Member Info for gewillia

Sain, In my new guise as 'the day trader-who-hasn't placed a day trade since 1995', I came across some more detail from Cass at Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/a-trickle-of-bad-u-k-property-loans-is-about-to-become-a-flood

I wonder how well the UK banks are placed to find themselves proud owners of £10 billion of defaulted property? Also mentions that £22 billion of construction loans are going south, with projects halted or defaulted.

Is the next crisis going to be the banks needing another bail-out by the year-end?

BTW, I admire your guts in continuing to bring unacceptable news to those who believe the fairy-story of Intu's "On Paper" £2.3 billion of net assets. You must have a hide like a rhinoceros. The boys are trading "the noise" at anywhere between 3p to 7p, which is just like spinning a roulette wheel, but I stand with Numis. Barring a miracle, the last spin will be at 0p.

Aside from Marshall Wace and Blackrock, these shorters are nonentities, imo. The time to get worried is when Mr. Odey or Muddy Waters appear on your list. They both have very good records at calling for a share price collapse.

It's a simple bet that the Flutter merger won't happen. The market thinks it will.

Thank you for the invitation, Heaveho. Talk about being offered a poisoned chalice!

If I knew the answer to your question, I would be either long, or short, ten million shares. As it is, I have no position.

My hunch, and it is just a feeling, is that at a time when the Government and Bank of England are busting a gut to keep businesses open, very few lenders will be keen to push anyone into administration. Thus, my hunch (and remember this is how Trump runs the US!) is that Intu's lenders will forbear in June, should Intu be unable to pay any penalties due on its' LTV and other covenants.

But, before that, I think the crunch will come when Rothschild's report back to the board, whenever that happens. Either they'll succeed in putting together a "Scheme of Arrangement" which includes a Debt-Rescheduling and a substantial fresh Capital Injection, from parties presently unknown. Or, they'll fail. The former would almost certainly include Debt for Equity swaps, diluting the current PI's. The latter would be the kiss of death, as it means some banker wants to foreclose now on some asset.

The fact that the SP is 5p and not close to 40p, seems to indicate the market's view on Rothschild's likelihood of success.

Sain, your news from Twitter is beyond extraordinary. This is beginning to remind me of the worldwide development collapse of the 1991/92 when Olympia & York (Creator of Canary Wharf) ran out of cash. The Reichmann brothers had been the world's largest and most successful developers and then the music just stopped. O&Y died and was carved up by the bankers.

If (and it's a very big IF) buyers who signed contracts back in January & February are now telling vendors to whistle for their completion money, this market is truly knackered. In effect, there would be no market. The concept of the 'willing buyer' has temporarily evaporated, making all attempts at valuation quite worthless.

It's all very well saying the vendors can sue and they probably have very strong cases too, but it will take years to get these claims into court. Meantime the vendors are being starved of cash at both ends, and some may well die of starvation, long before anything gets near a judge. Boy, are we living in 'interesting times'.

Last Sentence should read, "Who else are you betting on? Assuming, cheekily, that you might be willing to share."

Wigwammer, I hope I'm not encouraging anyone to do anything, except to be extremely careful before going long on Intu.

You're toying with the numbers, like I do. All sorts of interesting answers appear. But the questions I continually ask myself are, How realistic is this outcome? What are the chances of something happening? My personal experience of this kind of situation is that the assets eventually sell for less than was hoped & the liabilities multiply. I've never forgotten a lesson learnt at 19. I was gopher to the boss of the property management dept. He sent me to visit an industrial tenant, who'd missed the quarter day. A small engineering business. The boss was in the office alone. They were out of business. He'd shut it down because he'd no work-in-progress, but was very confident we'd get paid by the liquidator because he had a slew of accounts receivable. Even showed me a typed sheet. I duly reported that we'd get the cash eventually. Months later, in comes the Statement of Affairs & there's sweet tweet for the unsecured creditors. I pop round to ask what happened to the AR's? His smile was gone. The moment the liquidator wrote to all the AR's telling them to make payment to him, instead of the tenant, the grubby little AR's all wrote back, "Yes. We have the invoice, but unfortunately there's a problem with the widgets supplied to us. If you'd like to repair them to or satisfaction, we'll be happy to pay." - It's all a lie. It's a con, but commercial debtors know that Administrators have no interest in rectifying problems and rarely sue. That was an eyeopener that I've seen repeated many times. Businessmen are very tough.

