JB HI-FI'S true believers have used the recent near 7 per cent decline in the share price as a chance to load up.
While others were taking fright at the planned departure of Richard Uechtritz from the chief executive's chair, it has now surfaced that one of the biggest buyers was the Commonwealth Bank's fund management arm, Colonial First State.
Colonial has liked the stock for some time but has been hovering below the 5 per cent disclosure threshold.
In January, for example, Colonial was paying close enough to $22 for the stock.
But what happened last Monday when the stock was pushed below $19 enabled investors such as Colonial to buy up big at greatly reduced prices.
The JB board had a choice when it came to how to deal with Uechtritz's departure.
It could announce it separately or bundle it with the interim report which contained the usual hefty earnings increase.
Directors chose the latter presumably on the basis that the bullish earnings report - albeit one with slowing sales and earnings growth - would go some way to cancelling out the bearish perception of Uechtritz's passing of the baton to executive director Terry Smart.
While some punters took fright at Uechtritz's departure, Smart appears to be the great man's obvious successor.
Smart joined JB, along with Uechtritz, when private equity interests associated with Macquarie Bank bought the business 10 years ago. He, along with Uechtritz, then worked for three years readying the business for a float and when it went public - with the benefit of hindsight the business was given away - Smart was the operations and finance director who had developed the operational processes that underpinned its operations.
JB has made retailing look dead easy, but it is one of the hardest games under the sun and while Smart knows every nut and bolt of JB, the question now is whether he possesses that rare retailing gene. Colonial First State appears to think so, as it took a dominant hand in the two days' trading after the latest news, buying $19 million of stock and accounting for more than 15 per cent of the turnover.
SCV pulls up short
SCV Group, the retirement accommodation provider, has lost one of its big backers from the substantial shareholders' list following share sales by Alex Waislitz's investment company.
Waislitz's Thorney group has stuck with SCV for some time, but the company has failed to deliver big time after making a string of grandiose statements in 2007 when it raised millions from institutional investors.
At the time, SCV claimed it had a refocused business model and there was much bullish talk of the delivery of additional earnings and synergies.
In 2007, the outfit forecast tax-paid earnings of $1.8 million for 2006-2007.
The actual result turned out to be a $1.3 million profit.
The 2007-2008 forecast was anywhere between $2.7 million and $3.4 million and what happened?
Well, SCV weighed in with a total figure of $33 million, a
figure written not in black but in red ink. After that effort, SCV claimed it had ''repositioned its business'' and that the ''restructuring phase is now behind the company''.
''The business has been simplified, the majority of its outstanding historical issues have been resolved, and SCV is now focusing on lower risk and more predictable income streams,'' was how the company put it in 2008.
And what happened?
Well, last year SCV lost $6.7 million.
The company, which one year earlier declared that the restructuring phase was behind it and that the business had been repositioned, said that 2009 was a year where it restructured and repositioned the business.
The current year isn't looking brilliant. The company is yet to report its interim result, but operating cash flow was a $17,000 deficit for the December half, while cash on hand was $311,000, compared with $490,000 at the end of November.
The Waislitz camp isn't hanging around; in recent days they've been tipping stock out at one cent a share and less.
