has its eye on; earlier this week it moved a step closer to securing a big order for the Indonesian Nautilus tidal stream project.
READ Atlantis Resources powers higher on progress with Indonesian Nautilus tidal stream project
Bought 2,660 shares @ 43.5p each at a total cost of £1,172
DX (Group) PLC (LON:DX)
I’d never heard of this company before writing about it last week in a market report, and then the very next day I nearly crashed into one of its lorries on a blind bend.
That’s what I get for calling the logistics company accident prone.
Last month the company was laid low by an accounting error and the month before that it abandoned plans to merge with John Menzies’s distribution division.
The shares received a lift yesterday when it refinanced and brought in a parcel-load of new managers, including the two founders of the business.
Let’s hope these fellows can put the company back on the right road.
Bought 11,095 shares @ 10.5p each at a total cost of £1,180.
NAHL Group plc (LON:NAH)
Accidents seem to be the theme of the day, as this group operates the National Accident Helpline.
The shares were under a cloud earlier this year as a result of proposed changes to personal injury (PI) claims in response to bleating and grumbling from the insurance companies.
“The group has been planning for these changes since the initial proposals were announced. Whilst there is no doubt there will be some uncertainty in the short to medium term as all market participants reflect on the proposals, we are committed to maintaining both our market leading position and our relationship with our PLFs [panel law firms],” the company said back in March.
September saw the company refinance its banking facilities and the release of some not terrible half-year results in which profit before tax declined to £5.3mln from £7.5mln the year before, after taking a £1mln “brand repositioning charge” on its PI business.
Bought 760 shares @ 152p each at a total cost of £1,170
Sales
Carillion: Sold @ 44.25p each, generating £2,065, for a loss of £288
Dixons Carphone: Sold @ 194.9p each, generating £2,324, for a loss of £30
Igas Energy: Sold @ 65.25p each, generating £1,486, for a loss of £41
Here’s where we currently stand
Company
No. of shares
Total cost
Average price paid
Current bid price
Current value
Profit/ loss £
Profit/ loss %
Angle
2,840
£1,179
41.53p
39.5p
£1,122
-£58
-4.9%
Allied Minds
650
£1,172
180.31p
169p
£1,099
-£73
-6.3%
Atlantis Resources
2,660
£1,172
44.06p
42.5p
£1,131
-£42
-3.6%
DX
11,095
£1,180
10.64p
9.875p
£1,096
-£84
-7.1%
NAHL Group
760
£1,170
153.97p
148.5p
£1,129
-£42
-3.6%
Pantheon Resources
4,430
£2,352
53.09p
64.25p
£2,846
£494
21%
- Cash: £6
- Total value of original £10k portfolio: £8,428
- Profit/loss on closed trades and dividends: -£1,768
- Unrealised profit on current holdings: £196
- Total profit/loss: -£1,571