Member Info for barchid

Phil

You & me both !

Old

I fear you are correct, they definitely had a focus on gaming, which must make us wonder how astute their stock selection really is ?

Lejib

Spot on.

A perfect observation !

If people post on here news is much better than history, sadly some regurgitate history pretending it is news, presumably for their own agenda ?

Thevid

Sadly I am long & wrong, but still hopful !

They are still offered at 86.7p.

The 2 trades at 88p of 150k each were yesterday, so not wonderful.

They go XD next week

Shape

I agree with you, the real fear here is interest rates and despite posters saying they won't be high for long rates always tend to stay higher for longer in every cycle, what's worse is they are almost certainly not at their peak yet.

The other issue is the Pub itself, younger people often prefer recrational substances (if you want to get stoned these are way cheaper than alcohol today) or also many are now totally teetotal. So are pubs ex growth ?

They certainly appear to be in large parts of the country, if this spread to MARS country it's hasta la vista.

Against this the SP is so battered down here they are option money, if I were a shorter which I'm not but I often was before retirement from the market, I'd be scared to go short here just on the upside downside risk.

When I was first involved with this stock it was so comfortably ensconced in the FT250 that nobody would dream that one day it would be out but that is where we are today, relying on hope & charity, (I suspect more hope than charity from this board)...

Writing this the live price is 26.85/27p so the mid price is under 27p.

This really is down to option levels, I'm not sure how much more bad news is needed to bring the price down further but for punters who play options this stock must start to be appealing.

By the same token for genuine shareholders it signals more volatility, the big risk being the banks who fund the company and property valuations on the downside and an opportunistic cut price bid to put shareholders out of their misery on the upside.

Frankly I don't have a view which is more likely but down here more volatility seems a near certainty.

This uncertainty must be dreadful for their employees, I wish them well, they could easily be the biggest losers here, let us hope not, for their sakes.

Claire

Welcome back to the board, I trust your trading has not affected your judgement, but really, these directors are not exactly committing much capital in buying that number of shares at current levels, are they ?

You say "now a take over target" but the brain dead RF (super chap according to super discharger) turned down 106p so it would indicate that we have been a takeover target for quite a long time, not just now ?

WRT the mcap & brewery valuation, to most peoples minds is the valuation of the freehold estate fair or not.

Can it really be as high as stated in the last accounts in current market conditions ?

I come back to whether Mr Market is normally right or wrong ?

Shaprite

Succintly put, it never ceases to amaze me that so many punters don't see the negative but only the positive. If the licensed assets are really worth their stated book value then why has no clever hedgie acted on it for a bit of easy asset stripping ?

We will probably know soon as it is surely time that superdischarger, our resident perma bull gave us all another pep talk as to why any of us with a differing view to his just has to be wrong.

Or of course now we are in the 28's he will possibly tell us how he sold all his at a profit & is now waiting to buy back at 25p.

Karl

And there is the rub, MARS have been under 50p for about 10 months now, one would have thought private equity or hedge funds would have run the numbers which on the surface find that the stock price has been at least 50% discount to nav according to the accounts yet no one seems to have been interested in buying the company to asset strip which makes me wonder why not.

Clearly they can not bring themselves to believe the official nav.

Wolf

Thanks for this, but unless I am missing it he does not say how many pubs have actually been sold & at what prices ?

He says his strategy is proceeding well, but that is a very general statement and not specific to sales of properties.

I guess we must wait for the next accounts to see, but if the sales have not been going well I hope they will acknowledge that in their nav.

Certainly Mr Market seems to be ahead of the game here.

Annual report & accounts from their website ?

Wolf

Do we have any indication as to how the sale of their pubs that they put up for sale some months ago have been going. as

I can't recall any rns re sales achieved but the difference, if any, from book price would give a better indication of the real nav as opposed to the historic nav which is always touted on this board ?

Of course if they have sold zero then that would also be a pointer and a good reason for a fresh appraisal by commercial propertysurveyors on behalf of shareholders.

Unhooked

Indeed they do hold it in the Smaller Co's fund.

The point I was making was that their performance with small/micro cap companies over last few years has been more than disappointing, I don't believe they hold it in the vct but they have plenty of other poorly performers in there already, hence my remark of losing their mojo.

Jc

Good point you make re Amati "need rather than desire", they certainly seem to have lost their mojo recently, in the vct as well as smaller co's fund.

Disturbing but I consider you are very likely spot on target.

Well the payment and re-investment of the divi is certainly the reason to thank for the swift recovery this morning.

Hopefully steady as she goes from here...

Agreed, on a sum of the parts basis they are very cheap, hold and hope is also my strategy...

Formerly

And indeed the not so young...

However I think we need a few more successes under the belt before we start hoping that MERC could become this century's remodelling of The Great Gatsby...

Anyone have an idea why they are so weak today ? I've dribbled a few more in today at just sub 144p.

I see no announcements and with interest rates where they are can see every reason why the tame income from their clients cash balances will increase their revenues.

DYOR, all just my opinion

Thunder

Well argue with Mr Market, not me, but Mr M is rarely very wrong.