It looks to me like a Sub selling down since mid-Feb @actionman - keep an eye out for a "Change..." or "Ceasing..." notice in the coming days to confirm this. This sort of strong and sustained selling, particularly when it started before their half year report (on the 10th Feb, 2 weeks before the RUL report on the 24th) - so on no news from the company at the time - is usually down to a substantial holder reducing their position. Because RUL are a small cap with limited liquidity - often less than 200,000 shares traded over an entire trading day - these reductions can take a few weeks to play out. The faster they do it, the more they crash the share price. So far, the selling has seen the RUL SP retrace back to May 2021 levels, but they were trading at lower levels in prior years, so a longer term shareholder could still be taking profits at current levels.

I would speculate that it is either Perennial Funds Management or Regal Funds Management and Perennial look the most likely considering Regal topped up in January.

P.S. RUL do have an active share buy-back happening currently, and they would be busy buying back shares at current levels, however that is more likely to support the share price than to send it lower, so the fact that it is being driven lower despite that buyback is why I think it is someone with a LOT of shares (such as a substantial shareholder) who is selling down or out.

Seems to be a few micro/small caps seeing some significant selling in recent weeks. Sentiment is still pretty poor towards the space and with recession/rate talk not helping these illiquid small caps.

@actionman I was just looking at this one as well as I think it is approaching the area where I think it is potentially better value. In the recent results there was a small revenue downgrade and costs were up a bit as well but overall they reported largely as expected with a small profit, and are still on track with their transistion strategy. It seems unlikely that any bad news would be in the wind given that they have just reported. I reckon @Bear77 is on the money with a substantial shareholder selldown. Maybe they are sick of waiting for the SaaS revenue to actually fall to the bottom line.

Since the 23/2 RUL have bought back a total of 306854 shares on market, while a total 5.618M shares have changed hands, with very big volumes on the 24/2 (1.8M), 28/2 (1.5M) and the 2/3 (0.94M). So their buyback is barely touching the sides.

They have bought back a total of 4.34M shares to date which is only 38% of the total (11.45M) shares they can purchase before they exhaust the current buyback.

Thanks @Bear77 and @Slideup for your comments. Very helpful to understand scale of buybacks and likely significant holder selldown.

I think this is a buying opportunity and I will be looking to top up.

Could also be WMI who took a few big losses recently in 2-3 of the top 20 holdings they have

That sounds quite plausable @TycoonTerry - as I was wondering why there hadn't been any "Change in substantial holding..." notices lodged by whoever was selling down, if they are a "Sub" and if they have been selling for almost 4 weeks now - 2 assumptions there which may or may not be true - because they would have to lodge one within 48 hours (or two business days) of any change of 1% or greater (up or down), while they remain over the 5% threshold (for substantial holders).

However, WMI are NOT substantial shareholders, despite listing RUL as one of their top 20 positions - and RUL was in their top 20 list in their January report. Will be interesting to see if it's still there when they release their report for February - which should be in about a week (WMI's January-2023-Investment-Update.PDF was released on Feb 14th). WAM Microcap (WMI) is only a $332 million fund, so they could hold RUL as a top 20 position and still be below 5% of RUL's share register, as RUL has a very similar market cap - currently $328m.

For example, if WMI is trading at an aprox. 15% premium to their NTA (which it looks like they are), then their NTA is probably around $289m, and if WMI's top 20 positions represented 80% of that $289m, then that's $231m (rounded to the nearest mil.). We don't know their weightings - as they list their top 20 in alphabetical order, not weighting order, so if we assume that they have an even amount invested in all 20 companies (which they don't but just looking for a ballpark number here), that means their RUL investment could be worth circa $11 to $12 million - roughly - which would be around 3.3% to 3.7% of RUL's shares on issue. Less than 5% means they're not a "Sub" so do not need to lodge any notices at all about their holdings, unless and until they go over 5%.

If they were selling down, or somebody like them who holds less than 5%, that would make a lot of sense.

@Bear77 when you explain things like this you make me seem simple ???? I was happy with my speculative thinking but that is really informative

16-March-2023, as expected, WMI released their Feb report in Mid-March - on the 14th:

Source: February-2023-Investment-Update.PDF

So RUL was still a top 20 position within the WAM Microcap Fund at 28th Feb. Still don't know who is selling but it doesn't look like one of the Subs because there have been no "Change of..." or "Ceasing to be..." notices lodged by those Subs for RUL, and they would need to do that within 2 business days of their position moving by 1% or more in the shares on issue of RUL - or if they dropped below 5%.

As I explained earlier, WMI aren't Substantial Holders of RUL; my guess is that they own somewhere between 2% and 4% of the shares on issue (of RUL), and they may have been selling but not enough for RUL to move down enough to drop out of WMI's top 20, as shown above (bottom right corner of that slide, note: the 20 companies are listed in alphabetical order, not weighting order).

Meanwhile, the selling continues with RUL:

I have owned them previously, but not for a couple of years now. I like the company and what they do, however I couldn't see that there was sufficient upside potential with a high liklihood of achieving that upside vs. better opportunities in other companies where the upside looked better and more likely to pan out in my favour over the next 3 to 5 years.