Crystal Amber Live Discussion

TX2 17 May 2017

Re: Hurricane damage ? ..... CRS presently has around 11% of HUR;at peak it was about 15%.It has been & remains its best investment to date.The shares remain at a multiple of the price it subscribed for the shares & it has realised significant profit from sales.CRS also has warrants to take up further shares @ 20p.It is very difficult to put a valuation on HUR at this stage & I expect that we will see substantial movements in the share price as HUR progresses its development plans.

sage in the hills 16 May 2017

Hurricane damage ? ..... .....Will CRS have unloaded some of its Hurricane holding ? .....( which was a very substantial holding ? .....)SAGE

Johandesilva 08 May 2017

NAV report this week Looking at the top 10 holdings only, the share price trades at about 6% lower than expected considering Hurricane Energies gain over the past week.

IOMINVESTCOM 02 May 2017

Winterflood - Write up Well worth reading the full pdf version of their review of the fund.Crystal Amber* – Unique approach delivering strong returns · Unique investment approach – Crystal Amber is managed by Richard Bernstein who employs an activist investment approach to invest in UK special situations where he believes value can be released regardless of the market direction. Ideas are generated through screening processes and the manager’s network of contacts, which includes the fund’s institutional shareholders.· Small cap bias – The fund tends to invest in smaller companies in order to take meaningful stakes and therefore exert greater influence. At 31 March the average market cap of the fund’s top 10 holdings was £313m and they ranged from £22m to £1,026m. · Concentrated portfolio – The portfolio is concentrated with just 17 holdings and at the end of March the fund’s largest five holdings represented 75% of NAV, while the top 10 represented 92%. As at 31 March the fund’s largest holding was Hurricane Energy, which represented 34% of the fund’s NAV.· Strong performance record – The fund has a strong performance record both in absolute and relative terms. Over the last five years its NAV is up 148% compared with 59% for the FTSE All Share and 96% for the NSC Index. The fund has also outperformed the average returns of the UK All Companies sub-sector (+81%) and the UK Small Cap sub-sector (+117%) over the same period.Winterflood ViewWe believe that Crystal Amber’s activist investment approach offers the potential for idiosyncratic returns independent of the market direction. This is also demonstrated by its low beta to relevant UK equity indices, which the manager attributes to his focus on asset-backed businesses. The fund has a strong performance record, although we would highlight that the concentration of the portfolio and the long-term approach mean that performance can be lumpy. With the fund’s shares currently trading on a discount of around 4%, the fund is not necessarily a value proposition at present, however, discount risk is alleviated to a certain extent by an active share buyback programme that has maintained the discount tighter than 10% since 2013. Crystal Amber has been backed since its launch in 2008 by a number of leading institutional investors and we believe this reflects Richard Bernstein’s reputation both in identifying attractive special situations and effecting change. In our opinion this fund is a specialist vehicle that should prove complementary to mainstream UK funds through its activist investment approach.