When the chips are down, there's no charity. Everyone fights their corner like rats in a sack. Per the numbers, there could be a possible £392 m of net cash from a gross sale at £1.5b. But how realistic is this? If TC sold for slightly less, say, £1.35b, the £392m falls to £242m. Another £100m of penalties, drops it to £142m. My point is, that this number can change very meaningfully, very quickly and we don't really have the information to quantify it with real accuracy. Hence my watchword is extreme caution.

I haven't done the exercise, and doubt I will, to establish how the balance sheet would transform following a TC sale and debt redemption, so you could well be right in your calculations.

Cross Default Clauses - I make no pretence of being able guess which way a banker might jump. I merely wanted to point out their existence to people here who might never have heard of them. Very nasty hand grenades they are.

Like you say, it's not black and white. If it was, then the shares would be at either 0 or 20p+. The fact they're at 4p says there are two opinions, although perhaps the fact they're much closer to zero than 20p, suggests something?

I like your idea of a portfolio of dodgy plc's where the downside is 4p and the upside is 16p+. Who else are you bettin

Wigwammer, If I knew the answers to your two questions, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.

Is there a material chance that someone will pay £1.5 billion for TC? The optimist in me would have answered this question, before 1st March, with "Maybe". Simply on the grounds that assets of this quality come on the market very rarely. There will still be a need for some bricks&mortar shops, even if online goes to 67% of retail sales, and when that war is over, the very best, like TC, will be left standing. And if 'Deep Pockets' is prepared to take a 10 to 15 year view, then he'll likely be showing a good paper profit in a decade's time. Whether 'Deep Pockets' actually exists, I have no idea. I've been retired too long. Hence the "Maybe".

However, today, with Covid-19 hanging around for months yet, my guess is "No". For two reasons; One, the financial system is being upended by the (very necessary imo) lockdowns. Where that will end, no-one knows. And, as always, in a crisis, Cash is King. Secondly, thanks to the stock market rebalance, down roughly 25%, there are now all manner of other first-class opportunities to invest in assets and companies with proven business models, which are free of the sort of structural problems that online is posing to shopping centres. Meaning they're much less risky.

These other opportunities do not require taking a 5+ year view. They'll double your money in 12 to 24 months. A quick example from the recent past; Housebuilders tanked after the Brexit referendum. I saw no reason to believe that the UK population would stop buying homes just because of a referendum. We all need somewhere to live and in, or out, of the EU, I could see no logic is assuming that people would stop buying new homes. Consequently in early July of '16, I bought Persimmon and Berkeley. The former for £13 and change. Sold in December '17 for £27 and change. Ditto Berkeley. In at £25. Out at £41. A risk-free almost 100% in 18 months. (I wish they were all that easy).

I'm going off for a coffee now, so I'll give you my answer to your second question later. Please remember, in the meantime, that my comments are just opinions. They could well be wrong. I try to base them entirely on cold, hard, facts and numbers. No emotion. But humans are very emotional. That's how we tend to behave. Some gazillionaire, madder than Donnie Trump, might fall in love with TC and pay £2 billion. It's unlikely, but you never know.

With respect, Wigwammer, I mentioned, very deliberately, no possible price at all, saying of Mr. Whittaker, "I'd imagine he would like to buy this particular asset for himself. Whether he wants to? Whether he can raise the wind? Who knows?"

