RE:Tomorrow's CCTropical, Sorry, I have no idea who purchased those shares. The updated shareholdings of institutions will be posted in mid-May and we may be able to discern the seller/buyer.
It seems to me from the price action that the seller and buyer had an agreed purchase price and the price was pushed down to that price so that the transaction would occur at that price. It suggests a motivated seller and a bargain hunting buyer. It is possible the buyer simply agreed to take the shares at a discount to redistribute them on the market by slow selling. That did not occur but could still occur in heavier trading after the earnings release.
Rest assured, the retail investor is an afterthought of the institutional traders.
Insofar as the earnings announcement, I expect that VMD can beat the low estimates. Analysts often issue very conservative guidance because they want to generate positive earnings surprises to help support the share price to reach their targeted price. When an analyst posts a high estimate, it often is done because they want an negative earnings surprise so that the analyst can accumulate shares.
Unfortunately with the current pandemic wave, we are still in unique times so guidance on the core business might be difficult for management to forecast. For this reason, how the company is currently positioning itself for the post-pandemic period is all that I expect. I will be looking at revenues, patient count, employee groth, gross margin numbers and forward looking estimates.
It seems to me that analysts are expecting that VMD spending is heavy (more RTs, software, partnerships) to position its core business in the post pandemic. Once the company has a post-pandemic quarter we will be able to assess the true growth capabilities as it fills up capacity of its RT workforce. In many regions, it still cannot access referrals from hospitals because the hospitals are focused on covid. This is a significant barrier for VMD. We won't see this barrier removed for many months.