IOMINVESTCOM 27 Mar 2017

Re: Re- HUR related 27 March 2017For immediate release: 27 March 2017This announcement contains inside information.Hurricane Energy plc("Hurricane" or the "Company"Completion of Halifax Well Operations and Release of the Transocean Spitsbergen RigWell Results Indicate that Lancaster and Halifax are a Single Hydrocarbon AccumulationHurricane Energy plc, the UK based oil and gas company focused on hydrocarbon resources in naturally fractured basement reservoirs, announces that operations on the 205/23-3A well (the "Halifax Well" are complete.The Company can confirm that the well is an oil discovery with initial data analysis indicating Halifax is linked to the Lancaster field forming a single large hydrocarbon accumulation.The information below relating to the Halifax Well is preliminary and will be updated following detailed analysis once the final well data and third party reports have been received and analysed.The principal purpose of the Halifax Well was to support the Company's view that the Lancaster Field and the Halifax prospect are one large connected structure. Well results support the Company's opinion. The Halifax Well has successfully identified an extensive oil column, significantly below local structural closure. The reservoir interval encountered is pervasively fractured with porosities similar to those at Lancaster. The Company believes that the deeper oil down to ("ODT" at 1,846m true vertical depth subsea ("TVDSS" identified in the Halifax Well, compared with an oil water contact ("OWC" at Lancaster at 1,678m TVDSS, is most likely caused by a tilted OWC.The Halifax Well was drilled and cased to 1,179m TVDSS in accordance with the Company's drilling programme which was designed to isolate a potential gas cap and oil bearing column to a depth of 100m true vertical thickness ("TVT" below structural closure. It was subsequently drilled to 1,801m TVDSS and a Drill Stem Test ("DST" was undertaken. However, constrained by budget, available time and the safety requirement of drilling overbalance, the well was unable to clean up and recovered only traces of formation oil to surface. The well was finally TD'ed at 2,004m TVDSS, with no confirmed OWC encountered.Following discussions with the Oil & Gas Authority, the Halifax Well has been suspended to allow for potential future operations to either deepen and/or undertake further testing of the well, the programme for which will be determined following analysis of the well results.Preliminary third party analysis from the Halifax Well indicates:-- a very significant hydrocarbon column of at least 1,156 metres is present within the basement extending well below local structural closure (which is at 1,040 metres TVDSS);-- that the basement reservoir below the final casing point (1,179m TVDSS) is pervasively fractured (based on initial analysis of borehole image logs processing); and -- that porosity is consistent with that at Lancaster (based on initial petrophysical analysis. The Spitsbergen rig has demobilised and is no longer on hire to Hurricane.Dr Robert Trice, Hurricane's CEO, commented:"This is a highly significant moment for Hurricane and I am delighted that the Halifax Well results support the Company's view that its substantial Lancaster discovery has been extended to include the Halifax licence. We believe that the GLA is a single hydrocarbon accumulation, making it the largest undeveloped discovery on the UK Continental Shelf.The discovery of a 1km hydrocarbon column at Halifax validates the efforts the Company undertook to acquire the licence and drill, test and log the Halifax Well through the winter months. Given the positive well results, the Halifax Well has been suspended to provide the Company the option to return to undertake further testing as well as provide the option to deepen the well and thereby establish a definitive oil water contact.The end of the Halifax Well marks the

IOMINVESTCOM 27 Mar 2017

Re: Re- HUR related Hurricane Energy’s latest discovery points to a field with more than a billion barrels of oilDANNY LAWSON/PAHurricane Energy has made another oil discovery near the Shetland Islands, bolstering hopes that it may have the biggest find in British waters this century.The Surrey-based oil company is expected to announce today that surveys of its Halifax well in an area off the west of the Shetland Islands have identified a “kilometre-deep oil column” linked to its existing Lancaster find.This appears to be part of “a single large hydrocarbon accumulation”, the company is expected to say.The geological formation, where a series of successful wells have already been drilled, is thought to contain more than one billion barrels of oil, fuelling hopes of a revival for Britain’s hard-pressed oil industry.The collapse of global oil prices in 2014 has hit the North…Want to read more?Register with a few details to contin

IOMINVESTCOM 27 Mar 2017

Re- HUR related Hurricane Energy has made another oil discovery near the Shetland Islands, bolstering hopes that it may have the biggest find in British waters this century.

pharmaspecialist 24 Feb 2017

Worried by GI Dynamics Investment I must admit I was somewhat suprised to see Crystal Amber investing in a one-trick medical device company quoted in Australia as I would have thought this would be outside Crystal Amber's comfort zone. I also note the slightly unusual background of the two most senior members of GI's management, being ex-miltary personnel who changed career direction into the pharma/medical device sector. However, there are board members with more traditional medical training. I hope Crystal Amber has access to the necessary medical and scientific personnel to access and monitor this investment. I wonder if this "opportunity" may have been supported by Neil Woodford who has an association with Crystal Amber and whose poor investments in biotech have been highlighted by the media. I know GI Dynamics is a medical device, rather than biotech company but both sectors require medical, scientific and technical knowledge which I do not believe either Crystal Amber or for that matter, Woodford have. Having said that, Crystal Amber is a very successful fund so I hope my concerns are unjustified and GI Dynamics will prove to be as successful as most of their investments. I have a feeling that Crystal Amber would probably agree that this investment has quite a high risk to reward ratio!

TX2 22 Feb 2017

Re: re:Sutton Harbour Sutton Harbour represents about 3.5% of CRS portfolio by value so not a major problem.Sutton lost millions trying to run the airport even trying to stimulate business by running a regional airline,all an abject failure.I agree however it is likely that any development on the airport site is probably years away.Ironically development of the airport site for other purposes would create many jobs......

wineberry 21 Feb 2017

re:Sutton Harbour The Plymouth & West Devon joint plan is putting large emphasis on re-opening Plymouth Airport. This site is therefore likely to remain unused for some considerable time.