If someone comes in with a bid, they won't be paying Intu the entire contract purchase price, so there's no £1.5 billion of liquidity, or anything approaching that. Per the annual accounts, there appears to be at least three sources of debt attached to the property. The lawyers for any purchaser will be under instructions to pay the amounts required to repay the debts direct to the lenders. Just as your solicitor pays your mortgage lender any outstanding balance, when you sell your home, before they send you a net cheque for the equity.

The main secured debt on TC at 31.12.19 was £697.8 million. You will appreciate I am no banker, the unsecured financings are fiendishly complicated and the published detail is almost certainly insufficient for even a qualified outsider to analyse their impact on the company's cash reserves. So I can make no comment, except to say that if a sale was negotiated for the Trafford Centre then some £700 million would come straight off the top to repay the secured debt alone.

Whilst that repayment would apparently leave Intu with several hundred million of net cash, I beg to point out that Intu has probable more immediate short-term liabilities of several hundred million pounds, should the assets fall another 10% from their 31/12 values. The annual report discloses, that in this event, and after receipt of all money from the Spanish sales, the company would have to pay £113 m to the lenders at asset-level mortgages. Plus, £161 m to the lenders of the Revolving Credit Facility to cure net-worth and borrowing-to-net-worth covenants. That's £274 m out the door. Throw in the fact that Intu has a portfolio of Interest Rate Swaps, that are over £300 m underwater and have to be repaid eventually, and it appears "the equity" from a future sale of TC is disappearing through shareholders fingers faster than snow melts in a heatwave. The "liquidity" is a mirage.

A final warning, in response to other talking cheerily about bonds that don't have to be repaid, or refinanced, until 2022, 2023, or whenever. All lenders have a very nasty device called a Cross-Default Clause in their paperwork. If Intu incurs a penalty and seeks a waiver in June, whether or not it is granted, they are legally "in default" of that loan. CDC's permit every other lender to claim that Intu is then in default to them too. PI's are thus in the position where they are hoping and praying that no lender decides to pull the pin on June 30th. What's the chance of no lender breaking ranks? This is another reason why I am pessimistic. Rothschilds have their job cut out. I wish them well.

Indeed Wigwammer, there's every chance that someone, perhaps several parties, with deep pockets will come in to buy the assets. They're great property investments, with the exception of the onerous terms of the Derby 50%.

Were I a PI now though, I would be worried that such a buyer would approach the lenders on a property, instead of the company. Trafford Centre appears to be some distance away from penalty liabilities, but most of the others are on the brink. Let's imagine a situation where Centre X is about to trigger a liability to pay, say, £25 million in June and Intu asks for a waiver. Lender is very nervous. Deep Pockets offers Lender an amount that keeps the lender whole, after expenses. So Lender refuses to grant waiver, forecloses and flips Centre X to Deep Pockets. Where does that leave the PI's?

This situation is such a horrible mess. The retail investment market was so knackered already, thanks to online, and now Covid has turned the apple-cart upside down.

Trafford Centre was developed by Whittaker and is apparently the apple of his eye. So I'd imagine he would like to buy this particular asset for himself. Whether he wants to? Whether he can raise the wind? Who knows?

And what would be left in Intu, in the way of cash for the PI's, after, what would effectively be, a partial, or total, company liquidation, is anybody's guess. The legal & accounting fees involved in those exercises tend to be beyond mouthwatering. For anyone going long, it's all one almighty gamble that there might be more than 5p left for the PI's, in this scenario.

BTW, I think Scoredagainsteps comment at 14.31 Monday is very telling. His Market-Maker pal is warning him. That means the Market-Makers are very nervous, which means they are overall short the stock. If you come in to buy, they will sell you stock they don't hold and buy it back for less later, to close their short. This explains the enormous spread in Intu - anything between 10 and 20% difference in the Bid & Offer. When the MM's are overall short at 4p, that tells you where they believe the SP is going - likely to zero! The MM's don't want to be left holding any possibly worthless shares. All IMO.

