Ahmed Fahour: bowing out. Photo: Jessica Shapiro
TERRY Smart — a member of the JB Hi-Fi brains trust — has peeled off a modicum of shares in the wonder retailer.
Reporting a 42 per cent improvement in pre-tax earnings on a 28 per cent sales gain for the December half-year, JB scrip has managed a nice little rally in an overall market that's been heading south.
Just the other day, Smart sold 140,000 shares at $10.89 apiece — raising a useful $1.5 million.
Smart — the chief operating officer who joined the management buy-in of JB nearly nine years ago — has a good record indeed when it comes to JB shares and, for that matter, when it comes to keeping the retailer's extraordinary record intact.
In 2007 when the scrip soared to $17 or thereabouts, he let go a modest little parcel of 115,000 shares at $16.66 each — raising $1.9 million.
Then in August last year, Smart — along with Richard Uechtritz, the head of the JB brains trust — sold again, reducing his stake by 250,000 shares at $13.33 each. That raised $3.3 million.
In the months following both those sales, JB scrip declined by close enough to 50 per cent.
Hopefully for JB's happy band of shareholders history won't repeat itself.
Smart, by the way, retains $16.5 million of stock, as well as a swag of unexercised options.
Ups and downs
AHMED Fahour is bowing out of National Australia Bank against a background of a share price that is down by one third since he joined the board more than four years ago.
When he stepped down on Friday, he had $11.6 million of ordinary shares under his belt, but it wasn't all profitable sailing when it came to Fahour's share dealing.
That was because he boldly stepped into the market when the financial crisis hit and repeatedly bought NAB shares when they were on the slippery slide.
Little more than one year ago, Fahour paid $37 for 60,100 shares — an all-up cost of $2.2 million.
At the end of February last year he was again back in the market, spending $1.4 million on 50,000 shares at $28.73 each.
Near the end of the financial year, he picked up another 20,000 shares at $26.85 apiece, costing $537,000.
What hope do mere mortals have in the market when someone from the inner ranks of the banking industry gets it wrong like that?
But, of course, Fahour didn't only buy NAB shares. There was that line of 130,000 shares he decided to let go on November 3 last year at $24.78 each, a sale that realised $3.2 million.
And what a sale it was! A week later, the bank placed $3 billion of stock with institutions at $20 a share.
NAB shares are now at $18.01.
Clime change on way
FUND management companies have been on the nose with punters and Clime Investment Management has been no exception.
Clime has fallen from near enough to $1.30 to current levels of 20 cents, and the company has already flagged mark-to-market unrealised losses of about $2.5 million for the half-year just completed.
There is change under way on the register with Sam Kaplan's funds management outfit pushing the selling button in recent weeks. He has been tipping the shares out big time, including one 2.3 million line of shares at 17.5 cents each.
He's not the only one who is no longer on the substantial shareholder register.
Roger Montgomery, the Buffett devotee and public face of stablemate Clime Capital, has surprisingly exited as a substantial shareholder, following the sale of shares below 20 cents.
So who's been buying? Well, sniffing around the unwanted share bin have been interests associated with Geoffrey James Wilson, whose funds management interests have bought about 1 million shares at around 17.5 cents, so increasing their grip on the capital to 21.5 per cent.
