Member Info for barchid

Appleby
It should be BUT, when they sold off a line of older pubs last year to reduce debt, they went at a discount to book value.
Not saying that will happen again but last year was the closest we'll ever get to knowing how aggressively or not their assets are valued at, the pubs sold in November at £44.9mill had a book value of £62.6mill in their last set of accounts.

Trent
What you say re flooding & virus is correct, in fact a bullish view would be to say that flooding might give them the opportunity to renovate sub optimal premises with insurance helping to reduce the costs and the virus could/should result in much higher "off sales" as pubs are avoided.
Against that there is the generally nervous, if not risk averse, sentiment in markets currently, plus my fear that this could all be used as an excuse to cut or pass the dividend, which would certainly not help the share price.
But all we can do as investors is to weigh up the risk/reward, my own thoughts have always been that Mars is an attractive takeover target for a multi national, so it really is a classic case of hurry up and wait.
Patience can be a virtue....

I suspect the super tanker that was HL is now starting to suffer from their Woodford connection, down from £24.33 in May 2019 to £14.75 today speaks louder than M. Dampiers words doesn't it ?
A reputation takes years to build but can be lost much quicker

We hope !
GLA

Hi Boards,
Apparently a 30% stake in a tiny EIS which is held by Mercia is going to be a "billion££" company, and a plethora of posts all saying nothing, or less than nothing, from one poster who my best guess is a MM doing his utmost to generate excitement in an otherwise pretty odd company. But I guess with Easter looming maybe he is expecting the second coming ?
Mark you, we know the greed of the BoD when there is cash to be made for them but the RNS has been oblivious of any cheeky cheap options being granted recently, just the largest shareholder distributing shares to his family members for tax planning.

Solstace
I take my hat off to you, 15 posts last week and another 4 already today and every time you post the stock goes lower. Only a MM would put in that dedication to getting this stock down, so effectively, surely ?

fairdealer
Deflation is always possible but with the infrastructure spend UK plc is looking at I suspect we will be at the back of the queue for that.
However my fear is that as MARS are now publicly announcing debt reduction targets a divi cut could be low hanging fruit in order to assist this policy. Neverthekess when I raised this possibility it was not taken on board, I suspect it could happen, don't want it to but I can see how it could occur.

Gige
I agree with slackermark, I have been active this week and very happy to be with Bell's, service has been good for me but I hold all my aim shares in VCT's due to difficulty in dealing in them even when times are good and liquid.

Solstace
Congratulations on your tenacity in trying to ramp this stock with your 15 posts since Wednesday on the basis of the "billion ££ company" that MERC has a 35% stake in, (private, unquoted & if an ex Woodford stock possibly unsaleable), not to mention the phantom share purchases by directors, all you seem to have achieved is dropping the bid price from 24.20 when you started to 23p now.
Are you a MM in this stock by any chance ?
If so I hope your efforts paid off, it would be an awful lot of time wasted if not, wouldn't it ?

Appleby
Excuse my gallows humour here but out of interest I looked at the HL 3 month share chart and their 3 month high to todays price is looking even worse than MARS !
I am sure there are many bargains to be picked up today on anything other than a short term view but my main worry with MARS is will their board decide that with even a 7.5p annual divi failing to prop up the price why not cut it and retain the cash ?
I know the view on this bulletin board is that the divi is safe but I do have my doubts, we are in uncharted territory now.

Appleby
I just looked at the chart and see what you mean, but we are perilously close to the 80p's which would be a "hang on to our hats" situation, if we go there.
Sep4 2018 seemed to have been the low close at 89.85 if my chart is correct ?
Worryingly though, in this fall the 8%+ yield does not seem to be acting as a brake, so yes, a sustained break down below 90p is serious.
Still this week we are firmly into fear mode, quite possibly next week could be steadier, let us hope !

Yawn yawn......

Oh, the billion pound company ?
Dream on !

Solstace
Why do you repeat this?
We can see that Feb RNS was a stock shuffling "tax planning" manouevre, resulting in no effective change except within the family, I emphasised that in my correction to your post.
What part of that very clear rns do you not understand ?
What about the ratherl miserly holdings of the other directors, why no comment on that?
DYOR

Solstace
Inaccurate !
He held those shares and sold them into a vehicle for the benefit of his family & tax planning, he has owned them for years, I believe, probably from a sale of his company to Mercia.
Where is the CFO buying, or the Chair, other than options ?
If you do your research properly you will see that in the RNS of Dec 23rd the total number of shares held by directors was 73.169 mill of which 64.824 are/were held by Chamberlain, leaving a mere 8.345 mill held between another 6 directors (who actually own shares in Merc), which at the current bid price of 24.2p are worth £2mill.
So between the "gang of 6" their holdings are worth £336,000 each, on average, which HAVE NOT BEEN ADDED TO according to RNS since then.
Furthermore I believe, when you dyor, that they came from options anyway.
Are you honestly trying to convince us that they have real skin in the game?
Why did you not point this out when you were quoting the RNS to us all ?

Solstace
And MERC price is still dropping.
Don't you think that the BoD would be in buying now if this investment of theirs is going to transform Mercia ?

Trent
What you say is very salient but the new Chair did go down the swifter debt reduction route and was well received by the market too, not very long ago.
So his attitude could be, "why pay out all these divis", not trying to rattle any cages here but Vodafone did similar with a new boss, so never say never.
Just raising a flag on it, not predicting....

Solstace
I wish you well but I fear that even a doubling of value may do very little to the total nav and do remember, there are some probable lemons in that nav as well, they are not all plums !
Perhaps you should be looking at Tristel for a much more pure play on covid ? Chinese have already bought and paid for a very large amount of their disinfecting products....

Trent/Appleby
Not wishing to be the soldier who p*sses on the parade ground, but given the way the new Chair abruptly (and correctly imo) changed the debt policy by requiring it to be paid back sooner, is it not possible that he might make use of a slowdown/dip in profits citing covid as the reason & then cut the divi so he can pay off debt swifter ?
Just a thought from left field

Solstace
Before you get too excited have you calculated what % of the total Mercia nav is taken by Native ?
So if it doubled in value what difference will that make to their overall nav is surely the question to ask.