Mercantile Ports & Logistics Share Price (MPL)

S/p now down 99.99% post London AIM IPO.

Incredibly, the company still has 45 full time employees.

The Port jetty is still yet to be completed some 7-8 years after commencement of construction.

After 9 years of 'construction' barely half of the 200 acres of the inter tidal foreshore and Kajanja creek scheduled for reclamation to develop the port has actually been reclaimed and, of the 100 reclaimed acres, less than half has been developed with a high load bearing hardstanding to facilitate Port operations.

The 1,000m all weather quay as detailed in the IPO Document, never saw the light of day and was replaced by a cheap weather exposed 400m jetty, the 50m end of which is still yet to be completed some 8 years after construction commenced.

Development of the 'Port' in line with the IPO Document in any meaningful way ceased at least 6 years ago after they raised further money from clueless II's to 'accelerate' completion of 'construction' - despite claiming in the IPO Document that the £73m raised would be sufficient to complete the full build out of the Port.

Some £200m has been raised in equity and debt for a massively scaled down low quality terminal, compared to that detailed in the IPO Document. Of which they now have less than £1m in cash left and $50m of bank debt, attracting annual interest payments of nearly 4 times the current revenue being generated.

The CEO at the time of the IPO and during the following 8 years was arrested by the FBI on arrival in the US about 5 years ago and charged with carrying out a $300m securities fraud - for which he pleaded guilty in a plea bargaining deal, in return for a shorter sentence.

The former Chairman for most of the first 10 years following the London IPO, is a convicted fraudster who specialises in industrial scale Insider trading.

AIMHO/DYOR

Wont be long before there all here today no more quiet board incoming

Lets see what happens

Appalling results but, more or less in line with my expectation.

So, to increase revenue by 12% YOY, saw the operating costs go up by 71%!

As in previous years, NO economy of scale operating cost savings as the cargo handled increased!

Only port I've ever come across where the costs increase much faster than the revenue generated as the tonnage handled through the port increases. This occurs every year at Karanja!

Coal and cement cargoes attract extremely low handling rates and so are usually shipped through purpose built terminals with automated handling equipment.

As mentioned previously, handling these low value cargoes at a circa '$200m' build cost and still only half built break bulk terminal like Karanja is extremely expensive - NO PORT OPERATOR IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD DO IT!

Even were they to handle 10 million tonnes (7 times more than last year) they would still only generate a pittance in total revenue. Dirty, low handling rate bulk cargoes are rarely shipped through break bulk cargo terminals for a very good reason - it's almost impossible to make any money from them!

The going concern situation is to be expected, as next years operating performance WILL be worse than this year based on the expected small ramp up in bulk cargo volumes, as they have simply replaced one customer who was renting storage and use of the quay (ie MPL received revenue but had no costs), with more low handling rate bulk cargo, that has very high handling costs at a port terminal like Karanja.

Totally uninvestible - the equity has been worthless since they somehow managed to 'spend' $45m one year before they got onto the foreshore to start reclaiming the land on which to build the terminal !

My estimation of the current value of the terminal is around $25m - if you believe the books(and only an idiot would) they have 'spent' close to $200m part building Karanja Port over the last 10 years!

AIMHO/DYOR

Back on track , finance in place, nice update , with new links to Oil and Gas sector, container shipping etc, first target has to be a new 52 week high, that's another bag from here 4.75p gla.

Yup. They recently signed a contract with the biggest cement company in the whole of India as well. Going places with £15m finance from the director!!