RE: Market ActivityThe share trading on this company is turning into a joke. Its a penny ante game, which is certainly appropriate for a company with the reputation that ISM has built, but its juvenile even by ISM standards. In my opinion, there can be no doubt, when reviewing the trade history, that operation of the NCIB is affecting ISM share price in a way that is not the intention of the relevant regulations. A buyer, often anonymous, buys a small number of shares moving the price up, and immediately PI Financial Corp [the house handling the share buy back for ISM] initiates an insider buy. The share price has been moved up on volume comprised mainly of ISM buy-back transactions and the preceding [suspicious?] minor uptick trades.
As mentioned, its penny ante, and likely does not meet the materiality level for those that regulate the NCIB, who might review trading. But it might be worth checking this out with the powers that be.
The irony of the games, if indeed games are being played, is that from the ISM shareholders' perspective it has proved to be a no win exercise. This company is into its third share buy back of the past few years. By their definition of the reason for the NCIB, they have grossly misread the market's valuation of ISM - spending company cash to buy shares all the way from 93 cents down to the mid-teens - steadily downward. what has this done for the company? That's obvious - buying shares in a company that has steadily dropped to one sixth of its value, does not make economic sense, even if the buyer company is buying its own shares. So why does management persist in this nonsense? That's a difficult one to assess. Given management's penchant for implementing strategies that make no sense at the time, and less sense in retrospect, this buy back fiasco can be added to the inept management decisions list. The overall effect of this NCIB policy has been that the company has helped finance the exit of shareholders from it's stock - the winner here has been those that exited. Why is it that ISM does things to benefit shareholders that have exited the company, at the expense of those that continue to be shareholders? They did the same thing in the Nitinat spinout disaster, with the ancient dividend record date. Shouldn't management be interested in benefitting those that are current shareholders, those who pay the tab for the generous management remuneration and loss of office security?