do you want to follow orbis

Do you want to follow ORBIS?

ORBIS say;

“The basic philosophy underlying the ORBIS approach is the belief that while stock market prices are the best indicator of value for companies over very long periods of time, substantial deviations of those prices from their true value do occur over the short-to-medium term.

The Fund seeks higher returns than the Australian stock-market without greater risk of loss.”

ORBIS now has 44. 737m NBS shares under its wings. These are spread over 8 funds, but bulk of these shares are in following 3 funds;

ORBIS/SM Fund - 16.948m shares
Construction & Building Unions Fund - 8.781m shares
HESTA Super Fund (Health & Community Services Workers Fund) - 7.482m shares

ORBIS now “control” 10.34% of NBS shares, so if things turn to custard will not be so easy to exit gracefully?

The largest holding ORBIS/SM fund reported 6/09 they had shares in NBS to value of $4.548m in a portfolio of $367.797m

Based on latest disclosure ORBIS/SM will have about $7.6m NBS shares so taking current markets into consideration the current holding is probably no more than 2% of portfolio - probably less - so not a huge bet. Note at 30/6/09 the biggest ORBIS/SMS holding was NAB at around 4%. ORBIS/SM have 37 (30/6/09) stocks with holdings over 1% of portfolio - so not a high conviction investor! ;-)

It would be nice for some of us to think ORBIS has better info than the ordinary retail shareholder. They may have met management, but I think its fair to assume that whilst they are smarter than us (?) they have to make the same risk assessments that some people on this board are struggling with.

If ORBIS has been a significant buyer there have plenty of sellers - what happens when they stop buying - presumably this is now, if not quite soon.