Dr Manny Pohl which is Managing Director and has been in that seat since inception of the company in 1997, has been in a buying spree. The latest parcel on March 15 was another 113k bringing his total holding to ~$22.7M (~38.55% of the company).
Since 2019 he has made 36 transactions, with 21 on market purchases (and 2 off market) valued at almost $1.5M, plus a ~$5M purchase of convertibles (1/4 of what was offered to the market). During the same period, he also made 3 on market sells to the tune of ~$1.2M.
Shares are off 15% YTD. The explanation in the 2 Feb half yearly report for the fund performance decline was put down to market sentiment. Guess it follows the share price decline is the same…
At least they are back in black with a 79M net profit for the half year, compared to $431M in the red for the half to Dec 2020. There was also an earnings per share turnaround from 1.69c loss in the 2020 half to .31c in the 2021 period.
Pohl is getting on (not in the Buffett/ Munger timescale, but he must be close to 70. This point is only included as it makes me think this is his life.
I only started looking at this after seeing all the on-market purchases. After looking under the covers briefly there is not much makes me want to make this a flagship part of my holdings.