Member Info for barchid

johnht
If they say on their website or their accounts that they own a stake in a company then they do.
If they have invested clients money (which is the great bulk of what they do), then all they receive is their management fee so a shareholder in merc will only benefit from that fee, not from any uplift in value.
They tend to be focussed on large shareholders, not PI's, hence when they raised money to buy Northern VCT at a 40% discount to the share price it was not offered AT ALL to PI's, just the groovy gang and directors.
So in essence a PI is treated as a nuisance, historically. |Read the history & you will see for yourself

fairdealer
You have certainly summed the position up nicely here, one other point to reinforce your thinking, if Mars were not in a horrible position post covid with no pubs open & only selling to the off trade/supermarkets on razor thin margins compared to pub sales, why would RF & the board accept an offer just for the brewery ?
To me it indicates that they knew they were drinking in the last chance saloon, they had no choice or a bad choice, obviously they had to accept the bad choice.

Inthegame
I would not be at all confident that this could be turned round very easily, firstly no one really knows what they do (including some customers apparently) & secondly, Amati Global Investors who are always at or near the top of the league in their performance with AIM and small to microcap stocks has this as one of their failures, in at the initial placing 2 or 3 years ago at 79p & out a week or so ago of their entire holding (I think it was about 9% of the company) at 5p.
If they sold why should people all think they were wrong to sell with the sort of performance they have in these type of stocks ?
Go figure.

johnht
According to these links Mercia will not own anything in either of these companies, just the investors whose funds they manage.

adg
I have never known fairdealer to be negative, often cautious but never negative.

i-nexus are cheap today, cheaper than yesterday !

adg
Well it wasn't wrong to cut my holding back at the time, so if you think it is an odd thing to do, ie visiting companies you invest in, afraid to say I view it as part of DYOR

fairdealer
A very reasonable summation of the position
I would go a little further in that the jewel (brewing) has been sold off to support the pub estate. Personally I would have preferred it the other way round but then who wants a string of often scruffy and run down boozers ? I think a lot of new shareholders posting on this board should apply for the "privileged" card available (or was until recently) to shareholders, it does not lower the price of drinks but it does of food. Then they do a bit of cut price dyor to see what they think of the food.
I did and after a few visits I cut my holding sharply, there is really little consistency in the various offers other than for various reasons they go into the "don't return" column !
In short they are/were a great brewer but not a great publican, imho.

Adg
Dream on !
2 chances of a divi any time soon, no hope & bob hope.
And bob hope is dead already !

Boards
Isn't this site peaceful now all the over enthusiatic "twatterers" seem to have discovered two things ;
1 ) A holding by Mercia in a hot stock is probably so small that the amount of financial impact on MERC is roughly that of a parking ticket paid early at half price to their pockets &
2) Mercia is run by the BoD for the BoD (aka the groovy gang) & most certainly not for the shareholders.
After the wet dreams some of these posters were having it must be awfully like cold turkey now they see the error of their ways ?
I, as you know, prefer lobster.....
I trust you are well in these weird markets ?

Fairdealer
Your response was very restrained under the circumstances, the one thing any investor must do is DYOR.
How someone can spend money buying shares without realising that the dividend was axed is beyond me !
Is everyone aware that all their pubs are closed as well ?

Trent/Fairdealer
Thanks for the welcome, I do agree with the minority owner, Stelios/Easyjet, Vodafone/Verizon are 2 examples of that, but I'm not as bullish as Fairdealer on the revenue that could be derived from change of use, as I said in my post earlier. But time will tell, certainly I'd rather have Carlsberg running a brewery than a bank !!! Which is what could have happened if we did not accept the Danegeld...

Trent/Fairdealer
I actually arrived back v late last night on a repatriation flight, yes, far worse places to be locked down in but after 5 months away nice to be back.
Well, a foreign take over was always what I had often posted that I thought could happen, this is interesting though.
Bad news first, we are left with a string of very often sub par pubs.
So they might get planning permission, but a long slow game with their estate and what is a pub converted into a few flats really worth in this climate ?
But the good news is MARS is a brewer, only holding 40%, but with a great partner, to paraphrase their ad "probably the best brewer in the world" that business is the one to buy into and wave hasta la vista to the rump estate. My concern is RF's probable aggressive valuation of said estate.

Fair dealer / Trent
Great news, this is what I posted a while ago what I was hoping would happen, some sort of a tie up with an overseas brewer able to access UK's biggest brewer cheaply. Did I have the courage to load up at 30p or thereabouts ?
No I didn't !

Trent
Correct, not at all unexpected. I still fancy a takeover for the brewery part at least.
You saw that Youngs recently arranged financing to allow their pubs to be closed for a year ?
That was the indicator, whether or not pubs are the future for investing in I suspect is rather doubtful, but there are opportunities everywhere at present, the difficulty is sorting out the wheat from the chaff.
Still I've time to spare whilst waiting for SA airports to reopen !

fairdealer/trent
Gents another RNS alert;
Marstons were so happy with their liquidity that they have just arranged a further £70m ! Funny that eh ?
I am posting in case vampiresquid doesn't spot this RNS and has probably been announced after the Herald went to press so he/she won't see it in there today.
Not the most uplifting of RNS today I must admit.

giantsquid
So if a line of pubs are sold at a significant discount to their book value in the accounts you do not think that could happen again wrt statements of liquidity ?
DYOR !
But as yours appears to be from that trusty old rag, Scottish Herald, I'll give you a helping hand; check out RNS on Nov 4 where you will see that Admiral bought pubs for £44.9m which were in the books at £62.6m.
Draw your conclusions from that please, possibly more reliable than your Herald ?
Otherwise if you find the accounts a tad stretching why not just concentrate on the "Spelling Bees" you seem rather good at ?

giantsquid
It may perhaps be wise to note that when Mars sold a collection of pubs late last year they were all sold at a discount to book value.
You certainly don't need to be brain of Britain to appreciate that post covid pub estates are worth rather less than before, so when the lenders start acting on this, as logically they will, what happens to your "sufficient liquidity" then ?
I would be interested to know, please.

Trent
Good to hear you are bearing up, bored kids can be a s*dding nightmare.
Rather like RF's job at present I fancy !

Fairdealer
TBH we are quite enjoying it, but the prospect of 14 days self isolation upon return does not fill me with deep joy !
If you google "The Times James Hurley" you will see his articles (he is enterprise editor) and the article headed "Rent cut crucial to lifting our spirits" say publicans, is the one to read. It is a substantial article which seems well researched, the last part of it is Marstons specific. Apparently the barrister being used is Stuart Cakebread from Cerulean Law, in London EC4. And yes, the "Pub Advisory Service" also gets a mention. What does not sound promising is that the Adjudicator last year found Mars had broken rules & was "significantly deficient" in its treatment of the complainant by failing to provide him with accurate information etc......
I am pretty sure this is the same case that the Pub Advisory brought to our attention on this board last year.
I think we can all make ourselves better informed now that this is in the public domain.