This column has commented in the not so distant past about the attractions of Arnotts as an investment and how these attractions have been ignored by institutional investors with their fixation on large capitalisation stocks.
As a retailing company sitting on a large chunk of prime real estate in Dublin's main shopping area, Arnotts deserves better treatment from the market. But then, so do a lot of companies. Such poor treatment has led to Nelson Loane moving to take Adare private, Noel Smyth doing likewise at Dunloe Ewart and Stephen Vernon to look at a gamut of options for Green Property.
An unfair discount to net asset value (NAV) is one of the reasons for management discontent in property companies, and certainly there is no doubt that Arnotts (a quasi-property company) can feel hard done by trading on a near 20 per cent discount to NAV.
The share price might not have moved, but there are signs of movement on the Arnotts share register with Bank of Ireland Asset Managers (BIAM) suddenly buying an 8.2 per cent chunk of the company and emerging from nowhere to become the fourth biggest shareholder.
Who sold? It isn't clear whether BIAM got its stake from one seller or trawled the market mopping up whatever stock was available.
But the only bigger shareholders are the Arnotts pension fund (unlikely sellers), Arnotts director and senior counsel Richard Nesbitt (also unlikely) and Fidelity.
It had just under 10 per cent before the BIAM deal, but so far it has made no disclosure indicating that it was the seller. We await developments.
