UMS Holdings

[eve]

Many great points have been raised by fellow buddies in this thread especially recently with discussions on its business model, customer's intentions, macro outlook etc. Personally, I didn't find Andy's sale to be perplexing since I have seen him sell in great volume in the past while the business carried on steadily. But AMAT sale is different since it is unprecedented. I initially purchased UMS with the knowledge that with AMAT as a SSH, it implies that it has confidence in its subcontractor ability to deliver and the partnership is unlikely to be disrupted. With the stake sale, this premise no longer holds true - I am not saying that AMAT definitely has no more confidence in UMS but rather I cannot say that it definitely does. The fundamentals is no longer the same (to me) - there is an element of uncertainty as Specuvestor wisely wrote about. I did reduce my stake yesterday after contemplating about this. I am penning this now to avoid any hindsight bias but I do wonder will I regret parring down my stake when the dust settles (foresight bias ?) haha ! I hope the Board will issue a similar clarification like in 2012 to reduce this element of uncertainty.

(Vested)

IMO, the decision is rational, no matter the outcome. Buy base on a story, and reduce when story no longer fully valid.

I did read thru the previous posts, and preliminary research. I agree the fear on Andy disposal is unwarranted with his record. Mr. Market's fear should be mainly from AMAT disposal.

How bad is the (likely) damage from AMAT? Hm...

Could this just a case of AMAT selling some shares to lock in the gain? With the bonus shares being issued, this may bring the ownership back to 5% again? If this can be calculated to be the case, it would ease a lot of fear and speculation.