SharketMare, forgive me for intruding on a question that you asked Sain, but he and I share roughly the same age and background - London-based commercial property starting around the last quarter of the last century.

Although I've never invested in, or shorted, a single share of Intu, it was plain to me over a year ago, when the SP was north of £1, that this company was headed for the rocks. Because of my experience, I decided to make it my business to warn any less experienced potential investors of the grave danger of going long on Intu & explain why the potential was so deceptive. The numbers just didn't stack up. They still don't. The properties are beautiful, but the debts attached thereto are far too large. You have to have expertise in following the public numbers, in order to judge the risk & probable outcome of the company's investment and debt policy. Having experience going back 50 years, seeing several similar situations, which all ended in tears for the PI's, I reckoned that most PI's lacked that and thought I should warn them. Sain is coming from the same place. He has been singing the same warning song, perhaps for even longer. He speaks the truth.

I've, more or less, shut up, because the shares are now trading for pennies & warnings are not needed. The SP & the company's announcement that they have been unable raise funds to pay down the debts, tells you all you need to know. Whether the major shareholder has sufficient cash to mount any sort of rescue remains unknown. Last week's decision by a formerly 10% shareholder to bail at 4 to 5p over a matter of days, suggest they know that he doesn't.

So, where are we now? The comments here are beginning remind me of those to be seen on the very small companies that purport to be active in Oil& Gas or Gold Mining in the wilder parts of the world. Wild optimism that some white knight is about to ride to the PI's rescue & bail them out. The riverboat gamblers, whom I greatly admire for their courage, are into this stock like a rat up a drain. Holding for a day makes you a long-term investor. Intu is about as far from being a prudent 'widows & orphans' investment as Madonna is from being a virgin.

Rishi Sunak might lend them some of his £330 billion? Whittaker might bid 5p in August? Pigs might fly. It's all possible and I have no opinion.

But I do know one thing; Sooner or later companies like Intu run out of cash. They can't pay their bills. They're insolvent. Intu are facing enormous (£100m to £300m) penalty payments to lenders starting in June and now their tenants have stopped paying rent. 70% of the expected March cash-flow has vanished. It's an offence to continue trading when directors knows the company is facing insolvency.

Why do I still come here daily to read the news? I'm just waiting for the RNS announcing the appointment of administrators. Enjoy your trading, but take heed of ScoredAgain's post at 14.31 yesterday. Good Luck!

Sain, dear boy. We've been joined by Feeks, who has good understanding of the, probably fatal, problems here. Now there are three with good eyesight! Our little family is growing.

The argument being advanced by others, especially Doubleheaded, revolves around the difference between the purported NAV that can be obtained by subtracting the debt from the gross assets valued at 31/12/19, of £2.3 billion, as compared to a stock market value of £60 million. The reason for the difference is simply one of timing:

Accounts look backwards to a snapshot, 31/12/19. The stock market looks forwards, usually about 12 to 18 months. Where will the company be in mid-2021? It's a guess, but it's a fairly intelligent guess. It can, of course, be wrong, hence the lively debate in these columns.

I believe the reason the market values these shares at next-to-nothing is because the majority realise that Intu will have no net income after debt service by late 2023. Every month that goes by leases are being renewed at rents 30% lower than what was paid last month. Ditto empty units are being relet at 30% less than the previous tenant was paying. It's the death by a thousand cuts, as each lease rolls over individually, until eventually the whole portfolio has suffered a deadly wound.

During the next 3 years, Intu will fall further into breaches of the three types of covenants detailed in the Annual Report, involving up to £300 million of penalty payments, with over £100 million probably incurred by end-June. The optimistic PI's believe the bankers will happily defer these liabilities. I have my doubts. (I remember a West End property company owner during the 1974 crash, who was up to his ears in personal guarantees. I asked him how bad the bankers were being to him? He said that the worst thing was when they told him they'd agreed to sell his eyeballs to the Moorfields Eye-Bank!)

