As difficult as it can be, I would suggest all holders to keep your mind in a calm, zen-like state, by ignoring all the downrampers next week. This far in, they will be doing everything they can to put you off balance. I'll be keeping a close eye on market activity next week, leading in to the announcement and chatting to a few "close friends" as we move closer.
There's a lot at stake here and many things uncertain to us, however I'm confident we will finally emerge stronger and rewarded.
I disclose my position now holding 500,000 units.
Had a revisit on some random quotes by Andrew Grech, taken from Kohler interview September 2015 (Not intended as any advice, but parts that I felt we needed to revisit) courtesy of MightyAtom.
On Quindell...
"We think we have made the right decision in moving on various business assets when we did... the judgement we made at the time was that in the best interests of Slater and Gordon to get assets in the state which allowed us to optimise value and that's what we're trying to do."
On shortsellers...
.."we can only disprove by performance. And so what we're concentrating our efforts on is the performance that we hope and believe will bring about dispelling the views of those in the short selling community that are, I think as you put it, you know, fairly aggressively
attacking Slater and Gordon shares."
"I'm sure that short sellers have and are making a tidy profit from events over the last several months and, you know, I share the pain of all our shareholders in that. I guess the only thing I can do as a shareholder is not sell my shares which of course I'm not doing, but what other shareholders do will of course depend upon their own position and their level of confidence about the future of the business overall.
Of course, you know, all shareholders are subject to the kind of crisis of confidence that being constantly in the media in a negative sense creates and it's you know, I agree with you that it is not a good look and it's something that we're trying to work to remedy..."
"I don't think that it's in the interest of Slater and Gordon shareholders for management to become distracted by trying to counter every proposition that's put by short sellers and to focus on them as a problem. The problem is that we need to prove that we've made a good decision, not a bad one, and as I said, you know, the only way we can really do that realistically is by performance. So we are not running away from that. You know we're all here working hard every day trying to do just that and keep ourselves, despite all the things going on, you know, more broadly, you know, with ASIC, you know, with the investigations that are going on, the inter-Quindell PLC in the UK and of course to the share price there's been a fair destruction of value in share price terms. That's not something any of us are happy about, all we can do to affect that or to improve that position is deliver the performance and that's what we're going to concentrate on.
On reputation...
"I think Slater and Gordon has always been a place where people don't mind fighting with their backs up against the wall and I think it's certainly true to say that in the context of what's in the public domain, we feel as though our backs are up against a wall. And so our job is to stay really, really focussed on what we're here to do and we're going to continue to do that."
When asked "It's possible that you won't be through all this entirely until next August ?"
"Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I think.. You know. I'd like to think that, you know, we have a reasonable half year and we can tell the story about why it is that the indicators for better performance are there. You know, I think that we'll start to see some recovery then. But sure, I mean there's no escaping the fact that we are playing a long game and that's understandable. You know, that's perfectly within their rights. But our job, our charter is to run the business for long term, sustainable returns and that's what we'll continue to do.
All the best to everyone. And again, not intended as advice. Goodluck to all next week !
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