Marstons Share Price (MARS)

Topped up at 44.2p.

Feels like the drop is more macro noise than anything company‑specific — oil up, talk of more public spending, gilt yields twitching, etc. The usual “rates higher for longer” panic.

Worth remembering though: most of Marston’s debt is fixed or hedged, especially the long‑dated securitised chunk. Day‑to‑day rate moves don’t really change their actual interest bill. The only floating bits are the RCF and some small working‑capital lines.

So the share price reaction looks overdone to me. The real story is still:

H2 cash flow (historically strong)

World Cup trading

margin improvement

new-format pubs performing well

deleveraging

If the market wants to throw it down to 40p, I’d happily take another small slice. At that level you’re basically buying a business with a 128p NAV at a distressed multiple, just before its strongest trading period.

Not advice — just sharing the logic.

Good points ppywgda and appreciate the optimism.

I agree pub conversions are good, but their beer offerings are awful. Cask is sometimes non existent and beers are overpriced. So while people go in to watch an event/game they do not stay for a later drink or bother coming back for a while.

Hope things will improve, but a 30% drop from 67p, and capex rising again is a poor sign.

More importantly, the market is showing its disapproval.

Having watched the results presentation I think management are doing a great job under very challenging circumstances.

Reasons for optimism for me are:

- Grandstand pub conversions are very popular and will likely do very well during World Cup this summer, but also generally (no only for big events - ppl love big screens)

- ⁠Their small improvements in profit in H1 should increase in H2 as they are pausing their refurbs now for this financial year (so less drag on costs in H2)

- ⁠They’re using technology well to reduce staff costs and increase turnover (I see this as a moat of sorts as smaller pubs unlikely to be able to do this as well)

- ⁠Next few years will see hundreds more refurbs to Grandstand, 2-door pubs and Woodies, which will drive more profit

- They’re hedged for elec this year and gas until end of next year, so some cost control there

- NAV is 128p per share

I’m not saying it’s going to be plain sailing from here, but I do think looking 3 to 5 years out this has excellent potential for multi-bagging.

Yes, this is going downhill fast now.. cannot believe with a change of ceo, cfo, reduced debt, etc, we are still heading back to a junk status sp again. Surely not going back to 30p and under ??

Time for this underperforming management to stop pretending to run this business and instead put their efforts into selling it to get some shareholder value back.

I am in.... far too cheap....Busy world cup summer to look forward to....