SCT - Scott Tech

[duncan macgregor]

I have pulled a non charting 'Scott Technology' thread out of the archives. That is really because I don't think Scott Technology is a good trading share because of poor liquidity. Last Friday only 95 (not a misprint) shares were traded! I dare not think how much less than a marketable parcel 95 shares is.

This thread starts with 'out to lunch' suggesting SCT was a 'screaming buy' at somewhere near $3 on 30/04/2004. Yet now the share price has retreated to a '$1.82 buy and $1.85 sell' spread, this same share barely gets a mention on this forum. For those who like the FA statistics $1.82 today represents an historic PE of 15. That is greater than the 12.5 PE when SCT was regarded as a 'screaming buy' at $3 two and a half years ago. Consequently I don't think SCT is a 'screaming buy' at close to $2. I am buying more for portfolio rebalancing purposes. But if you believe that exporting from NZ has any future then I think SCT is worth accumulating at around this $2 level.

I notice the engineering director, Kevin Kilpatrick, sold all of his shares late last month. Ordinarily an insider 'selling out' like that is not good news. However, Kilpatrick has already signalled his retirement from the company to go 'grape growing' in Marlborough in August 2008. Given he is still a director of Scotts, Kilpatrick had a limited window of opportunity to 'sell out' while the company annual results are fresh. If he had waited he could have been accused of insider trading. So I don't think Kilpatrick selling out to fund his new grape growing activities in Marlborough should necessarily be seen as a loss in confidence in Scott Technology itself.

Kilpatrick selling out of 170,000 odd shares during 2007 has worked well for me because I have been buying SCT shares in trickles all year - boosting my own holding in this company by something like 80% in the process. My average purchase price of these 'new' shares was $2.07. That doesn't look very clever if you consider the current buy price is $1.82. But that is assuming that I could have bought the number of shares I did buy at 'todays price' of $1.82. And that would not have been possible. It also ignores the dividends that I have accumulated during the year, which makes my 'theoretical loss' (it was a 'theoretical profit' two weeks ago) much less painful. I know that I couldn't have bought my shares at $1.82 because it has taken over a month for me to buy my 'November tranche', a very modest number of shares on market at a price around $2.

So when do I expect my profit margin on my latest SCT acquisition to rise into the black again? I have no idea. But I am prepared to wait. And if the market weakens further I am prepared to buy more shares in the interim. I don't know if buying SCT shares at $2ish today will look clever in two and one half years time or not. But I think it is more likely to look clever than buying SCT at $3 looks now, viewed with two and one half years of hindsight.

SNOOPY

discl: hold SCT

SNOOPY look at the money you might have saved your self with a modest stop loss. Fundamental analysis is as usefool as tits on a bull as you are proving. SCT is a disaster with its illiquidity in the market. With patent rights being non existant in china judging from the copy cat duplicates in our market makes SCT is a high risk share. Macdunk