Member Info for Forensic505

Looks like we could have lift off from here.

Remember - the worse the daily news gets, the better the fundamentals for MANO gets!

GLA

Completely agree StreetsJ. Only one feasible explanation for such an extreme reaction:

from the order book it looked like someone used today to exit. Makes sense - usually good volumes on results day. The sell orders then completely dried up in the last trading period so I think that has passed and leaves an enticing entry point. If it’s quieter and more positive tomorrow, that should confirm that reading I think.

Watched the Investor Meet Company session earlier.

CEO said that, on the back of the first cartel settlement (£3.m net returned to MANO), they were currently seeking settlements on ALL the cartel cases.

I therefore repeat an important element of my thesis on this company. If MANO settles all the Cartel Cases (ahead of the trial listed for Sept 2026) then I believe that MANO would then be net cash positive units balance sheet and completely free of debt. That then opens up the strong probability of dividends and/or share buy back.

Hi StreetsJ

The evidence is their results before Covid temporarily destroyed the UK insolvency market.

I was being conservative withe the £6-8m range.

For year ended 31 March 2020 (so just prior to Covid) they hit £9.5m PBT. That was up 40% from the £6.8m the year before.

The business is now very significantly larger. The size of the legal team is a good rough reckoner. In 2020 they had 10 in the legal team to process the volume of cases. They are now at 18 and the CEO has said they are adding more. So it looks like their capacity has doubled.

New signed cases, new case referrals and case completions are all around double the size of 2020.

Add to that the statement today where they say they see the avg case sizes increasing and larger realising visible in the second half of this financial year.

Finally - their cost base is pretty much fixed. Adding one or two lawyers is cheap (insolvency lawyers are cheap. They aint the golden circle types from the like of Freshfields).

Take all the above and I stand behind the £6-8m with some confidence.

Interims just released.

The insolvency business is clearly (and unsurprisingly) booming. Record case completions and very strong new case referrals, against very tough comparable from last year.

Another huge cash inflow figure that comfortably covers all its operating costs and all of its new investments PLUS net debt materially reduced again = impressive.

Ignore the non-cash write down on the cartel cases. That is pure accounting (and highly conservative at that) and a complete one-off accounting adjustment. They completed one cartel case recently for a net £3m+ and they clearly state today that there are other cartel settlement discussions (PLURAL) ongoing. I am expecting that the other cartel settlements will completely extinguish all the company's debt and then good dividends will resume. With MANO's near monopoly position in the insolvency litigation market, that should then be a very sustainable yield, with major upside potential on the ridiculously bombed out share price.

They really should have excluded that as an exceptional item in their profit presentation. The underlying profit was £2m. They are clearly flagging that the second half will be much stronger. I would hazard a guess around £6-8m PBT (they were at £8m pre-covid, so that makes sense to me now that covid is long gone).

In my book, that puts MANO on a PE Ratio of 6x. Which is ridiculously cheap for a company at the heart of the UK's insolvency crisis ! I think it will be debt free within 12 months and then have a utility style dividend policy going forward from there.

As ever, DYOR but this looks to have huge upside potential to me and at this bombed out share price, there is no realistic downside.

@anon3 - fully agree. If it ever comes close to 220p, I’ll be adding in spades. I’m in at 234p and very content.

Annexo Mark 2…

I just have a feeling in my guts that they are gonna use the AGM to take the company private for a pittance and wind it down for the benefit of (a) their bankers (b) the board personally.

Reasons:

1. Why bother with the costs of listing in Oz and UK when being quoted is no longer of any value whatsoever to the company.

2. Why bother doing the wind down work for faceless public shareholders, when you can do it out of the public spotlight, in private and aimed at solely feeding your own face.

3. The Chairman, CEO and other board members have proven themselves to be incompetent and wholly untrustworthy. They simply do not care a jot about anything other than their own pockets. We’d have been better off keeping Nick Rowles Davies, the former alleged expenses thief who was previously on the board. At least he had the decency to get caught stealing!

