TOP - The Loveable Mr Waislitz

Forum Topics TOP TOP The Loveable Mr Waislitz

Pinned straw:

Added 9 months ago

There are a number of posts on Strawman on Thorney Opportunities (TOP), highlighting the management fee rip-off scams Mr Waislitz has been running for many years at TOP (and TEK, and anywhere else regular investors have been unlucky enough to encounter him).

Maybe spend your time more usefully and don’t read all the following AFR article. However in summary the article points out how the delightful Mr Waislitz is currently involved in legal action with Nic Bolton (“corporate raider”), Tim Gurner (Melbourne property developer) his future sister-in-law and his ex wife Heloise Pratt.

Alex Waislitz on Thorney, the Pratts, Nick Bolton and Tim Gurner

What was interesting was in relation to Mr Waislitz and his dispute with his ex-wife, the article says:

"Its’s an investment he (Waislitz) has turned into $1.6 billion and is now at the heart of an ugly court dispute with Heloise, which threatens the control of his business, the Thorney Investment Group. The couple split in 2015, but the divorce is still being finalised. The details are messy but in essence, Waislitz says Heloise left the running of Thorney to him. Heloise says she legally owns half and was deliberately excluded.

There are fears on the Pratt side that Waislitz could counter-claim for a share of Heloise’s fortune, estimated to be $4.84 billion by the Financial Review’s Rich List team.”

So Heloise is worth $4.8 billion, but clearly must be running a little short on cash and is now going ex-hubby another billion or so. Wow, what sort of a world do these people live in.

No wonder she is just referred to as “Hel” by many. As for Mr Waislitz, as we used to say when we were younger: “It could not have happened to a nicer bloke”.

PortfolioPlus

Added 9 months ago

Yep…in any 50 - 50 deal, he wants his 50, your 50 AND the hyphen in between.

Best avoided, but clearly, his investment companies adhere to the old PT Barnum belief ‘there’s a mug born every day’

stevegreenycom

Added 9 months ago

Did you guys get an invite to the dinner party, mine was lost in the mail unfortunately.

Peter Dutton fundraiser: Alex Waislitz joins long list of billionaires hosting dinners for the opposition leader

Bear77

Added 9 months ago

He does like to waste money @stevegreenycom - including on a lavish lifestyle - I'm not sure if you'd also classify the following in the same category (wasted money):

4-March-2025: Exercising $102,398.40 worth of options in ReadCloud (RCL) to take TOP/TIGA's stake from 10.92% to 12.27% (Link)
3-March-2025: Buying millions of dollars worth of shares in Calix (CXL) from 4th September through to 3rd March with the largest three purchases being $602K, $412K and another $1,765,000.50 in a placement in December. This has moved TOP/TIGA up from 8.67% to 10.81% of CLX (link)
TIGA/TOP also now own 27.51% of Doctor Care Anywhere Group (DOC), and were accumulating shares through to 12th Feb (Change-in-substantial-holding-from-Tiga-Trading-Pty-Ltd-(TIGA-TOP).PDF + Previous buying notice link here for July and August)

Looks like it's going nowhere fast on a 5 year chart (above) however, it's been rising during the past year (below):

Well, it looks like it's been rising, but it's actually just below where it was exactly 12 months ago...

ReadCloud (RCL) actually has been rising more than falling over the last 12 months (see below):

But over longer periods they haven't been a great investment:

Also, look at that liquidity (above, 2nd image up); the lowest offer (@ 10.5 cps) is +9.4% above the highest bid (@ 9.6 cps), which is likely why zero RCL shares have changed hands today (@ 12:35pm Sydney Time).

[EOD result was 4 trades in RCL for a total of $20.3K and the buy/sell spread still @ 9.6 vs 10.5 cps, i.e. still a 9.4% difference, less liquidity than a dead dingo's...]

I would posit a theory that anybody investing millions of dollars of other people's money is going to struggle to make money for their investors consistently at the nanocap end of the market, unless they are excellent stock pickers and those nanocaps turn into microcaps and then mid-caps over time, which hasn't been the experience generally with TOP and Thorney Investment Group Australia (TIGA). It gives Alex something to do clearly, because to accumulate positions or to reduce them, it does take time and a lot of trades, but he hasn't been a very good stock picker, so there's that...

TOP/TIGA own 10.81% of Calix (CXL), 12.27% of ReadCloud (RCL) and 27.51% of DOC.

Another company that has far too many "investments" that crash and burn is NAOS Asset Management. I note that NAOS are still listed as the largest shareholders of BSA with 32.72%, and here's BSA's graph:

BSA's market cap has gone from $75.45m just 4 weeks ago to just $6 million today, all on the back of losing their services contract with the NBN (or "nbn" as they like to be known). Now that's a lobster pot!

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