I was interested to read the substantial shareholder declaration...

I was interested to read the substantial shareholder declaration lodged today by the Commonwealth Bank. They have just over 5% of AMA now. You would think that a substantial investment by CBA in AMA would be a sign of confidence, but no. Most of the 36 million shares now controlled by the bank were borrowed from UBS and Merrill Lynch and others, presumably acquired in the capital raising last November. It won't be a coincidence that CBA began borrowing these shares in December 2019, along with other shorters, because that's when the share price started heading south. CBA is only obliged to declare this now, three months after the fact, because of the substantial shareholder rule. CBA would only continue to hold the shares if it saw significant further downside or because the settlement date for returning the borrowed shares had not been reached. It's all in the fine print of the announcement. As a long term investor in AMA, I am disgusted by this.

On the positive side, we now have a situation where a $200m company is on track to do $900m worth of business this year, and probably more than that next year. To my mind, that says AMA will not remain a $200m company for long. As has been said, the banks are flush with cash and don't want any company to fail (I'm assuming CBA has no involvement in financing AMA - that would be the height of reprehensible behaviour).

It is also encouraging to see that the government introduced anti-raiding laws a couple of days ago to protect beaten down Australian companies from the sort of hostile foreign takeover attempts which can easily materialize at such times.

It is unfortunate that a result of the capital raising, perhaps not foreseen at the time, was that the international hedge funds which subscribed to the raising became awash with AMA shares and decided to profit not by holding their investment in a quality company but to play off the back of a massive forced decline in the share price.

I hope the shorters get burned badly when people realize more broadly that AMA is a strong company with strong cash income and high quality guaranteed income at that.

I continue to hold what I have and buy more because I think AMA has a bright future. Regardless of what shorters may expect, I can't see AMA going away.