I say “we”. I was out of this a good while back and even made a few quid.

DYOR. GLA.

Better sustained sp progress over the last 2 weeks for LGEN.

Hopefully that’s some reflection of the new Chairman due to take over in the next few months. It just feels like the LGEN Group would benefit from some new thinking at the top.

interim results out wednesday next week.

before any of their annual or interim results announcements, i always have a quick looksee through the latest official statistics from the uk insolvency department.

the numbers i focus on are:

total company insolvencies - running at consistently 2,000 per month. during two years of covid period the monthly number was around 600…so these are now over 300% higher.

total administrations (this is the insolvency method used by the bigger companies eg sheffield wednesday, ppe medpro - mentioned by “rumbers” last comment below). current running at around 120-140 per month compared to the covid period of around 50-60. so big company busts are around 260% higher.

that is my thumb nail, *** packet, call it wot you will, crystal ball on this investment.

conclusion: mano is something like 70% of the uk insolvency market, so its addressable market has gone up 300% since covid ended….but the share price is down something like 60%….

that don’t make no sense to me !

dyor but this is a strong conviction buy for me, especially when the downside is non-existent at this share price. gla.

This is generally a wonderfully well informed investment board focus on LGEN and its comparables. I personally have greatly benefited from learning from regular posters.

Please can we kindly keep that focus. The political stuff is amusing but an unwelcome distraction.

This is my greatest conviction investment, ever.

Last week’s sharp “correction” was such a beautiful, no brainer buying opportunity. Boots accordingly filled!

Didn’t think I’d get rewarded quite this quickly.

Most attractive aspect of this ETF is it’s investment focus around AI (it does have a little exposure to Nvidia, which I am fine with) but its main investments are on Robotics, AI implementation, AI infrastructure.

Just like they said in the gold rush - forget about speculating on gold, buy the shovel companies!

That is exactly what we have hear.

As ever, do your own research but, for me, I think this has simply excellent potential to produce a 5-10x return over a 3 year investment horizon on a broad based AI industrial revolution investment thesis; with very little downside, due to its focus on the support and implementation side of that revolution.

@alan_Smith: interesting post, many thanks indeed. Please can you let Me know what SMIF is please? I can’t figure it out! Much appreciated.

@Thronegames: i read an excellent article on this issue because it initially alarmed me as well. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the exact logic in the article, but my fundamental takeaway was that the dividend cover only looked weak on a very spurious/simplistic method of calculating dividend cover. On a far more common sense (and I think cash based) methodology, the dividend was amply covered and the LGEN board have been very clear in stating on the record that they fully intend to be growing the dividend on a real terms basis going forward.

Apologies for not being able to remember the precise details, but as a very cautious investor myself, I would have completely exited my investment here if I had any material doubts as the sustainability and underlying credibility of the dividend available here.

I’d love RBC to be right! The yield would be even better than it already is !

“Do hear 5…?

Going…going…”

Stock Saint: Even on that basis, the board should then discount the YPF fair value by the cost of capital (13%?) on a compound basis over three years. So in rough terms that is probably a 40% write down on the $ 1 billion.

Given that Trump doesn’t seem to like Litigation Funders and loves Argentina. Suggests the Milel landslide could be quite a killer for the YPF claim. Given all the risks of appeal; ever getting paid and the simple time discount that should be applied to any possible future payment, I would expect the Burford board to apply a conservative provision against the holding fair value of the YPF case now.

My understanding is that the fair value of this case is a very material part of the Burford net assets. Circa US$1 Billion ?

Interesting observations about the RNS. Thanks for highlighting that, I had missed it. Suggests to me that they are preparing shareholders for a bumpy landing. Mr Cheney, we got a problem here…

Yes the order is still there…

That’s a fair old punt….interesting

One of the few retail companies to actually benefit from the increase in the minimum wage. On the negative side it increases staff costs but on the positive side the vast majority of their customers have more disposable income.