Member Info for barchid

Majorboy
I guess you are correct.
I saw a presentation they did at a vct agm last year and it seemed to be little more than a richmans Skype.
Nothing I've since since convinces me they are no more than that.
A tub of lard I fear !

Comeonvog
If the company is in such "growth mode", why are the shares so much lower than a few months ago?
Markets normally get these things right, and I did not say they would be sold at £8, I said my guess was they would be sold closer to £8 than the £29.75 which was touted as a "reserve price".
I see no reason to change my view.
I still see this company as a tub of lard with a lot of stale bulls.

Greg
Doesn't look like the MM's are seeing anything like such a high valuation as you mention on this tub of lard !
My understanding of the take over rule is that bidders must pay the highest price they paid for the stock within the last 12 months.
But if the buyers are not holders, or have not purchased within 12 months, they can bid what they want, that is why the price is a third of your projection.
My guess is £8 will be closer to the final bid (if it comes) than £29.75.

Dinoken
Indeed, we did discuss together the possibility of a bid about 3 weeks ago & with sterling down here MARS must be a very attractive proposition to a multi national, in fact even with a good premium to market cap this must be appealing to private equity funds. But to be fair I've been thinking this since they were in the 80p's, and it's never happened, (yet !).

Market makers crosses towards the close are difficult to detect.
But are often done for a reason !

Massaging the price up for another sale next week perhaps ?

I guess the time to buy is when Woodford sells his last tranche, but that could take quite a while if current turnover continues, that is also assuming that Invesco do not start selling down their almost 40%.
So dark clouds for quite a while I fear.....

Rivaldo
£30 in a bidding situation?
In your dreams !
Why has there been so little evidence of stake building by potential bidders if they felt there was even the faintest chance of having to pay that much?
This will go cheap, as nearly all UK tech firms do.

Citywire has a good article this afternoon on Woodfords sale of 5% of Mercia at 30p whilst the offer price when he was selling was 37p, with him taking a £1million hit. It would not be sensible to think he is going to hang on to the rest of the holding, so us pi's have a very dark cloud hanging over our investment ! On the basis of never missing an opportunity I see the MERC board have fixed the price of their staff options at 33.5p being the mid price at yesterdays close.....
Good for some !

You are, imo, spot on by saying a dead hand.
Additionally there is the worry that Barnetts almost 40% at Invesco may start to be reduced, which if the BoD of Invesco funds involved do their job properly they must surely be considering ?

Boards
I wish you are correct in hopimg that Woodford will start buying again but as he is stuck in so many unquoted stocks it is reasonable to assume that he will carry on selling MERC so his funds can be cashed up before all the redemptions, especially as this stock pays no dividend.
Sorry to be a Jeremiah here but that looks the most probable likelihood to me, actually I think the BoD of MERC have questions to answer as to the shareholding list.

It is an awful lot less today !!!
The real problem is, over promise, under perform and you kill the SP'
Couple that with no one really understanding what they actually do (Hoshin management?!) and you have a disaster, placed at 79p, now 24p......

According to the rns Woodford sold about 5% on Friday, so he still has another 20% left to go !
The fact that Invesco hold almost 40%, his old shop, shows that the drag on the share price is likely to take a fair bit of shifting.
Given also that until recently the board shared the same Chair as WPCT this could be a text book example to illustrate how not to go public !
65% of equity held by 2 investment companies should have rang all the bells even before the sharing of a Chair with Woodfords trust.
It is a great shame as the company is fundamentally very sound, imo, but should never have concentrated the free float into 2 hands.
Although a plc can not choose who they wish to have as shareholders they can certainly avoid this in the "pre placing" stage, viz the horrid share price performance now

Well if it is not Woodford selling think where they might go to when he does, which he will have to.
Think also of the management who paid their now departed Chairlady £40ish K I believe who was also Chairing Woodies (im)patient capital who are still sitting their running this company oblivious, apparently, to their SP performance. Presumably they had never heard of directors "overboarding"
Hardly impressive are they ?
I guess they reap what they sow......

Bamps
I agree with you that the debt reduction was tardy, I guess the new chairman accelerated it, oterwise RF would have carried on building, he clearly likes his building programmes ? Market had been pleading for debt reduction.

Crowbar
Thank you for your timely advice re the deferral of new builds, very useful.

Shares look oversold down here, must be worth dipping a toe in again !

Bamps
Figures modestly disappointing in like for like but good news in the acceleration by 70 mill of their deferring spending on new projects, upgrades, just as Crowbar pointed out in end June.
He seems to have been right on the money then.
Weather as it is at present should transform l for l sales which coupled with the accelerated debt reduction looks good to me, but I am only an investor, not a MM.....

Fairdealer
Thanks for that post, yess Wednesday I see from the website, it really should be good news after some years of disappointment, for seasoned investors in MARS, hopefully a welcome change from the usual uninspiring update !

Dinoken
I agree with you, I think that the possibility of a bid has to be considered in evaluating MARS at present.
Largest UK brewer and even with shares at 123 the market cap is only 770mill, according to FT.
Factor in low sterling and to a brewer in a strong currency this must look an absolute snip !
Sell off the pubs/lodgings and you have a seriously cheap brewery.
Mind you, I have been thinking that for a good while now but was long & wrong.
Now I'm merely long, thankfully !

Dinoken
I certainly hope you are correct, but I am happy with small mercies, being "long & wrong" for some time an uptick of a third to 120 is pleasing enough at present for me.
But then I thought they looked good at 140, so I'm no barometer of these things.
I still fancy a bid though

Dinoken
Perhaps they could do one flight called the "120" in honour of finally crawling back up to that level today ?