EXCLUSIVE: Disgraced Neil Woodford vetoed delisting of RM2, source

Published 21 October 2019, 12:28

A source has come forward to Deputy Sheriff Towers in relation to the Woodford catastrophe that is AIM-listed (for now) RM2 (RM2), the maker of disruptive non wooden pallets. Firstly, I am told that RM2 was forced to list when everyone at the company knew it really was not ready: the product (those revolutionary trackable pallets) was still in development and the company was still guzzling cash. But roll forwards to 2016/17 when it had run out of cash and needed yet more funding, and a proposal was put to delist and take the company private – which was vetoed by Neil Woodford.

Redemptions Watch: Neil Woodford still behind those dodgy markets

Published 3 September 2019, 09:10

At the weekend I noted that Neil Woodford was blaming the markets for his terrible underperformance – it was nothing to do with him, natch. Yesterday the FTSE100 put on 1% and the FTSE All-Share, his benchmark for both the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF) and his Income Focus Fund (WIFF), put on 0.93%. But according to Morningstar, those two funds only put on 0.61% and 0.70% in NAV per unit respectively.

Kier-blimey! Today’s Woodford disaster is Kier (again)

Published 11 March 2019, 03:27

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Just when Neil Woodford might have thought it couldn’t get any worse (at least for a day or two), up pops fully-listed Kier Group (KIE) – whose rights issue refinancing saw the humiliation of being bailed out by the underwriters last December -  which seems to have found an extra £50  million of debt since its trading statement of just seven weeks ago……and capped  that with the announcement of a £25 million provision with regard to a redevelopment project at Broadmoor Hospital. As I write, the shares are at session lows of 412p  a drop of 85p, or 17%. Neil sure can pick’em.

Neil Woodford Redemptions Watch: a better day, but WPCT questions future viability of Woodford

Published 1 October 2019, 10:58

Yesterday the FTSE All-Share, Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus Funds, dropped 0.23% but for a change the Woodford unit trusts went up by 0.60% and 0.40% in NAV per unit respectively. Some good news for Neil: his Equity Income Fund has held on to the £3 billion mark for now, but redemptions continue at Income Focus.

Redemptions Watch: Neil Woodford on a roll but bad news is rolling too

Published 12 September 2019, 10:07

Yesterday Neil Woodford’s benchmark for his Equity Income and Income Focus Funds, the FTSE All-Share, put on 1% and Equity Income followed suit with a 1.11% gain in NAV per unit. But Income Focus ran up a storming 2.94% gain. It will be interesting to see how. Meanwhile joke NEX-listed Rutherford Health (RUTH) – the former Proton Partners – presented Neil with a £12.5 million bill for newly minted equity and this morning Oslobors-listed Thin Film has announced a new debt facility to keep the lights on – and yet another round of redundancies. As for other pending disasters, there is still no news from Eddie Stobart (ESL) in relation to its promise to release interims in early September, nothing from revolutionary washing machine outfit Xeros (XSG) in relation to its attempted £5-10 million fundraise and from Verseon (VERS) there is just deafening silence.

Woodford Dog Eve Sleep releases Interims….oh dear, Neil, got any cash?

Published 27 September 2019, 09:08

Neil Woodford’s revolutionary bedding company, AIM-listed Eve Sleep (EVE), has released its interim results and whilst the company boasts of the halving of EBITDA losses (bullshit losses), revenues are down and it reported losses of £6.7 million on revenues of £12.9 million. Of course, Neil Woodford knows best and has thrown ever more good money after bad into this one-way ticket to financial oblivion and now sees net current assets of £13 million as at 30 June, which the mathematicians of you will see is less than twice the H1 loss – and that was almost three months ago. Eve Sleep needs yet more cash…..and Neil hasn’t got any.

Neil Woodford’s Income Focus fund: down again as redemptions bite once more & hard!

Published 19 June 2019, 09:58

After a couple of days of relatively light redemptions, Neil Woodford is once again facing a wall of demands for cash out of his Income Focus Fund (WIFF). Data from Morningstar this morning shows that whilst the NAV per accumulation unit put on a measly 0.01%, the fund dropped heavily in magnitude yesterday: redemptions are back in spades.

Redemptions Watch – a bad day for Neil Woodford’s Income Focus Fund, but WPCT shows where the real damage is occurring

Published 3 August 2019, 08:20

We had a good day, now we’ve had a bad one. But it makes little difference: redemptions continue regardless at Neil Woodford’s Income Focus Fund (WIFF). According to Morningstar, yesterday saw a fall in NAV per unit of 1.03% which should have dropped the total fund size from £284.9 million to £281.97 million. And why is WPCT's share price still collapsing?

Notes from Underground - Thanks for the pageviews, Panorama

Published 27 October 2019, 11:00

It's pretty gratifying that Will Panorama credit the folk who exposed Neil Woodford on Monday: here are our top 50 exposes since 20 is the number one story this week. The Panorama effect has been slow, but real, in increasing readership to ShareProphets. 

Neil Woodford Redemptions Watch: it’s eyes down for a tsunami at Income Focus

Published 16 October 2019, 10:31

Yesterday Neil Woodford finally threw in the towel. Having been sacked as investment manager for his own namesake Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF), as we immediately pointed out here on ShareProphets, his fund management operation was no longer viable. Last night we learnt that Woodford had handed his notice in at WPCT and Income Focus, and will wind up Woodford Investment Management. It is an outcome we have been explicitly predicting for over a year and a half and now it has come to pass. The only question now is how much further humiliation can be heaped on Woodford, and that day of reckoning is already upon us.

