Top 20 Movement, page-193

May Top 20

Sorry for the delay on my Top 20 summaries - I've been snowed under with EOFY wrap up. I'll post May update here and will get around to June in the next week or two (will be more interesting given recent updates).

There was some substantial developments amongst the Top 20, let alone a big trading day on 20th May where we jumped 22% with associated huge volume of 40m traded.

Buyers - No.1 Citicorp added 10.7m or an extra 1.8% on their holding
No. 4 Richard Lockwood - long term NED increased his holding by 5m shares (equal to the amt of performance rights he had, so not sure if this was retail purchase or not - would be in the published docs somewhere). Inc of 3%. His last SH addition of 3m was July 23.
No. 5 HSBC added 8.8m, but more significantly this was a 25% increase on April
No. 11 Molate has added (1.1m) for the 2nd month in succession, moving him up a couple of spots

Sellers - No.2 BNP (Clearstream) - sold down 4.1m or 3.8%. This fund has traditionally shown a lot of activity and appears to trade AUC. Zooming out, they actually hold more than they did now compared to July 23.
No. 3 BNP sold 2.8m or 3.2%
No. 8 Denis Rakich (ex director) sold another 500K parcel. Tax obligations? June/July will tell.

While there's been a lot of banter about the CR and impending consolidation, my personal view is that AUC is slowly awakening and the arduous work by the board so far is placing themselves well for further funding from larger players. For all the retail guys out there complaining that they weren't included in the CR, there won't be much to complain about once their SH is valued at multiples of current pricing. Given the relatively short time lines and expected news queue, less trading and more holding should see us benefit well.

June figures with 1st tranche CR and July with 2nd tranche will complete the story of who's doubled down at the top end of SH's.