{"id":371431,"date":"2026-03-29T13:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371431\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T13:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:48:08","slug":"i-invested-in-datalex-shares-about-20-years-ago-are-they-worth-anything-now-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371431\/","title":{"rendered":"I invested in Datalex shares about 20 years ago. Are they worth anything now? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I invested in a small amount of Datalex<\/a> shares about 20 years ago. The company left the Irish Stock Exchange some time ago.<\/p>\n

Would you be able to let people like me know if they are worth anything now and, if so, how can one go about trading them?<\/p>\n

JB<\/p>\n

I hope it was indeed a small amount. You have my sympathies \u2013 this has been one rollercoaster that, in hindsight, you probably wish you had not embarked on.<\/p>\n

Datalex<\/a>, a software company specialising in the airlines business, has fallen a long way from the giddy days of its flotation. In fairness, it struggled to top its initial public offering price at any stage but the fall from grace since 2019 has been pretty catastrophic.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the company was profitable and growing for most of its 15-year pre-flotation journey from 1985 to 2000. The flotation itself took longer than expected. Initially planned for 1999, it was then due in mid-2000 but did not happen eventually until October of that year.<\/p>\n

The omens were mixed from the start: two weeks before its planned flotation in Dublin<\/a> and New York, the company said it expected to price its shares at between \u20ac7.61 and \u20ac8.31. In the event, on the day, the shares were actually priced at \u20ac6.84 \u2013 18 per cent below the top of the guided range and 10 per cent below what had been considered the lowest likely price.<\/p>\n

These things can happen, markets are volatile beasts and the Nasdaq in particular was fairly unsettled in the run-up to Datalex\u2019s flotation, but companies are very careful when they set the expected pricing range. This is a key element of the marketing programme to attract investor interest in the share and the last thing you want is to overpromise.<\/p>\n

Shares are supposed to bounce on flotation, delivering some frothy early profits for short-term investors while giving a generally positive view of the company\u2019s prospects as a listed entity for others, before settling down to a more measured (hopefully) consistent advance.<\/p>\n

That really didn\u2019t happen. On the day they floated, the shares struggled to even regain their flotation price. They did get as high as \u20ac7.25 at one point before the end of that year, although they finished 2000 in the red, at \u20ac6.20.<\/p>\n

Things got worse from there before the shares staged a steady turnaround after the financial crash, rising close to tenfold in a decade, at which point it was one of the Irish Stock Exchange\u2019s most consistent performers.<\/p>\n

All that came to a juddering halt in 2019 when an accounting scandal hit: essentially the company had book revenue that it had not yet actually earned. The fallout was immediate with the shares collapsing by 60 per cent in a single day.<\/p>\n

Dermot Desmond<\/a>, already a major shareholder, stepped in with loans to keep the company afloat as it suffered the indignity of a Central Bank investigation and a 15-month stock market suspension over a delay in filing accounts.<\/p>\n

When it resumed trading in July 2020, it was facing another problem: the Covid pandemic had effectively shut down its client base, the airlines and travel industry. The shares slumped 75 per cent.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Desmond loans, and more importantly how to pay them back and move forward, have been the defining feature of the business.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, in July last year, it announced it intended to walk away from the stock market, with chief executive Jonathan Rockett<\/a> saying it would allow management to focus more on strategy and execution and potentially give it greater access to capital.<\/p>\n

That was confirmed at an extraordinary general meeting on September 4th, when some 99.1 per cent of the 78.1 per cent of shareholders who voted backed the plan. As the company\u2019s three biggest shareholders \u2013 Demond, businessman Nick Furlong<\/a> and his Pageant Investments vehicle and former Glen Dimplex chief executive Sean O\u2019Driscoll<\/a> \u2013 who together owned 75.7 per cent of the business by then were supportive of the plan, that outcome was never in doubt.<\/p>\n

It delisted just over a week later, on September 12th. So where does that leave you?<\/p>\n

Quite how you have fared really depends on when you bought into the business. <\/p>\n

The company did put in place arrangements for the off-market trading of shares with a company called JP Jenkins, which specialises in trading of shares in unlisted businesses and is regulated in the UK.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be out of pocket anyway, certainly given the impact of inflation over the past 25-plus years, but it\u2019s a matter of degree \u2013 and quite substantial degree at that.<\/p>\n

The shares did trade below the 30 cent at which they ultimately delisted at several points in their 25-year stock market. If you bought then, you will be making a headline profit on any sale now \u2013 though trading costs, which you can set against a trading profit before assessing capital gains tax liability, will, in my view, almost certainly wipe that out, leaving you with a loss on the deal.<\/p>\n

More likely you bought ahead of that 30 cent price and are at a loss anyway.<\/p>\n

The only good news is that, once you actually sell these shares, you can set that loss against profits you make from the sale of other assets in the same tax year or later.<\/p>\n

So, yes, there is some nominal value in the shares, though not a lot. Since they started trading through the JP Jenkins facility, the shares have moved by precisely one cent \u2013 from 29 cent to the 30 cent at which they were trading when they delisted.<\/p>\n

You can find out more about that business on their website here <\/a>and there is a specific page on its website dedicated to trading in Datalex, which you can find here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There you will find that there has been spasmodic trading in the shares over the six months since the company has delisted. There have been 35 trades listed in that time, involving just over half a million of the company\u2019s shares. That\u2019s just over a quarter of 1 per cent of the shares in issue.<\/p>\n

The trades involved blocks of shares ranging from 175,000 at the upper end to as few as 660. At that base, you are talking about \u20ac198 worth of shares before you take account of any trading costs.<\/p>\n

You can find a list of brokers here<\/a> that Jenkins says accommodate trades through its platform.<\/p>\n

How much will it cost? That depends on how many shares we\u2019re talking about and which of the brokers you use. Among the brokers familiar to Irish investors, the list does include Davy.<\/p>\n

If you already have a Davy account, you can expect to pay commission of 0.5 per cent subject to a minimum charge of \u20ac14.99.<\/p>\n

On top of that JP Jenkins says it charges both buyer and seller 1.5 per cent of the value of the transaction in addition to a \u00a325 (\u20ac28.85) transaction fee.<\/p>\n

So, if you have 1,000 Datalex shares with a nominal value of \u20ac300, you can expect to pay \u20ac14.99 in Davy commission (as the 0.5 per cent rate gives rise to a charge of \u20ac5 which is below their minimum commission).<\/p>\n

You will also pay \u20ac15 in commission to Jenkins plus the \u00a325 transaction fee for a total cost of \u20ac58.84, leaving you with a return of just over \u20ac240.<\/p>\n

If you are not a Davy client, you would need to open a Davy account, most likely a Select account, which simply facilitates execution of trades not advice. It costs \u20ac50 a quarter but the trading commission is set against that fee so \u20ac50 may be your max outlay to Davy in those circumstances.<\/p>\n

Before choosing, you should examine the cost with other brokers listed on the Jenkins site.<\/p>\n

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com<\/a> with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I invested in a small amount of Datalex shares about 20 years ago. The company left the Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,166646,16609,61,60,76188,166648,166647,124489],"class_list":["post-371431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-datalex","tag-dermot-desmond","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-stock-exchange","tag-jonathan-rockett","tag-nick-furlong","tag-sean-o-driscoll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}