And all of this is before the Covid disaster, unfolding before our eyes. As you point out, the quarterly rents are due this week. My gut says a number of tenants either won't pay, or will arbitrarily reduce the amounts due. As regards "legally binding contracts" - Hooey! My mobile phone supplier has me by the short and curlies - Stop the direct debit and he'll cut the line off. The landlord, however, is up a gum tree. He needs court orders to change locks and distrain for non-payment - all of which take months at the best of times - and that's when the courts are sitting - Right now, I understand the courts are suspended. I'd regard a shop rent due this week as optional, especially if Intu was my landlord.

I wonder how Rothschilds is getting on at herding the cats?

Hello again, Sain. Our old friend, Lord Wolfson, CEO of NEXT, has published his annual results today. You may remember a year ago, I drew PI's attention to his comments on how he expected 2018's 50-50 split between online and brick shop sales to move to 67% online and 33% bricks by 2024. And how he had every intention of slashing his rent bills. And the likely affect of this big swing to online on shopping centre rental values. You certainly commented on it. Incidentally, he has at least ten branches in Intu centres.

Today, he has a very revealing section which actually gives £ numbers for the 44 stores, headed "Rent Costs & Lease Renewals", where they renewed these leases in 2019. The total rent on these stores fell by £4.1 million (reduced from £13.6 m pa to £9.5 mpa. That's a fall of 30%. They also hit their landlords for £3.2 million, either in cash for store upgrades, or rent-free periods.

In 2020 he has 53 stores up for renewal, where the expectation is to reduce the rent bill by another 30%, or £7.7 million (From £18.5m to £11.0m) and hit the LL's for another £4 m in gimmies.

So in 2019 all NEXT's landlords lost £4.1 m, capitalised at, say 6.5%, = £63 million of capital value (before those cap. rates went up), or £1.5 million per shop unit rented. Likewise, this year, their estimated lost rent of £7.7 m at 6.5% = £118 m loss of capital value, over 53 units = £2.2 million per shop unit rented. I'm ignoring the £7.2m given as inducements, which would increase those losses.

Extrapolating, this gives us a very good picture that units in Intu's malls are probably falling in value by between £1.4 and £2 million per shop, every time a lease is renewed or rent reviewed. If you then take Intu's gross rent roll of £528m for 2018 and reduce that by 30% to £370m, by the time all the 2018 leases have rolled over in 2023, that has an awful effect on the company's ability to pay it's way as a going-concern.

They have £74 m of property non-recoverable & £43 m of head-office costs and £211 of finance costs = £330m total costs, before any extraordinary items like penalties and capital costs, leaving a "profit margin" of just £40 m pa. That £40m then disappears with the sale of the Spanish assets this year. When you're trying to run £6 billion of first-class assets efficiently, a zero margin is thinner than a gnat's wing. The meat in the PI's equity sandwich is vanishing fast.

All of this, of course, is before the Coronavirus disaster. NEXT guesstimate that they'll get hit for between 10% and 25% of total turnover (£445m to £1 billion), but really have no idea. Given the photos in the media of shopping centres, I'd guess 50% minimum over the next six months.

BTW, footfall can be very deceptive. I walk through the Stratford Centre every time I go to Olympic Stadium. I spend zilch. The only useful number is 'sales per sq.ft.' but Intu, very sensibly, isn't about to disclose that to us peons.

Afternoon Sain,

The problem with trying to corral a bunch of dozens of lenders, as I'll bet you've seen in the past, is their differing levels of security.

There will be those who have a safety margin between their debt and a, say 20%, greater asset value. And there will be those who are already in a slight deficit, or very close to it. The former may be more pragmatic and willing to go along for a ride. The latter may be more edgy and inclined to want to liquidate now with a manageable loss, rather than hang on and see it possibly grow nastily over 12 months. It all depends on the personalities involved and how their overall loan-book looks, in the face of the Coronavirus' effect on the economy.

