I find it amazing we are discussing whether Orbis could be selling. Yes they did sell in MDT but their selling was picked up by Legg Mason Asset Management recently at 14.7 cents per share. Lets look at the Orbis track record in REITs, they have acquired a group of heavily discounted REITs (refer Dec Report by Orbis?). Whilst their contrarian model is about buying undervalued assets, I not sure their unit holders would be very impresssed with their actual performance in these REITs & their overall performance as fund managers based on their published performance results, given many posters on CER would have bought far cheaper & in some cases actual earned profits by trading CER. Orbis hold plenty of REITs at the wrong price including CER. Given they hold about 18% even a 1% disclosure through a Substantial Shareholder Notice is going to send the rest of us running for the hills. In fact they are in so deep with CER they will either have to have years of patience to slowly feed this stock out or hope there is some corporate action which takes them out. Stocks like these fallen REITs were easy to accumulate in quantity but could be very hard to unload if you own millions & the whole market is aware you are selling. Selling 10 million CER is relatively easy, try 100's of millions & see how the market reacts. I don't know why we put Orbis up on a pedestal, given they started buying around 37 cents & have continued to buy all the way down. Lets hope they don't sack their fund manager in the short term, because new fund managers have a habit of dumping previous fund managers mistakes & starting out afresh. At current prices selling by Orbis would only be realizing losses on CER, so they probably don't have many choices at present unless a new fund manager for them has new ideas & wants to change the portfolio quickly. Regards Buffett PS This discussion of Orbis only confirms why I manage my own funds rather than allow them to be managed by a "Fund Manager"
CER Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
