Around the Traps ... with THE FERRET 07:54, Tuesday, 13 June 2006
Sydney - Tuesday - June 13: (RWE Australian Business News) - ***************************
The bells were ringing when CCI HOLDINGS (CHL) rose 3c to 25c on Thursday on turnover of 1.56 million shares, 30 times recent averages.
The ringing became more frantic on Friday afternoon, when the shares were up a further 4c to 29c and turnover even higher at 1.57 million.
It then all became clear when CAMPBELL BROS (CPB) announced a takeover bid at 31c a share, and said it had acquired on market or had options to acquire 8.55 per cent of the company.
Campbell Brothers managing director Greg Kilmister paid tribute to the management of CCI for having have done a good job in returning the company to profitability.
"However, CCI has benefited from the very buoyant market conditions of late aided by the current strong global mining industry, and further performance improvement by CCI will be heavily reliant on market share growth or diversification," he said.
Meanwhile, shareholders of QMASTOR (QML), which was spun off by CCI, won't be too pleased.
On April 12 it sold its stake in CCI for $373,309 at 20c a share.
The sale represented a profit for Qmastor of $56,046.
The 31c offer would have given the company more than $200,000 extra.
And even more on the market after CCI rose 10c to as high as 35c in the last few minutes of trading on Friday before closing at 32.5c.
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Tim on the email pointed out that another stock that had risen on the falling tide was CONSOLIDATED MINERALS (CSM).
"During these three miserable days it's risen from a long downtrend bottom of $1.73 to (when last I looked) $1.96," he said.
"Maybe it's related to the Titan takeover, the value of which my deficient arithmetic can't comprehend.
"Or maybe manganese is going up ..."
Tim should have quit while he was ahead.
ConsMin fell 14.5c to $1.76 on Friday, against a rising tide.
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We nitpickers spotted another percentage violation over the weekend.
The TV reporter said the 71.5 per cent rise in iron ore prices last time and the 19 per cent this time had "almost" doubled prices.
Nope.
The first rise would have lifted 100 to 171.5 and a 19 per cent rise on that is equal to 32.6, which would make a total 204.1 - that is, more than doubled.
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While we're nitpicking - and we only include this because it potentially affects business, and therefore the sharemarket - we wish Opposition leader Kim Beazley would stop saying "kids".
Such as in his speech to the NSW Labor-fest over the weekend in which he claimed an "18-year-old kid" could not be expected to negotiate wages with a corporation.
Er, come to think of it, if he'd said "18-year-old child" it would have sounded really silly.
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Stocks hitting new highs were rather thin on the ground (or should that be thin in the air?) last week but EMITCH (EMI) delivered the goods, for a while.
It hit a long-time high of 80c on Friday before closing at 77c.
The shares have almost quadrupled in the past 12 months, making it one of the tech boom's survivors.
In the December half net profit rose 60 per cent to $1.1 million and EPS 69 per cent to 0.64c.
So it obviously isn't the low p/e that's attracting buyers.
More recently, emitch completed the purchase of the assets of OneMail.
Emitch describes OneMail as a "best-of-breed" suite of electronic direct marketing tools which will enable emitch clients to deliver "unique, high-impact promotional messages with substantially improved open rates over currently existing email formats and distribution systems".
CEO Lee Stephens said the completion of the purchase further consolidated emitch's position as Australia and New Zealand's largest and most sophisticated digital advertising agency.
The consideration was $500,000 in cash and the issue of $5 million in shares - 848,896 shares at 59c.
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