Whatever happens, the story proves that this share is now a crap-shoot. They're rolling dice in hopes. Rothschilds have got their work cut out.

Now here's a pension fund with cojoñes. Going long almost 49 million shares yesterday. There was a time when trustees weren't allowed to buy shares that didn't have a five-year history of regular dividends, but we live in a more pro-risk era.

Sain, please don't leave us. I've enjoyed your insights. Like me, you're prepared to speak truth to power and damn the torpedoes that get fired back because the message is apparently unacceptable to some readers.

Today, I just want to make a comment about the difference between capital and income. Over the past year, quite a few posters have pointed out that Intu has the cash-flow to pay it's debts and this is true. But, they've then leapt to the conclusion that Intu is therefore problem free, which isn't remotely true. So I have a small example, which may (or may not) clarify the problem: Imagine you've a home mortgage for £250,000. Today, that costs you 3% in interest - just £7,500 pa, or £625 a month.

Your income is £50,000 a year, so payments are very affordable. Now imagine that buried in the small print of your mortgage is a clause that says the value of your home must always be 50% greater than the outstanding balance. Once or twice a year you must send the lender a certificate of value. The fine print goes on; if the value falls below >50% on valuation day, then you must pay down the loan, to restore the 50% surplus.

Your home was worth £400,000 when you took out the mortgage in 2017, so no worries there, eh? But the UK economy has since hit the skids and house prices are falling. In 2018 they fell by 12%. Then in 2019 they fell by 22%. Your home went from £400k to £352k and now £275k today. At £352k, you had a problem; £250 x 1.5 = £375k. You had to come up with £23 grand fast last year. It was tight, but do-able. No fancy holiday during 2019. That paid the mortgage down to £227k.

Today, £227k x 1.5 = £340,000, but the latest value is just £275,000 = penalty payment of £65,000. Rather larger than your entire gross income. Now you need to start selling assets fast. The ISA's go out the door. Maybe the kids or wife's car too. These %age falls are exactly those experienced by Intu in 2018 & 19.

You've kept paying the mortgage interest dutifully for the past two years and can still "afford" it. What you can't afford is the mortgage penalties. Your lender might agree to give you more time, might agree to forgive some of it and accept less, but remember, your fate is now in the hands of the bankers. You're relying on the charity/kindness of your mortgagee to keep a roof over your family's head. Not qualities that they're famous for displaying in spades. You're effectively at their mercy. They can dump you in it tomorrow.

And that's the difference between capital and income. Just because you have a nice income doesn't mean you're solvent.

Sorry Jvalue, you're mixing up capital problems with income problems. The interest payable on a loan has nothing to do with covenants regarding the capital value of the asset securing it. My analysis of the capital/debt problem is thorough.

But, lets' take a look at your assertion that "Debt payments have gone down massively" - Debts are £4.5 billion. Base rate went down by 0.5% yesterday. Half of 1% of £4.5b is £22.5 million. Intu pays over £200 pa in interest, so even if all their debt was floating rate (which it isn't), their debt payments would fall by roughly 10%. That's massive?

There are some very interesting straws to be pulled from the results. "In no particular order" of importance; "Insights into Rent Sustainability" concludes that 30% of their tenants can't make a profit at current rents, which are "unsustainable". 10% are washing their faces. 20% are lossmaking. Intu have done a very through job of analysing their 13 largest centres, covering 1,500 units. Here's a lulu - "Moving all the borderline and unsustainable rents to a sustainable level would require the group rent roll to reduce by 16%." For "sustainable" read "today's market value rent". Their rental income fell by 9% in 2019. Intu are forecasting that to continue and increase in size.