IOMINVESTCOM 21 Feb 2017

Amber warning – the investor whose interest signals danger Amber warning – the investor whose interest signals dangerRichard Bernstein, creater and fund manager behind the Crystal Amber Fund From outside it appears nothing more than another of the anonymously plush townhouses that stand silent sentry in Mayfair, London. But behind the dark front door of this eighteenth-century terrace building is the nerve centre of Crystal Amber, one of Britain’s most feared activist investors.When the investment fund appears on a firm’s shareholder register, both the company’s management and other investors can be guaranteed that the business in question is in line for a shake-up. The £230m listed fund, led by City veteran Richard Bernstein, has a record of triggering seismic change at the small and mid-cap companies where it builds stakes. Many of the firms it targets are eventually taken over. As a result, whenever Crystal Amber starts buying shares in a business, the City pays attention.One of my shareholders has said to me, ‘Richard, you’re not really a fund manager, you’re a businessman’“The correlation between companies we invest in which are subsequently taken over is very high,” muses Bernstein, dressed in a dark suit and shirt and sitting at a conference table in Crystal Amber’s offices, just a few minutes’ walk from Hyde Park.ADVERTISING“One of my shareholders has said to me, ‘Richard, you’re not really a fund manager, you’re a businessman,’ and I look at businesses as the same way as a businessman does. I look at our portfolio now and I can see why a lot of these businesses are attractive.”The fund has held stakes in the film studios business Pinewood, the chocolatier Thorntons, and the Irish airline Aer Lingus, and all three have been snapped up by suitors within the past two years. Pinewood was bought by a property fund for £323m, Thorntons was swallowed up by its Italian competitor Ferrero in a £112m deal, and Aer Lingus was taken over by British Airways owner International Airlines Group for €1.4bn.All of these deals generated lucrative returns for Crystal Amber and its heavyweight shareholders, which include the top fund manager Neil Woodford and City giant Aviva Investors. Bernstein, 54, insists with a ready smile that he does not pursue the type of aggressive activist campaigns favoured by US funds, despite his success in overhauling companies and turning them into bid targets.Traditionally, investor activism has been more common in the US, where hedge funds including Elliott Management and Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square are not averse to publicly criticising companies where they hold stakes.“We’re not the US brand of activism,” Bernstein says. “Our default position is not to be antagonistic towards management teams. In nine years of our existence we’ve called one EGM and that was a company where most of the board resigned that morning after we called it.”That is not to say, however, that Bernstein is afraid of going public and castigating company bosses when he believes he is not being listened to.“Our style is contrarian, patient, supportive,” he says. “But when management teams are deliberately obstructive and acting in their own interest rather than the stakeholders, then that is unacceptable and we act.”It was during one of those confrontations that did burst out into the open that Crystal Amber first came to widespread prominence in the City. In 2010, two years after Bernstein set up the fund with the backing of Woodford, he was involved in a high-profile spat with Michael (now Lord) Grade as he urged Grade, then chairman of Pinewood, to step down.“He’s probably a great guy to have at a dinner party, but in our assessment he doesn’t have the desire, the determination, the sweat, or the toil to get the best for shareholders,” Bernstein was quoted as saying at the time.Richard Bernstein “I always enjoyed the stock market and the psychology of what makes a share go up”The dispute thrust him into the spotligh

IOMINVESTCOM 20 Dec 2016

Re: CRS - Camellia related - Duncan Law... And Sutton Harbour

TX2 20 Dec 2016

Re: CRS - Camellia related - Duncan Lawrie ... In addition the uplift in share price here was probably caused by the good news from Hurricane.

IOMINVESTCOM 20 Dec 2016

CRS - Camellia related - Duncan Lawrie disposal [link]

IOMINVESTCOM 15 Dec 2016

Paul Scott's view - Sutton Harbour related to CRS This is a special situation, as the company is under Strategic Review, and might end up being sold. It owns a number of unusual assets, including a leasehold on Plymouth Airport (closed since 2011). How that land might eventually be used will dramatically affect SHH. According to today's update:The final Department for Transport Review of the viability of re-opening the former Plymouth Airport is still awaited and the Group will update investors as soon as it is available... The Plymouth and South West Devon Joint Local Plan will be subject to an independent Government Inspector's scrutiny at the 'Examination in Public' ("EiP" currently scheduled for Autumn 2017. A long wait might be in store here. The only attractive element to this complicated saga is the considerable discount to NAV (£24 million market cap versus £40m NAV).[link]