How to sell half of the shares I hold?

aspley

I have a certificate for 2,000 shares for a company and I wish to sell half of them. I have been pointed in the direction of x-o.co.uk but I wanted to know if it is simple to sell just 1,000 of the shares and retain the other 1,000 shares.

Vortigern

Yes, easily done.

Open account with XO
Send them your share certificate and a Stock Transfer Form
All of the shares will be in XO's nominee account.
Instruct XO to sell half of them
The other half remains in the nominee account.

MallyGirl

just make sure you are aware of Capital Gains Tax rules

aspley

I'm selling them into goes over the two tax years so I shall be just within the CGT threshold for both transactions.

Can I select a minimum price I would sell at, for example?

bowlhead99

Yes you should be able to leave a 'limit order' when you place your online order to sell the shares, whih is 'good for' a certain amount of time. E.g. I'll sell this 1000 shares the price goes above £15 a share by next Friday. And I'll sell this other 500 shares if the price is over £16 before the end of the month. If the price doesn't go up to the limit you'll accept, they won't execute the trade.

If the price goes up for a split second over that limit they will try to sell them but it might not stay there long enough to execute the transaction in which case they would take them back 'off the market' and try again if there is another opportunity before next Friday or whatever date you set.

Or, you can just place the order to sell at market price and either they will get you a guaranteed price for you to accept within the following few seconds (or reject, if you don't like it), or if you place it out of market hours they will just take whatever price they can get when the market opens as long as it's above any limit you set.

jennyjj

aspley wrote: »

I have a certificate for 2,000 shares for a company

That's a bit of a red flag. Are your shares really held in a certificated form, or are they held in a nominee account and you have a statement that tells you your holding? That's two quite different things.
If it's the former, you might find that you'll be steered towards the latter.
I/we are assuming that this is a company listed on the main London Stock exchange?

aspley

jennyjj wrote: »

That's a bit of a red flag. Are your shares really held in a certificated form, or are they held in a nominee account and you have a statement that tells you your holding? That's two quite different things.
If it's the former, you might find that you'll be steered towards the latter.
I/we are assuming that this is a company listed on the main London Stock exchange?

I will double-check that but I believed it to be a certificate issued by Equiniti who issued the shares when my SAYE scheme matured.

jennyjj

aspley wrote: »

I will double-check that but I believed it to be a certificate issued by Equiniti who issued the shares when my SAYE scheme matured.

Equinitii act as nominees for the likes of BT and Santander.
It's almost certain that they hold your shares in nominee form and that what you have is a statement of account of what they hold.
Certificates look like certificates, are generally embossed and have the word 'Certificate' on them. Sometimes companies force a transition from certificated form to uncertificated form and render the old certificates sentimental value only.

Good news, is that if they hold the shares in a nominee account, then they can handle a partial sale for you at modest cost.

Zorillo

Is there a reason you want to retain half the shares? It is considered high risk to hold shares in your employer as you could lose your shares and your job if it starts to struggle.

Assuming I wanted to have some money invested, I would sell them all and use the other half to invest in a more diversified investment, probably via my pension for the tax relief.

jennyjj

Zorillo wrote: »

Is there a reason you want to retain half the shares? It is considered high risk to hold shares in your employer as you could lose your shares and your job if it starts to struggle.

Assuming I wanted to have some money invested, I would sell them all and use the other half to invest in a more diversified investment, probably via my pension for the tax relief.

Seconded.
I did BT sharesaves over a few decades and built up a very overweight position in BT shares. Rather distressing see them drop from £13 a share down to 70p and then eventually up to £2.40.
Fortunately, I sold lots of them near the top: Diversified and paid off my mortgage. I still held too many though and see a big fat lost opportunity.

aspley

Zorillo wrote: »

Is there a reason you want to retain half the shares? It is considered high risk to hold shares in your employer as you could lose your shares and your job if it starts to struggle.

Assuming I wanted to have some money invested, I would sell them all and use the other half to invest in a more diversified investment, probably via my pension for the tax relief.

I saved £9k via a SAYE scheme and bought the shares when that matured in August 2015. They are now worth £30k so £21k profit. If I sell all of them, I'll take a hit on CGT. If I sell half in March and the rest in April, I believe I'd be clear of CGT. Does that sound right?

I'm using the proceeds as a down-payment on a property.