Half of the tenants paying unsustainable rents have "robust covenants with over 5 years remaining on the lease." So the hinted business plan is "we'll keep pillaging these tenants with deep pockets and expect them to smile & take it on the chin" That's an original way to win friends and influence people. I can't see Lord Wolfson and friends standing for that.

Intu are seeking covenant waivers, where the LTV has, or is, breaching limits. IOW, they're begging the lenders to hold off demanding their penalty payments. What chance do they have of succeeding? Who knows? The potential amounts are staggering: See "Debt Structure & Covenants" - A further 10% fall in values from 31/12/19 would trigger the liability to £308 million of penalties to cure defaults in LTV covenants, net-worth covenants & asset-level borrowings. These are unaffordable out of current profitability and cash-flow.

"Going Concern" - "A material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt on the Group & Company's ability to continue as a going concern." That's accountant-speak for "We're very close to going TU. Hang onto your backsides."

"Viability Period & Statement" - " . . . it is not possible for the directors to form a reasonable assessment of the Group & Company's ability to continue in operation and meet its' liabilities as they fall due beyond March 2021 . . ."

The asset value fell by £2.5 billion, from £9,255 million to £6,721 million. Debts on those assets amount to £4,498 m.

On paper there's equity of £2,323 million. That's almost equal to the 2019 devaluation. So if the market value continues to fall at the same speed this year, there'll be zero equity left by Christmas. And Intu is saying today that rents have to fall by 16% over the next few years, in order for their tenants to prosper?

Small wonder the shares are quoted at 5p today. The market is anticipating there's no equity left. We shall see.

There seems to be a presumption here that today's very large trades are shorts closing.

However, the RNS just posted this afternoon by Coronation Asset Management of Capetown, South Africa and previously a holder of 10.99% of the shares, reveals that they have sold 1.45%, or 19,500,000 shares, today. This appears to tie in with the 19,500,000 trade recorded at 10.54 today.

Percentage holders have a couple of days to notify the market of purchases and sales, so maybe no cavalry riding to the rescue yet. Just a big investor bailing out.

GVC seems to have gone right out of its' way to obscure the $-numbers from Roar Digital, the MGM Resorts JV, which includes the very important results from the first season of betting on the NFL regular season in the USA to 31/12. There is virtually nothing except for percentages. Gross Revenue up by 55%. Digital GR accounted for 68% of total revenue and was, apparently, up by 137%.

All very positive and good-looking numbers, but virtually worthless from any valuation viewpoint. Is that up 55% from a base of $1 million, or a base of $100 million? We aren't told. Except for the one hard number - the JV (as anticipated) recorded a loss of £12.5 million.

The hard numbers for turnover and costs are buried within the results for "Rest of the World". Thanks a bunch, boys.

There's no breakout of start-up costs. No estimated further start-up costs as the business expands from 7 markets in 2019 to 11 during 2020. No estimate of the time-frame guesstimated to expand from today's 11 states to the 19 which have legalised gambling. This is very significant, as 11 states gives access to just c.20% of the US population, but 19 would give access to 50%. That 30% increase represents tens of millions of potential gambling customers.

Based on some less obscure numbers for 2019, released recently by Flutter and William Hill, it seems reasonable to conclude that the NFL market is proving a major and profitable expansion for UK Bookies. But why do GVC want to hide their light under a bushel. Is there any valid reason to hide good news?

Anyone care to speculate?

Doubleheaded - I'd like you to learn some manners - fast. There's been a variety of interesting opinions posted here for the past year or more, as Intu has sunk like a stone. Everybody, including you, is entitled to their opinion. EXCEPT, when they become personally belittling & insulting and include orders "to stop posting". We treat each other respectfully, notwithstanding our disagreements. We leave judgemental comments to the Daily Star and Piers Moran.

Sain is a vastly experienced commercial property agent. (As am I). He's probably forgotten more than 95% of the posters here will ever learn about commercial real estate. His opinion is to be respected - not spat at like an angry, frustrated child. You're very welcome to disagree 100% with him and me, but save your insults for the football grandstands.