Woodford Investment Management files accounts… £14 million reward for failure

Published 7 January 2020, 10:33

What does not stink in the annual accounts for Woodford Investment Management which surfaced at Companies House yesterday? The £14 million dividend paid to Neil and his business partner Craig Newman surely is top of the list but then there are the dates…. Let me explain.

Kier – in comes new CEO Andrew Davies who calls a strategic review. Will Woodford be vindicated?

Published 15 April 2019, 08:28

Andrew Davies narrowly missed out on what surely would have been the corporate hospital pass of the decade – last year he was announced as the new CEO of Carillion, but it went bust before he got his feet under the desk. Now he comes in as the new CEO of Kier (KIE) and despite the rights offer of last December, his first move is a strategic review.

Ouzo Time: Woodford Calamity Rutherford Health crashes off Aquis - all the £100m+ of money's gone

Published 23 December 2021, 08:12

At 3:42pm yesterday it was announced that Aquis lobster-potted Rutherford Health (RUTH) – formerly Neil Woodford shambles Proton Partners – is to delist, thus bringing to an end what must have been the most outrageous listing by Neil Woodford on the market today. This follows a management restructuring – getting rid of the CEO, the Chair and a raft of NEDs – after the company failed to raise new money and the cash ran out, leaving it reliant on bridging finance and the arrival of a Chief Restructuring Officer.

Shocker: Neil Woodford Equity Income fund will be gated until Easter at least

Published 16 June 2019, 09:49

We have speculated about how much cash Neil Woodford needs to raise within his sunken flagship fund, the suspended Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF), in order to get the current gating lifted. Of course, because it wasn’t really an equity income fund at all due to the massive exposure to unlisted and illiquid holdings in companies that not only offered no dividend but actually need feeding so that will be quite an ask. We know that it had been suffering redemptions at a rate of about £10 million a day until the shutters came down when Kent County Council asked for its £238 million back on June 3rd. So that’s about £250 million (Kent plus that day’s redemption requests) already.

The Nomates Neil Woodford 2001 excuse/defence - it's just a Maginot line

Published 25 August 2017, 01:55

It is quite amazing to see just how few friends fund manager Neil Woodford has in the City these days. It is almost as if I am starting to feel that he is a kindred spirit. Neil, how about we have a joint Square Mile Christmas party for all of our friends in a telephone kiosk somewhere? The vast fees Nomates has charged for delivering three years of dismal underperformance do not play well but it is the arrogant insistence that Mr Market is always wrong because Nomates knows better that has unleashed such waves of schadenfreude after his latest disasters. But he still has one or two defenders who say "aha remember 2001" - but this Maginot defence does not wash.

This week’s top disaster for Neil Woodford

Published 7 April 2019, 05:18

Our good friends over at Citywire have again come up with bad news for Neil Woodford, in revealing that investors in his Equity Income Fund (EIF) reacted badly to last month’s sequence of dismal news by cashing out to the tune of £160 million. Having started March with £4.7 billion, EIF slumped to £4.4 billion last month which suggests that redemptions are not the only problem for Woodford.

Reader Post of the Weekend: Woodford Dog BenevolentAI – Temasek 10, Woody “nul points”

Published 7 October 2019, 12:17

I am indebted to Pierotlunaire for his post over the weekend on my piece Woodford Dog BenevolentAI: as predicted......but it is good news really! for the paperwork for Temasek’s investment into this cash-hungry dog has arrived at Companies House and as expected Temasek has take its pound of flesh.

The “good news” for Neil Woodford was that BenevolentAI had managed to attract an investment of $90 million from Temasek. The valuation of BenevolentAI was hit for six, dropping to around $1 billion (from $2 billion) but the other piece of good(ish) news for Neil was that this would drop his unquoted investments held in his Equity Income Fund, which was at the time well over its limit of 10% of the fund – partially because the dodgy Guernsey listings had been scrapped. But of course it also meant that book value of his investments in BenevolentAI had halved at the stroke of a pen.

Neil Woodford - now about the missing dividends and another thing

Published 3 January 2018, 04:21

I gather that Neil Woodford's office has been busy dealing with questions relating to our most excellent series of articles and podcasts over Christmas. I have been made aware of its responses which are detailed but still leave me feeling incredibly unsettled on two major factors.

Neil Woodford’s flagship Equity Income Fund – May scores-on-the-doors as the losses and redemptions pile up and the noose tightens

Published 2 June 2019, 12:47

Neil Woodford has had a rotten month of May. His pride and joy Equity Income Fund started the month at £4.33 billion but finished at £3.71 billion – a shocking drop of 14.3% in one calendar month and two of the four accumulation units closed below the launch price of 100p almost five years ago. But how much of that was due to poor stockpicking and how much was the flood of his investors heading for the exit?

Are the wheels about to come off Neil Woodford’s Proton Partners valuation?

Published 9 July 2019, 09:29

A stack of TR-1 RNSs yesterday afternoon detailed the transfer of stocks by Neil Woodford, who was sacked by the Omnis Income and Growth fund, to its new manager, Jupiter. Among them was one from Proton Partners (NEX:PPI), which Neil offered a funding commitment to in order to see its joke NEX-listing complete and now can claim an instant profit every time the company calls on him for more money. But there could be a fly in the ointment….