Member Info for Forensic505

Well said Little Jimmy.

I wonder what the next wave of lies they try to propagate now.

I do think that from the outset the various “professional” City analysts got their forecasting models wrong.

In all cases, they, rather simplistically & lazily, took the average historic return multiples and simply applied that to “deployments or commitments” going forward. Assuming those historic returns would apply like clockwork.

LCM never had a huge number of cases ongoing, so a more granular, bottom up approach should have been pretty straightforward. Then sensitives applied.

BUR and MANO operate with many more cases, so a modified but still bottom up approach could have been applied. Personally I find Mano’s 12+ year track record of reporting annually and consistently 120% IRRs over many hundreds of cases that complete very fast (c. 12 months) to be obviously highly impressive. But they OWN their cases. Their people can drive those cases to a conclusion very fast. BUR and LIT are passive funders, not the owner of the cases (look up the law on champerty and maintenance). MANO is pure insolvency cases where Champerty does not apply. So, so different to all other “passive” funders.

LCM’s run of big losses could have been a “downside” sensitivity case, so as that became reality, investors could and would have been far better informed (so less violent sp corrections). It would have also stopped rather idiotic senior executive behaviour (as we certainly see with LCM) that simply deploying shareholder funds (knowing that the analysts would automatically apply historic rates of return) would produce a profit upgrade and sp ride.

Insane and very dumb.

DYOR

My goodness….another major disaster loss…..AS13.2m loss on own balance sheet.

Genuinely shocking.

Any appeal risks adding good money after bad. I think I read somewhere that successful appeals run at around 10% win rate.

Exactly right ggplr.

I’m starting to think that “traditional” litigation Funders (Burford, LCM and Omni) are just not suited to being listed companies. Their cases take many, many years to resolve. They are not in control of them (champerty) so they are passive funders (the one sector where you are legally allowed to BUY and therefore completely control cases is in insolvency. MANO is a pure play on that). And now we are seeing from LCM, that losses/wipe outs are a regular event.

Operations like these are probably far better suited to the unlisted hedge fund world.

Just an individual thought. DYOR.

Apologies - she/he must be referring to 17 Dec 25 Half Year report. I have now checked and the data on 49% reduction in Administration appointments is there.

Copied from ADVFN. I am no expert in this area but its a good and it does seems to be a particularly well informed post:

"Make no mistake, the KEY USP for FRP is their complex insolvency work, called Administrations.

In their trading update last week, they stated that despite RECORD levels of UK insolvencies, their number of Administration appointments is down a shocking 49% compared to last year.

See my posts above. I have been a very strong supporter of this company in the past but last week I sold out based on that one KEY fact.

Yes they have other divisions eg M&A and Property Advisory, but those are pretty new to them and are also highly cyclical. It is the very high margin Administration business that has always set them apart, so that 49% decline is incredibly alarming, to say the least.

Why the big drop in Administrations? 3-4 years ago the BIG FOUR accounting groups (PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte) were forced by the Government to dispose of their insolvency advisory businesses. Those are all now independent entities backed by the very deep pockets of a few very big Private Equity firms. Before their spin offs, those BIG FOUR were very weak competitors because of their many and multiple conflicts with audit and tax etc. THAT HAS ALL CHANGED. I spoke to a current manager at FRP at an investor event last year. He told me, the newly independent former BIG 4 are now VERY aggressively attacking FRP's core market of Administrations. As a small example, he told me that FRP used to be able to charge £50-100k simply as an initial retainer fee to conduct a "Business Review" prior to their appointment as formal Administrator. The firm doing that initial 99% of the time gets the Administration appointment and pockets the HUGE follow on appointment fees.vThe Independent Big 4, now do this "Initial Review work" for FREE. That then guarantees them the formal Administration appointment. Administrations often last for a year and more, so that is incredibly lucrative income and directly explains FRP's stellar but HISTORIC track record.

IMHO: THIS IS A HUGE, HUGE RED FLAG, my friends.