I'd like to make one further general point: Valuations aren't worth the expensive paper they are written on. Why not? Because they too are just an opinion. They are always prefaced by the comments that the valuer assumes the existence of a reasonable market, in which there are willing buyers and sellers, like the Big Box warehouse market.

Today, the retail investment market is most unreasonable. There is a total dearth of buyers and financiers. We have seen over the past six months that major owners (Hammerson & Intu) have had to discount valuations, then only a few months old, by more than 20% to get rid of unwanted assets. Try applying that to these latest valuations and see what the effect is on "the equity".

Yes, next week's accounts will apparently show a balance sheet with £2.5 billion of equity between Intu's latest asset valuations and the debts encumbering them. IMO, that and four quid will get you a coffee at Costa. Because until someone pulls into Manchester on a train loaded with gold bars and puts their hard cash on the boardroom table in front of the BOD, saying "Here's £x. I'll pay that for all your assets" we have absolutely no idea what the equity is really worth.

We all have opinions. You think you're going to make a killing. Sain & I think think you're more likely to lose every penny. We believe we're being very realistic, because we've seen episodes like this (often largely unnoticed by the press or general public) many times before over the past half-century, in the UK, Europe & North America. This just happens to be a particularly large example of Hubris meeting Nemesis in, what was once, a FTSE 250 plc. Good Luck.

MickR, thank you for this post, It illustrates perfectly that Intu is several miles beyond being any kind of sensible investment, based on rational projections. The host of new names posting here show that the 'Riverboat Gamblers' have arrived in force, risking five grand to make forty & not caring much if it goes whoopee down to zero. That's coin-tossing. Not investing.

I've commented several times in the past year that John Whittaker is a very unknown quantity. All his companies are private and his personal privacy extends to the point where he last gave a press interview in 2012. It was disclosed last year that he liquidated some investments to cover £400 million of margin calls on loans secured against his Intu stake, so clearly his finances are several light years away from ours. But, and it's an enormous but, no-one knows his financial clout today.

Secondly, he's 78 years old. He's clearly still very wealthy. A resident of the Isle of Man, he commutes by helicopter to Manchester every day to his office under the dome of the Trafford Centre, (which does sound slightly egomaniacal to me). This was the only asset he brought to Intu. He might well be very happy to kiss goodbye to his almost worthless, unfinanced, shares in Intu, provided he takes the Trafford Centre with him, at little, or no, cost, on a side deal with the financiers.

He doesn't need you, or any other PI, to help him do this. The idea that he will pay 39.4p to all the PI's is frankly ludicrous. When this stock was over £1, I warned that you'll all be quite irrelevant to the major shareholders, bankers, financiers & professional advisers, if it came to a carve-up. They will leave you all high & dry on the beach, as the tide goes out, with them sailing away in their yachts with the assets. I've seen this happen. If you don't believe me, as Sain for his opinion. He's seen it too. Now with the stock at five pennies, & the carve-up starting, people are crossing their fingers that a Capitalist Magic Grandpa is about to shower them all with 39p a share? To which, I say, 'In their dreams.'

Matthew Roberts can write what he likes about his vague plans for the future. They're not worth the paper they're written on. Pelion met Ossa last week when Intu failed to put a rescue package together. Nothing much will change between now & 30th June. We're already two months down the line. Fiddling with commercial rates next week will have zero effect on asset values. Further Penalty Payments will be incurred in June: Milton Keynes, Merryhill & Chapelfield are already within 0.7% of triggering them. St Davids Cardiff & Trafford Centre are within 5%. Intu must be coming near to the point where it runs very short of operational cash because of the penalties it started having to pay in January.

BTW, I have nothing against riverboat gamblers. I greatly admire you for having nerves of steel to risk thousands on the turn of a card. Good luck with your £50k.