Heavy selling but share price rises!

Unusually heavy trading in PlusNet shares today - including some very big sellers in the last couple of hours when approx 750,000 shares were sold. Strangely - considering that sales have far outnumbered buys today, the share price has risen by 9% to 114.5p at the time of writing.

Something funny going on...

Simon

Looking at the site you quoted most of the big "sells" are delayed publications which would mean (?) that most of the activity today has been buying hence the rise.

Probably on the back of the mounting coverage about TalkTalk, about how quickly they are getting their 0.5m customers online, their QoS, and the fact that LLU is looking increasingly like the silver bullet that never was (cf. Vodafone's recent decision to go BTW).

Maybe people are realising that PlusNet's prior market communications (About diversity of supply and providing a high QoS product) were the right strategy.

And yes - you can debate till the cows come home about whether they can actually deliver that strategy

A publication delay would normally only mean a delay of 60 minutes for trades >6 times bigger than the 'norm'. Unusually large transactions (>75 times the 'normal' size), would be classified as block trades and subject to a display delay of up to 5 days while the market maker tries to maximise his selling price. However, these delayed transactions should be flagged with the appropriate code, ie from 'V' for a delay of 1 day to 'Z' for a delay of 5 days. No such codes appear to be associated with these transactions today suggesting that the delay has been no more than 60 minutes..

Simon

You seem to know a lot about this, what's your best guess or hypothesis for the "something funny going on"?

It could mean that market makers are holding on to some big buys for a few days -- which in turn could mean that some insiders know something about an impending takeover bid or merger. Pure speculation of course...

Simon

Pipex have been frisky of late.

Interesting!

Do you think anyone would want to take over or merge with Plusnet? Their reputation and network is in tatters these days, seems to me such a takeover or merge would do more harm than good for whoever took them over, who would want to inherit the mess Plusnet have made in the last 18 months?

200,000 customers or thereabouts is probably worth taking on. Especially as most of them are in contracts that would reasoanbly secure most of the business for a good period of time.

Reputation wouldn't of course matter if the name was changed to say Pipex would it.

I wonder if Vodafone are setting up their own ISP, or looking to buy one...?