Member Info for Forensic505

Zeus note now published.

They say it underpins the 4.8p and will upgrade again once MRE out (which is very soon).

I’ve been working in the City for 17 years now.

I have never seen an Investment Bank have to issue two share price upgrades on two consecutive days 🤯

Over to you guys, Zeus !

We need to consider FW’s position as well as the ATG board’s.

FW closed their largest fund to date just 15 months ago at $1.4 Billion.

FW’s biggest fund investment to date is their 22% in ATG. But their purchase price was 500-550p per share. If the current takeover approach now collapses and they have to mark to market their ATG position at 270p, that will be a career ending event for our Australian friends. What remains of the $1.4 billion will have to be handed back to LPs (technically they’ll refuse to honour future drawdowns) and FW will be unable to raise another penny farthing in investment funds ever again.

Conclusion: the board need to make the deal work. But so do FW. Time to end the silly slapping match and start talking sensible numbers. IMO the range is 475 - 525p. Time to get down to some see pencil sharpening.

On the back of the new data released today. Zeus have increased their share price target today to 4.8p. Up from previous 1.9p. 100%+ upside available on today’s close.

See full note on Research Tree. Happy drilling.

Sadly no news flow/engagement recently. Therefore price drifting, it seems to me.

Happily: this presents a lovely buying opportunity (at around 50p 😍😍!!) as annual results via usual year end trading will soon be upon us. Boom 💥

I hear you Mr ShandyPants.

Let’s see…

If the board crater this for us, I’ll set up a class action. With the grotesque salaries we pay for them to go and halve OUR share price, they should should have plenty of personal assets and professional indemnity insurance for us to have a very hard run at. I’m warming up no win no fee lawyers in case Monday is a board-driven car crash.

I am retired but until recently worked in UK M&A for 40 years. In my personal opinion, this represents a tremendous M&A arbitrage opportunity for private investors. The ATG Board will be forced to provide due diligence access by the highly effective and highly ethical UK Takeover Panel. Based principally on my comparables analysis below (see earlier posts), post diligence, this should support a final completion takeover price of 450-500p.

I say this here in good faith, and something extraneous can also go awry, but, sadly, UK private investors are not able to benefit from the high quality research that is available to institutional investors. This is the position post “Basel II”, which I have always thought was detrimental to shareholder democracy.

*others = otherwise

Disagree.

FW are saying: “we’d like to consider offering more than 400p but the obstructive ATG board behaviour means we cannot go higher until we are granted basic due diligence access”.

The individual board members of ATG need to be mindful of their fiduciary duties to shareholders, others they become personally liable for lost opportunity losses to those same shareholders.

I am sure the ATG Board’s lawyers (individual and corporate) will advise them accordingly.

Correction: current FitzWalter offer is 400p (not 360p).

So not too much pencil sharpening required to make this happen.

Goldman Sachs (aka ChatGPT) just did the following fundamental EV/Free cashflow analysis for me, comparing ATG against the peer group that FitzWalter itself identified in one of its recent letters:

ATG: 7.9x

Autotrader: 19x

Baltic Classifieds: 19.1x

Rightmove: 20.6x

Ignoring a 30% takeover premium, applying each comparable company’s EV/FCF to ATG values ATG share price at:

Autotrader: gives an ATG share price of 796p

Baltic Classifieds: ditto 800p

Rightmove: ditto 863p

Using EV/Adjusted sustainable EBITA gives a range of ATG share prices of 475p - 690p (excluding takeover premium).

FitzWalter need to sharpen their pencils a little, from their current 360p.

Personally, I think the executive management have been poor and heavily overpaid. I would therefore be in favour of a takeover at 500p and above.

I agree @shandypants

I have been adding vigorously at 330p. Given high likelihood of a binding offer of 425-475p is due this time next week (deadline set by The Takeover Panel is 5pm on 2 February), I am surprised that others aren’t seriously filling their boots now!

Attended the AGM today.

Management taking a perfectly sensible stance:

If we get a firm offer at a good price for shareholders, we will recommend it.

If we think the price is to low: we continue with our organic expansion plan, which is going to plan.

The great underpin for shareholders is that ATG is a fantastic business. If FitzWalter finally table an offer that really reflects the value of the business (and remember they happily paid 550p for their 22% shareholding not that long ago) then fair play. I will accept that.

But if they are not a genuine outfit and this is all just a rather childish, and pretty unethical, fishing expedition to try and steal the business on the cheap at a FAR LOWER price that they themselves bought at, then we reject the bid and management build the share price back up to 1,500 which is where it was in 2023.

Thanks and agreed UPshunt.

I have been looking at the new board. I think the chairman, Howard Leigh is now effectively in control now. He has a super impressive background, It was his business called Cavendish (that he started decades ago) that has become the shining jewel in the quoted Cavendish Investment Bank Group - presumably that is why they changed the group name to Cavendish !

Leigh looks like a very savvy operator indeed. He's an expert in Corporate Finance (he headed up the CF faculty for the Chartered Accountants institute). So someone like him will be totally focused on shareholder value. Top bloke. I think the new CEO (Halton) is a good operator - been in the Mano business for over 10 years. Plus a new CFO who looks much better than his predecessors here, by a long chalk. I think we're in good hands - in particular led by Leigh.

Year end results not far away now. I agree - given their business cycle (2 years from taking on a case through to full cash receipt) we should now be harvesting the fruits of three years of record case investments. So net debt should be well down down and profit should be very strong.

Underlying profit was £2m for the half year with a strong message that H2 will be stellar, so I'm looking for around £5-6m+ for EBIT for the full year ending 31 March 26. On my calculations that puts the vacation of MANO at a PE of around 7x. Dirt cheap. Canaccord have a target of 130 (100% upside from here and I really can't see any downside risk at this lowly share price).

My only disappointment so far this year has been that they haven't managed to follow up with further cartel case completions since their excellent £3.2m win in 2025. Cooklin's last gift to the stockholders! If memory serves the trials are about 9 months away, so these should be very ripe to close. If they hit NAV on the cartel cases, they will extinguish all their net debt and this should look very pretty indeed.

A number of investment banks have tipped MANO to be one of the top financial services recovery stocks for 2026. I wouldn't argue with that. I have added significantly these past three weeks.

DYOR as ever and GLA.

Major adds at 680p.

Christmas has come early (or late!)

Many thanks to those generous individuals who sold. Truly grateful ☺️ 🙏

They have engaged very well with FW now. They have played a blinder. 400p is the “basis” for a discussion.

Excellent work by the Directors.

Clearly, FW have to pay the usual premium for a far less “recommended” deal. A hostile bid would cost them far more operationally in the long term. They need to get management and full team onside with their plan, they can only be done with a consensual, agreed and recommended offer.

I have a foot in both camps.

‘Gwan my son !

@MrBear That is exactly right. Very well spotted and highlighted. That is precisely the kind of language they HAVE to adopt in a formal Offer Period. Thank you.

Good point @Richdom