Buyer of large piece Pumpkin Patch a mystery

A sizable chunk of Pumpkin Patch
was traded today, leading to speculation
as to who the purchaser might be and why.


Like other global markets New Zealand's NZX rallied today(19 March NZ time) by 1.4%.

Not as spectacular as the Dow's 400 plus points or Asian markets 3% plus rises but many of our stocks did well.

There are more months of bad news to come so don't forget what happened earlier this week please.

I must point out to readers of Share Investor that I noticed a stock that finally got bought in serious volumes today after being beaten down to its IPO price earlier this week.

Pumpkin Patch Ltd [PPL.NZ], the children's clothing retailer and manufacturer, hit $NZ1.5o yesterday and one or several sizable players got some serious action in the company to the tune of over 6.7 million shares. A very large daily amount for this company and the current thin liquidity of trading in NZX stocks in general at present.

Who the buyer was can only be speculation at present but there are several I'm willing have a stab at.

My first pick would be Carmel Fisher's Fisher Funds, who already have a sizable chunk north of 5% of the company and would clearly see the company as a steal considering the current price and the price they paid for the bulk of their chunk in the company.

A close second horse would be Jan Cameron, the former owner of the high fallootin outdoor lifestyle retailer Kathmandu and a recent large purchaser of shares in Postie Plus Group(PPG), another more "down market" New Zealand retailer.

Pumpkin Patch, like Kathmandu, is a strong, high margin, brand in its market/s and it would fit her investing profile for good companies bought at excellent prices.

Of course another outside guess would be an as yet unknown player getting a foothold in the company to launch some sort of bid for the retailer. I hope not.

3.6% of the company's shares were traded and the buyer got their stake at NZ$1.60.

The shares were up by 11c to $1.61.


Disclosure I own PPL shares in the Share Investor Portfolio.


Pumpkin Patch @ Share Investor

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