Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Positive interims building on the recent profit upgrade message.
They are the only bidder for the massive Scottish contract.
Share buyback will be completed ahead of schedule (no surprise of course with recent buying), and the pointer that the Board may introduce a further buyback programme.
There could be many reasons for Milton selling, some of which could be due to their own investment situation rather than anything specifically relating to Mears, so I wouldn't necessarily take it as a negative for Mears going forward.
I have never been a fan of share buybacks as I have seen examples where large sums have basically been flushed down the toilet. One example was the old Cable & Wireless. The company that took over part of C&W - Liberty Global has also engaged in big buybacks and the share price has gone backwards. If the excess capital is not being used for investment purposes I would prefer a special dividend. But there will be some who argue for buybacks for tax reasons and some directors have an element of their remuneration package based on share price increase.
So we have our answer - they have been hoovering up shares sold by the Premier Miton Group. Would the seller have sold without the buyback in place?
4.1 million shares now bought, which means half of the £20m allocated has been spent in just 2 months when they said it could take 18 months to complete the full programme. There could be a big seller whose shares they are hoovering up.
Huge increase in buybacks over the last week. If this carries on the £20 million allocated for buybacks will be exhausted in a few weeks.
Looks like I need to revise my forecast, and £3.50 now must be achievable in the short term
This has momentum and £3 appears within reach. If it gets there anybody who got in at £2 around the time of the results will have a nice 50% profit
Thing not think!!!
Private investors often get shafted, so every chance that will happen here. I wonder if given there are related party issues that Wicks is on the legal hook and needs to keep the think afloat for now or he could be facing personal legal action against himself.
The fact that they need £5 million points to the company being insolvent, and the banks will not lend them any more. Announcements regarding funding via additional shares are normally made after all the funding has been agreed. Would not be surprised if the supposed £2.5 million new funding is Wicks and Nish. This looks dead in the water and the end game is being played out. Would not be surprised to see some legal actions being brought. What were the former non-executives actually doing other than collecting a pay cheque?
Surprised the RNS this morning only covers director purchases as I was anticipating that there might be some stake building going on.
Yes, it would be technically insolvent if it cannot service the debt on the due dates and reliant on their banks to keep operating.
I wonder if we will see any RNS today as anybody who has built a 3% stake I believe has 48 hours to notify
Stxx I felt a while ago they should have been biting the bullet, and whilst not what you would really want to do, unloading their best assets to get that debt down. They were hoping to get by, and ultimately didn't as the cost over runs smashed the cash flow. Others on here and elsewhere have criticised the share buyback, and it ultimately does seem to have wasted precious cash that they needed. Again today a lot of buying, so some are confident of making money here. I do hope that any large stake building is not designed to get the company and assets on the cheap, leading to small shareholders getting a further kicking in. With Wicks and Nish large holders there is probably less likelihood of that happening, but who knows when the deals are being struck.
Nearly all buys this morning so far
Although share buys and sells do get misreported, there does seem to have been more buying than selling. If that is correct (a big if) then someone sees value at 20 pence
I wonder if the delay in the £75 million sale was because the buyer started to play hard ball on the price. If it gets to a fire sale what would the landbank go for?
I have never been a great fan of share buybacks having seen examples of cash being flushed down the drain. The argument the company would make is that it will enhance shareholder value as there is a significant discount between share price and asset value. Ultimately the strength of that argument lies in what assets could be sold for, and if it came to a fire sale then you can immediately at a minimum halve any NAV. Hopefully it is not the case, but some loan agreements have gearing requirements, and INL are well north of 100%. Right now besides the company announcing completely new largescale sale of land agreements, the only thing that would be a positive signal of the worth of the company is if the directors between them went out and bought for their own holdings a minimum of 2 million shares.
Again I'm not sure how positive today's RNS actually is. They have had up for sale existing houses at Wilton for some time, so it could be the conclusion of that process, and there is the question of how much actual cash has already been accounted for.
In some ways today's RNS seems like an almost desperate move for some good news, given that it was something previously announced. I would be interested to hear what others think
about the working capital part, to me it points to a company short of capital.
I wonder if it is time to de-list and sell all the parts of the company off. They have got into the nasty habit of finding banana skins, and when you get into that habit it becomes hard to get away from it.