Daily Stock Market Report (Fri 30 May 2025) - HVO, MNG, AUTO, BOWL

Fri 6:02am by Graham Neary

49 comments 4744 reads

Good morning and welcome to Friday's report!

The quiet RNS will give me a chance to circle back to some of yesterday's releases that we missed.

Mello 2025: Ed, Mark and I will be at Mello in London next week, which will be a great chance to meet some of you in person. If you'd like to go and haven't booked it yet, we can offer a discount code "STOCKOPEDIA50", which can be used at this link. See you there!

12pm: today's report is finished, have a nice weekend everyone and I'll see you in person at Mello next week, if you can make it! Cheers.

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
M&G (LON:MNG) (£5.4bn)	Dai-ichi Life and M&G form strategic partnership	SP +6% M&G becomes preferred asset management partner in Europe for major Japanese insurer. Expected to deliver >$6bn of new business flows for M&G over five years. Dai-ichi Life intends to acquire 15% of M&G through on-market purchases and will then have the right to representation on M&G Board. Trading update: performance year-to-date is “broadly in line”.	AMBER/GREEN (Graham) [no section below] M&G’s total AUM was £346 billion as of Dec 2024 and so >$6bn (£4.45bn) of new business over five years may not be all that material. However, notice that the Japanese company will buy 15% of M&G shares through on-market purchases (regulators permitting) is interesting - and a good reason to mark up M&G shares in advance of those purchases. I’m moderately positive on M&G although I do find it very complex - we looked at its final results in March.
Harmony Energy Income Trust (LON:HEIT) (£209m)	Offer Lapsed	Drax offered 88p but that offer has now lapsed in favour of a 92.4p bid from Foresight group (LON:FSG).	PINK [no section below] Drax explained last week that they “take a disciplined approach to acquisitions”, and therefore would not be increasing their bid.
hVIVO (LON:HVO) (£111m)	Trading Update	SP down 57% Major profit warning. Significant contract cancellation alongside a postponement and a smaller study cancellation. New 2025 revenue forecast £47m if there are no further contract wins (prev: £73m). New op profit forecast: loss of £12.1m (prev: profit of £5.8m).	BLACK (RED) (Graham) Net cash that's nearly as large as the current market cap provides some comfort. But losses are expected to eat into that…

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Mark L.

Fri 11:48am

Also some senior indivuals in the US Government administration are vaccine sceptics. That does not bode well downstream for the type of respiratory virus challenge trials thathVIVO (LON:HVO) offers.

I sometimes listen to a podcast on viruses (this weel in Virology). It has recounted US government research labs and staff being closed down overnight.

So I am today one of the disappointed hVIVO (LON:HVO) shareholders, and I don't hold out much hope for a recovery from US originated pharmaceuticals trials. The issue isn't tarriffs it's their administrations approach to science and medicine.

Albertos

Fri 1:38pm

ITM Power (LON:ITM)

Price spike on about double volume.

Probably one of the two disclosed shorts closing I think.

Hold a speculative small position here on the basis that hydrogen could gain traction in the energy transition.

But you've always got to remember Betamax.

Barry Addison

Fri 3:20pm

I bought more this morning - in fact more than doubled my holding for a pittance really. The drop just seemed significantly overdone imo especially with the cash being so close to the new (low) market value. I can't blame Mo, the CEO, for this - it is surely caused by the situation in the US which was openly discussed in the Press and the forums when Trump took office.

Fri 3:29pm

Management base their forecasts by looking at the pipeline and applying a success percentage to each one. I had thought that they would have lowered those percentages once Trump was elected. We were never informed what was the value was of the large contract but plainly it was a real whopper and that is the real problem we have here - the smaller contract losses and the postponement would have been absorbed otherwise.

Richard P

Fri 3:40pm

Warehouse Reit (LON:WHR) done deal at 110.6 p - another UK listed entity off the market. Long drawn out drama now over with

NeilS

Fri 3:42pm

FWIW I’ve held since 2017. The value is pretty much unchanged but it’s returned slightly over 50% of my purchase cost in dividends with reasonably low volatility.

I feel quite confident in the ability of the managers to assess risk and structure loans for upside and as a specialist I think they are a go to source for funding in the industry and can cherry pick good opportunities.

Fri 4:03pm

? Not yet! I read PUSU extended to 6th June.

TheHitman

Fri 4:10pm

The detail is in the RNS NeilS of the revised final offer.

timarr

Fri 4:25pm

NeilS is correct, this is not a final offer.

The RNS is a PUSU deadline extension extending the offer period by a week and notifying that market that that revised bid price is 110.6p. Blackstone haven't submitted a final offer and could still pull out, although that's presumably unlikely unless there's a world wide financial crisis in the next week.

Although, frankly, at the moment anything is possible.

https://www.londonstockexchang...

Charles Mitchell

Fri 4:26pm

Albertos I four interested in hydrogen have a look at Hydrogenone Capital Growth (LON:HGEN) Been a bad investment for me- I bought on launch as keen on the sector. Now trading on a crazy discount to NAV of 70% despite the NAV only falling 11% since launch. They are, in my opinion, going to have to do something re the discount. I would think maybe another lot larger hydrogen fund might/should have a look at it.

But I have no reason to think that is happening I hasten to say.

Fri 4:35pm

Buts it's recommended ...

But*

Fri 4:42pm

Warehouse Reit (LON:WHR)

Buts it's recommended ...

So was the previous one, but Blackstone renegotiated that.

At this stage it's unlikely to not go through but I have seen it happen when a financial crash occured between the recommendation and the final bid. However, a mere week's extensuon does imply the extra time is to finalise terms rather than to allow further due diligence.

timarr

Fri 4:47pm

"On 19 May 2025, Blackstone submitted a final* revised proposal at 110.6 pence per share"

Seems final to me, save the usual caveats. It's not a done deal though. That I agree on.

Bouden54

Fri 5:41pm

Seems a pretty poor deal at a 15% discount to NAV.

Fri 7:46pm

Bottom line is that the takeover is now 99% going ahead at 109p and will be wrapped up imminently next week.

Mark Carter

Sat 6:53am

HVO was a share I bought back in Jan at about 20p. I heard many positive things about it and thought it sounded pretty good. I sold out 2 months later at 15p when I realised I had made a mistake. The company seemed way too promotional to me, and too eager to buy other businesses.

Shares are now 8.7p. Sometimes there's just a bad "smell" to a company and it pays to get out.

WDWombat

Sat 4:53pm

Dai-ichi Life is one of the 'great' Japanese life companies. Their Tokyo HQ was taken over as the HQ of the US occupying force under Macarthur after the WW2 Japanese surrender. Many years ago there was a minor agreement with Baillie Gifford which involved Dai-ichi personnel studying BG investment methods in Edinburgh, allied, I believe to some investments capital placed with BG. This looks much weightier with the key difference being the apparent intention to act as a major share buyer. I can't see that it would prove anything less than beneficial for M&G. Incidentally, Dai-Ichi was for many years a mutual life company but the company was listed under the Japanese market code 8750 some years back. I would guess the company is enjoying the benefits of an higher interest rate environment. The market cap is just over £20bn equivalent, roughly x4 the size of the British-based company.

Silver Moon

Sun 8:07am

Re M&G (LON:MNG) which I have kept on principally for the dividend I should think if it had used half the dividend on buy-backs the picture would be quite different to the present.

Sun 10:35am

Thanks for that Charles

I will investigate.

Daily Stock Market Report (Fri 30 May 2025) - HVO, MNG, AUTO, BOWL

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Graham Neary

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