Maintel Share Price (MAI)

The founder and significant shareholder is calling for the chairs removal and to be replaced with Martin Rowland. Seems Martin has a reasonable background, and with his association with Harwood I wonder if this is a precursor to an attempted take-private?

"Martin Rowland

Chair

Martin Rowland was appointed as non-independent non-executive director and Chair of the Company in October 2024. Martin is currently Executive Director of Transformation of Carr's Group plc (Carr's), in which Harwood Capital has a shareholding. Harwood Capital also has a shareholding in Centaur. Martin was previously a non-executive director of Carr's. He is also Chair and a shareholder of Pace XL, a transformation consultancy specialising in process and systems design. He was previously non-executive director and Chair of Smoove plc, a UK-based conveyancing technology provider, and a Chair and shareholder of Inzpire, the defence company. Prior to this, he held investment roles at LDC, the private equity fund, before moving into an advisory role with businesses."

Just watched their full year results presentation. Seems like things are going well, positive tone throughout, particularly on the new business front and improved go to market approach. To my mind this is at odds with the broker forecasts which show only 3% top line growth (in line with inflation basically), and slight decline in EBITDA forecast for this year - which I guess is due to caution over macro environment, and also NI increases. Still I think a bit of a disconnect given they think they grew 8% organically in 2024...

The UK PSTN / ISDN switch off has been pushed back to Jan 2027 (I had missed this) which to my mind means there will be a slight ongoing tailwind in 2025 and an increasing strong one in 2026 as businesses transfer from legacy solutions to digital solutions. This should also give Maintel the opportunity to upsell additional network, security and managed services to companies making the transition.

Overall, I remain a bit frustrated at the modest outlook and the lack of chairman. But think this is still a hold, the turnaround is complete, balance sheet is now OK, and I think we're one good period of trading away from upgrades and decent cash generation / deleveraging of the balance sheet. Guessing there's no one else following though?

Anyone in this still? Trading update not great but not terrible; the company is definitely no longer 'distressed', balance sheet under control, growing, profitable. Valuation still stacks up (c.5x EV/EBITDA), but downgrades today aren't great. Don't understand why it's taking them so long to appoint a Chair and full time CEO - its been 9 months!

If that 2 was mine, it was not a sell but a buy.

I'm sticking with it till results next week at least, as I think the fundamentals / valuation outweighs my concerns re governance (for now). The board changes to me suggest either Harwood is in the driving seat - good news in my books - or that the changes are more innocent. Hopefully we will see some new, high quality and INDEPENDENT NEDs appointed in advance of the AGM in May. Time will tell and very conscious I could be wrong here! Surprised shares have continued to be so strong in the interim...