Date: Thursday 24 Oct 2013
LONDON (ShareCast) - Sports Direct’s founder Mike Ashley has sold 16m shares in the retailer, representing a 2.7 per cent holding and netting the billionaire owner of Newcastle United 106m pounds.
An announcement to the stock exchange revealed Ashley had sold the shares at a price of 662.5p, marking a 7.5% discount to Wednesday’s closing price of 712p and sending them tumbling nearly 4% to 683.61p on Thursday.
Ashley, who founded Sports Direct in 1982, still owns a 61.7% holding in the company and has agreed not to sell any more shares for another 180 days.
The share sale comes hot on the heels of a trading update from the retailer which was issued on Wednesday and showed group sales had risen 15.1% in the nine weeks to September 29th.
Stephan Shakespeare, the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of YouGov, disposed of 3.35m shares in the internet-based market research firm.
In a sale made for "personal financial and tax planning purposes" to repay a personal loan, Shakespeare traded the shares in for 76.5p each, earning a total of £2.56m. The director, who has pledged not to sell any more shares before at least 2015, now owns a 5.88% stake in the firm, equal to a total of just under 5.72m shares.
The disposal was made 10 days after the AIM-listed company posted an 8% increase in full-year revenue to £62.6m, while profit before tax and exceptional items swelled 13% to £6.8m.
The group invested in data products to lower its reliance on custom research, growing this area 17% in the year to account for 24% of group revenues.
YouGov continued to tighten its operating expenses, but as a result of the focus on data saw gross margins fall slightly due to higher external data collection costs as more international off-panel work was conducted.
Looking forward, Shakespeare said he was encouraged that clients were demanding “a more data centric focus” to their market research and that for the coming year the company expected to see continued growth in revenue and profits.
Top Director Buys
SThree (STHR)
Director name: Mr Gary Elden
Amount purchased: 15,149 @ 345.00p
Value: £52,264
HaloSource Inc. (Reg S) (HAL)
Director name: Mr Martin Coles
Amount purchased: 250,000 @ 17.25p
Value: £43,125
Centaur Media (CAU)
Director name: Mr Patrick Taylor
Amount purchased: 50,000 @ 51.00p
Value: £25,500
Falkland Oil & Gas Ltd. (FOGL)
Director name: Mr Tim Bushell
Amount purchased: 90,000 @ 28.00p
Value: £25,200
Falkland Oil & Gas Ltd. (FOGL)
Director name: Mr R T Liddell
Amount purchased: 75,000 @ 28.25p
Value: £21,188
Falkland Oil & Gas Ltd. (FOGL)
Director name: Mr Timothy S Jones
Amount purchased: 50,000 @ 28.25p
Value: £14,125
Melrose Industries (MRO)
Director name: Mr Justin Dowley
Amount purchased: 3,825 @ 300.42p
Value: £11,491
Top Director Sells
ASOS (ASC)
Director name: Mr Nicholas Robertson
Amount sold: 840,000 @ 5,000.00p
Value: £42,000,000
ASOS (ASC)
Director name: Mr Nicholas Robertson
Amount sold: 744,792 @ 5,000.00p
Value: £37,239,600
ASOS (ASC)
Director name: Mr Nick Beighton
Amount sold: 240,000 @ 5,000.00p
Value: £12,000,000
YouGov (YOU)
Director name: Mr Stephan Shakespeare
Amount sold: 3,350,000 @ 76.50p
Value: £2,562,750
Close Brothers Group (CBG)
Director name: Mr Jonathan Howell
Amount sold: 76,890 @ 1,271.32p
Value: £977,518
Alkane Energy (ALK)
Director name: Dr Dr Cameron Davies
Amount sold: 1,000,000 @ 40.00p
Value: £400,000
Close Brothers Group (CBG)
Director name: Mr Elizabeth Lee
Amount sold: 18,140 @ 1,270.91p
Value: £230,543
IG Group Holdings (IGG)
Director name: Mr Peter G Hetherington
Amount sold: 10,660 @ 616.00p
Value: £65,666
Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd. (Singapore) (DFI)
Director name: Mr Michael Kok
Amount sold: 5,400 @ $11.38
Value: $61,434
NR
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