Member Info for DC2007

Pearls,

Lets have a look at your suggestions.

- First the HoF £90m write-off. Based on an assumption that HoF without DEB is entirely worthless, i.e. have a future value of £0. What's your evidence for that?

- To buy DEB before next Thursday, MA would have to offer at least 22p for all the outstanding shares he does not already own. That costs £190m. I'll take your word that he's already spent £150m on DEB. Then there is £200m to repay the bondholders. So he's going to pay £540m (190+150+200) to control a business the market valued on Friday at not even £20m?

Think today will be the highest volume of all time.

What do the BoD have to gain by colluding with lenders and creditors?

Appreciate you putting a figure to it.

In probability terms, what do you rate the chance of this happening Pearls?

In what way is he dominating the high st? A lot of the businesses he's taken an interest in are doing poorly or totally flunking. If there is anyone left dominating the high street, it can only be Next.

I don't get it Pearls - you're now asking others what's going on. But for months you'd insisted MA would bid for Debs at the first possible chance for a large premium to 3-4p. What's happened?

What fireworks? What has happened?

That quite a few have liquidated positions says they might know something. PIs are always the last to know. There is no institutional buying (or directors) which compounds the poor sign of the institutional selling.

The institutions bailing out is not a good sign.

Online has to be the immediate answer KNIGELK. It has transformed what people do with their disposable income and vastly expanded the market where that income can be consumed.

Also another thing might have hurt them a lot over the past two years has been the weak pound following the Brexit vote. With such thin margins to begin with, higher buying costs will have shaved them even more as they don't have the pricing power to pass this on to customers.

It's a good experiment to wonder how things would be now if the previous CEO was still at the helm. Sergio came in and has spent a lot of cash on Redesigned. The costs escalated too which is a yellow flag. If they'd not bothered doing Redesigned, I think overall now, they'd be no worse off. There might even be more cash on the books. And stubbornly retaining the dividend as profits more than halved was a blunder.

Having listened to Sergio's presentations, he's never inspired me with confidence; he seems a little vague and as if he doesn't believe in what he's doing himself. It's most encapsulated by his oft repeated phrase of making shopping 'sociable, fun and confidence building'. The confidence thing is just weird and I've never got my head around it.

They [the article] are implying debt is beyond what was quoted in January and free cash less. If that's true, then the £40m bridging loan could already have been burned up. Could that be a possibility Pearls?

How reliable is the journalist who wrote it? I can only see the first paragraph and it trots out the "sources closes to the talks" line, which could mean anyone's Aunty.

Agree and then some - see gradual drift towards new all time lows unfortunately.

And now Mothercare has overtaken Debs market cap to rub salt in.

Short tracker is updated every weekday, usually after the session has closed. I'm not convinced of the accuracy, even after accounting for their disclaimer that short positions under 0.5% are not included in the total. I don't know of any better (free) source for this data though.

All part of the excitement. Five more trading hours - loads of time - yet for the share price to go to 20-35p like Pearls has been saying. Hang on in there!

Seriously, come on! You think most of the press have missed this whereas you've spotted it? Alternatively, they know but realise it's of limited significance. A possibility Pearls?