Looking at the September end top 20 shareholders list recently posted on the WHL website, something interesting has happened. Bergen has sold out of it's position, or at least out of it's top 20 position.
In late June they had nearly 31m shares, and were our 6th biggest holder.
In late July they had 30m, and were still our 6th biggest holder.
In late August they had 15m and were our 13th biggest holder.
In late September they were no longer on the top 20 list, with the lowest holder on that list holding 7.2m shares.
We can't say that they have sold out completely, but my guess is there is a fair chance they have. I think there was some talk about someone spotting 10m going up for sale from a single holder back around 9 September when we started our slide from the 1.3-1.4c level, and this might fit with Bergen exiting. The other big moves last month were:
Citicorp nominees (i.e. held on behalf of clients) bought 7m shares
HSBC nominees (i.e. held on behalf of clients) sold 8m shares
Confadent sold 12m shares (these guys play around a bit - they bought 14.5m shares only in August)
Victor Lewis (formerly held 8m shares) sold some shares to drop out of top 20, to be replaced by Alan Matthew Fittall at no 20 with 7.2m. Presumably this is our exploration manager, meaning two of our executives are in the top 20 shareholders list.
Of these movements, to me, the Bergen change is the most significant. Nominee accounts are usually held on behalf of small investors, so the Citicorp and HSBC numbers suggest some have sold and some have bought (wow, who'd have thought?). Confadent holdings bounce all over the place, so September was another month of doing whatever it is they do. Bergen though, was a big holder, and is now gone.
Why? Well, of course we'll never know for sure, but given they started selling up a few months back that suggests to me they decided to wind down a while ago. It's seemingly NOT a new decision based on, for example, a view that AWE won't drill due to capital constraint post their big recent find. Why not? Because they started exiting in July and August, well before AWE announced the find (18 Sept). Maybe they (Bergen) had a redemption in one of their funds that they had to fill. Anyway, as I said, we'll not know their actual reason, but it does make me a little more confident that the recent slide was started by this technical factor rather than any big change in fundamentals. It seems to me they had a strategy to sell out, and took advantage of the P67 prospective resource upgrade (8 September) to finish executing their plan. Obviously our even more recent CR event hasn't helped lift things, but this to me helps explain what happened around 9-12 September
QFY Price at posting:
1.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
