Subject: Re: Unite Group (UTG), UK, falling knife.
I noticed that the daily buyback rate increased from 150k shares per day average to 350k yesterday.
https://www.investegate.co.uk/...
One nice thing about the low price is that it amplifies the value of these buybacks.
Selling assets at book value to buy back stock, is a wonderful thing when NAV is (credibly) over 950p and the share price is 500p.
Buybacks have a meaningful impact on intrinsic value when the following three things are true together:
a) the stock is *very* mispriced, in either direction.
b) a *very* large amount of stock is bought; i.e. several % of the entire business, ideally >10%.
c) the money is not urgently needed for some purpose to keep the business running.
If Unite commit hard to buybacks and the price stays low, they can add a surprising amount of business value.
At yesterday's 350k shares/day for example, they would be buying back 7M shares each month of the 540M shares that exist.
They would buy back the entire business in just 5 years at that rate!
Which is good for you if you're the last person left holding the final share. ;-)
And while it is happening, the NAV/share of the remaining shares starts zooming upwards, making it even more financially attractive to do buybacks.
If you run the maths, there is almost no better business model for them right now than selling off every non-core asset that can be sold quickly for a good price, and doing absolutely huge buybacks.
There are very few UK REITs that have this kind of opportunity available to any degree.
I hope they will increase the buyback rate even further while the shares are so low, to lock in the win.
TRS