The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
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Yes, this was my business/professional life lol
the ability to showcase success (real, hard cash exit success) is everything in developing a £10bn++ asset management business
At this stage of the cycle
esp to show new LPs/fund investors that Merc has plenty of firepower for co-investments
The balance sheet is evergreen and is also throwing off money to add to funds under management (ref FDC acquisition last December), the side of the business that provides recurring revenue and drives the progressive dividend policy.
Boards, it turns out that casually hosing down the Millennium Falcon and the backyard of SpongeBob SquarePants delivers zen in buckets. The original game has over 7 million users and putting it on a virtual reality platform is a no brainer. Instead of twiddling in front of a computer screen, who doesn’t want the freedom of waving their stick around for a pleasant half hour?
The ability to achieve a seriously decent exit for a major investment in a v challenging market does pretty much everything
tp 50p++
Scharnhorst : PowerWash a "1st Person Squirter" nice.! which reminds me, I most clean my pavers.
Barchid: Yes, it's been "Tin Hats" for a while now. Maybe your Resuscitation idea could be the spark for NDreams new game "Defibrillator Simulator". "Stand Clear ....!
AIM only down 20% YTD . No weighted averages in this little index.... Shouts to OBWa for hanging in there 👍
The FD has explained in detail numerous times how buy backs don’t make financial sense for this company. I’d rather see a special dividend. I’d also have rather seen them hold on longer as the PowerWash Simulator game will prove a big money spinner. I guess that’s why Aonic have bought in just after release of the VR version of the game. All the same it’s plenty money in the bank for us and we retain a stake in Aonic which is a company going places. Maybe they’ll buy Futurlab as well to sew up PowerWash. I was hoping nDreams would do that. Onwards and upwards.
I am not a fan of buybacks which are loved by Directors because it enhances their holding values. The true view is that where there is money to be made by the company in its businesses, that is where cash should be spent. It is called 'Reinvestment' and it should be the first priority. I am also not averse to growing the dividend to us shareholders!
I hope here that they do a bit of diversification rather than have more eggs in the UK gaming market.
Boards
It has been a long & lonely wait & this is not exactly a flip from where they have been but a modest resuscitation...
With £60m of cash surely a small buy back of stock would make sense now?
£10m would give us a better eps to then see some value uplift from the funds management business?
Sell em while they're Hot...! Nice 2.7 X flip. 👍
Mercia company nDreams won best virtual reality game for Synapse at the TIGA awards on Thursday night. Their development partner Futurlab also won with high selling game PowerWash Simulator. nDreams released the virtual reality version of that game on 2nd November.
https://tiga.org/about-tiga-and-our-industry/about-uk-video-games-industry
....franks the apparently unpopular message that Mercia might well come out of this bear market smelling of roses.
Having sold half my holding months back I have just bought some back at this lower price.
Predictions? The next set of results out in November is anyone willing to offer a guess as to where they sit? My intuitive feel is that they will be broadly in line with forecasts which is why I hold a stake here. I view MERC as a low risk play and do not lose any sleep over owning a small stake.
EV is closer to £70m
but 3rd party FuM is only £1.2bn
My bad
still only c6%
and you get the £130m (or nearly 2*EV) equity book as well
EV c £80m with FuM c £1.5bn (5% of FuM), and an equity book way in excess of EV
MERC is stupidly cheap BUT everything hinges on demonstrating the basics (steady profitable exits)
DYOR
With the price response to latest RNS it would be better if they didn't bother or just take it private and give everyone an exit.
We need to hear about proftable exits
Not much of a holding in aceleron (if any)
Merc put money into Aceleron - now down the pan.
They tried to raise more cash but no joy.
Administrators now in place.
Https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/TERN/statement-re-share-price-movement-82cviu3ji6vtuyg.html
They own 27% of a company which was contracted to Space X hence their sp doubled on the news.
That’s a shame oldbutnotwise. I hope you find somewhere exciting for the money. I think a good sale of one of their portfolio companies will spark a revival and there are enough positives for me to sit tight. Though this is how I feel at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTnINFdwuE
Alfredo
I was given a phone call about February as I had been told before Christmas how valuable it was likely to be !
Things are never quite what they seem in Mercia land, hence my considerable cynicism...
After not very much deliberation and observing that I paid c30% more than the current price, I decided that the best for me in this market was to withdraw 50% and keep the remainder under close observation! Got 25.2.