missed out, page-16

Jukes,

Thanks yet again for one of your wonderfully rich and comprehensive posts, another one that you can cut & paste into that book.

It seems that the solution is therefore to ring the company and the registry in advance, to make sure you know the specific 'ex' date for the offer in question. It makes sense, and is a good precaution.

However, I still think it is ridiculous that so many relevant dates are published in regards to such offers, yet they fail to publish the 'ex' date. In my mind, it is the 3rd most significant date for both new investors and existing holders (after the start & finish dates), as for new investors it gives them a deadline, and for existing holders it gives them predictability in terms of the upcoming SP fluctuations (or a chance to use the 'Jukes method' of selling & repurchasing cheaper). I'd rate the 'Issue date' as the 4th most important, as by then it is all sorted out and you're just waiting to receive your extra shares. With the amount of mandatory reporting that goes on, having to specify the 'ex' would be a pretty basic one to have as standard. Why should everyone have to ring the company and/or registry to find out, and lots of investors want to know it.

Anyhow, now that I've vented that (I don't think it's just Monday-itis), another point of annoyance, as also mentioned by Jukes:

That investor who 'sold down 200 000 PLT shares taking out all the bids to 40.5c' on Friday afternoon ... how annoying was that?! It brought the SP right down just before the close of the offer, thereby reducing the 'feel-good' factor of those participating, yet denied others (such as RDBest?!) to pick up shares near that price unless they happened to already be parked in the 'Buy' column when they did the big sell. GRRRR!

On the positive side, at least it happened just prior to the offer close (rather than early on, which might have affected the raising), and 40c was never actually reached or breached (nor should it have been).

The thing I don't quite get about it, is if they didn't have enough money to buy into the extra 1/5 allocation, how does a trade on the last day provide money to actually pay PLT (given the settle next week), unless their broker forwarded the money or similar? Perhaps they already had the cash, but wanted to free up the equivalent funds for other on-market purchases.

Anyhow, let's hope the capital raising effects diminish rapidly and we can get the SP back to what it's really worth.

Talking of which, RDBest, have you noticed the SP is still trading low? At at this point in time, there are still 42c trades taking place, so if you were disappointed about missing out on 40c, it appears there are still some cheap shares to be had (IMO only of course, there are never guarantees things won't get cheaper again given market fluctuations / volatility etc.).

I wonder if today's selling action is from some rights participants who are taking a quick 5% to 10% profit (very short-sighted in my view, but each to their own).

As documented previously, I picked some up a couple of weeks ago at 45c (after the 'ex' date, and I knew it!), and have fully participated in the 1/5 rights, so I think I'm done making my PLT even more of an imbalance in the portfolio (10 other shares, but PLT has kind of taken over!), unless there are further drastic market downturns.

Cheers all, on to bigger and brighter things (and bring on the next announcement / investor report etc.!)