DYOR but at 136p (not far off their all time high) I think they MUST have used various accounting "trickery" to flatter their bottom line profits (eg releasing provisions against questionable WIP and debtors - exactly the same mistake that Tenon and Vantis made when they were both quoted on AIM. Both of those two firms went bust. And.,,,,,FRP is the OLD Vantis business !!! As The Who once sung: "we wont get fooled again"). You can only do that accounting trick once....Honest opinion: STRONG SELL."

101p

Congrats great shout earlier this week.

Have a good weekend

Exactly the same as UK overcharge that was established on the first UK test cases about 18 months ago. So fully inline with the assumptions used by Mano’s external valuers. Can’t remember that firm’s name but the CEO has referenced them and the 5% several times now.

Manolete Customer: where do you get this statement from: "Now we’re told that HSBC want to exit which implies that the cash covenants are tracking the wrong way." ?

I have neither read nor heard anything of the sort to support your statement, whatsoever.

Your message is libellous and has the clear intent of deliberately misleading the market.

Hi Rumbers,

My understanding from the last results call (in Nov I think ?) was that the 15 new Barclay cases were pretty much secured (I could be wrong but that was my reading). But you are absolutely right, Mr Hayhoe will now be presumably looking at the really outstanding results Mano delivered on the first wave of the Barclays Pilot (around 80 cases I think) and...hopefully....coming to the rational conclusion to engage with Mano on how best to recover the £10 Billion the Government has already paid out to various Bounce Back Loan banks under the 100% guarantee that the Government gave on the entire £50 Billion Bounce Back programme. That is the really big prize but, under a new Government, it is very difficult/impossible to guess what new approach to the whole Covid fraud recovery programme. Could be zero. Could be anything ! Best of luck.

Twins = headwinds

MANO share price is up 30% in the last 6 days, on unusually high and consistent volumes.

Yet it is still almost 50% below its 2018, IPO price. Suggesting further significant upside headroom.

This company specialises solely in UK insolvency litigation claims. It was hit hard by Covid as the government of the day suspended normal insolvency laws for over two years and pumped pound 700 billion of liquidity in to support UK SMEs. It takes time for that hit to unwind but it should now start appearing in the rearview mirror. With what one would reasonably presume a strong set of Twins now behind it for the foreseeable future. As ever DYOR but the trading data above does look promising.

LIT now has an £84m equity market value. Plus c. £20m debt. So therefore over £100m total enterprise value (equity value + debt value).

That looks somewhat "stretched" on its loss-making performance and with commitments down by 2/3rds the future doesnt look too bright either...

Caution required here. As ever, DYOR.

@United_99: many thanks for the link to that article. Its an excellent deep dive on MANO and (a very rare) well balanced, pluses and minuses, article. A great read:

https://rockandturner.substack.com/p/manolete-partners-special-investment?r=1owuoe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Agreed Half Penny. Last week Begbies reported a record rise in financial distress among UK companies: up a huge 50%!

With the share price at less than 50% of its IPO price in 2018, this is one of the few companies that will prosper over the next several years given the dire UK economic outlook.

DYOR

The debt is far too high here. And there are more BIG "deferred" cash payments they have to shell out from previous acquisitions. If you look at the presentation (helpfully someone posted the link below - thank you), the organic "growth" is pitiful. All they are doing is adding debt and equity to BUY revenue growth. Utterly ridiculous. Knights are universally disliked in the legal profession, which is why many of the good partners who join via a Knights acquisition, take their cash consideration as soon as they can and then leave for a better firm.

Yet....the CEO sold shares for £50m personally when the price was at a peak.

Dont get fooled again!

DYOR

Rider75 - you got it right "2035" there ! lol

Very good spot. I completely missed that episode of the saga ! Thank you MasterRSi.

MANO is now priced below Net Asset Value. Insane discount for a business that looks to be accelerating strongly back to its pre-COVID levels of operating performance and very strong cash generation.

This will rebound upwards very sharply once people appreciate the stars realigning here. The macro tailwinds are almost perfect for this insolvency focused business.

At this price level of discount to NAV, the downside risk is now massively outweighed by the upside opportunity.

DYOR