@French Orchard, it is good to be sceptical, that is a valuable trait to have as an investor. It is a shame though that when investors haven't done the requisite due diligence on a stock, they instead believe that there are "some kind of dirty tricks" at play. Have you considered that the selling of VC since the acquisition was announced may have put a fairly significant amount of pressure on the share price? I'm not saying this is the only factor at play, but it is an important one.
VC went from owning 14.7m units (5.37% SOI) prior to the acquisition (17th of Dec 2021) down to 7.7m units (~2% SOI) as of the 28th of Feb 2022. I can provide another update once I have seen a more recent copy of the register as I suspect that VC now holds less than ~1% SOI. Moreover, the SPP pricing mechanism (15% discount to the 5-day VWAP leading in), resulted in the SPP price acting as a magnet (and likely a floor) for the share price because holders were guaranteed to be able to sell on-market and then buy back in cheaper. These are all important factors. Another important factor is that the acquisition was considered "left field" by some (myself included) and these types of female focused weight-loss businesses don't resonate with many people, including (probably) many of the male-dominated existing HLF register. I don't
assume the bottom is in, that would be a very dangerous assumption indeed, and buying into a downtrend is always difficult, but I think it is likely. The THM acquisition killed the previously neutral/trending upwards momentum in the share price, and sent it on a very bearish trajectory. That will likely eventually stabilise once the register has reset with new holders who see strong value at these levels. Let's see what happens over the next 12 months. The management team want to see a major turnaround in the share price, and so do I.
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