Member Info for horace678

down the slippery slope...

Lord Ashcroft (57%) has recently lent a load of money to the company so that it can get back on its feet again, and he expects to get his money back. He has also recently changed the senior management. Let Ashcroft's management team do their work and we should see a recovery if we wait long enough.

No, Cazenove has 12%, Barclays has 5% and Geraldton (aka Lord Ashcroft) has 57%

I agree entirely. If Lord Ashcrot has a majority stake in MVW (one of 5 companies he has a majority in on AIM), then you WILL make money - you just have to wait long enough.

See today's RNS stating that Barclays has gone from virtually no shares to a holding of 5.3% - the plot thickens...!

Also, Lord A owns 57% of IPEL, so at the end of the merger, he would own....57% !

Lord A owns 57% by Geraldton, Cazenove held 16%, the rest is available by looking at the appropriate press releases. With 57%, Lord A can control the future of the company, but maybe if he offered less than the actual price for the company, it wouldn't make him look very good.

Yes, he likes to keep his fingers in many pies...note how Andrew Wilson (newly appointed to the board of MVW) is also on the board of IPEL.

I remember when Ashcroft merged Carlisle Group (his services company) with Corporate Services Group (29.9% owned by Ashcroft at the time) in around May 2008 to form Impellam, a large holding in Corporate Services Group was in the hands of Dresdner (up to 20%). The share price was at 9p but it gradually trickled down to 2p with lots of offloading of shares. Ashcroft then jumped in and merged with Corp Serv Group with the shares at 2p. I wonder if there are echoes of that situation here. Was Dresdner offloading shares as part of a deal with Ashcroft ? Is Cazenove offloading shares here in a similar situation? Only time will tell...

My hunch is that Lord Ashcroft has been behind the recent fall in share price. I suspect he was behind the tentative offer in August (who else?) but decided that he could get the company for a cheaper price. In my opinion, he has struck a deal with Cazenove who have agreed to sell some of their shares to get the price down. In return, Cazenove (and the other shareholders) will be rewarded with some nice shares in Impellam (IPEL) which is itself solid and undervalued. This means that Cazenove don't have to wait around for ages till MVW improves in value. I think Lord A will put in an offer for MVW to merge with his services mothership IPEL before long.

I am long, having bought 190k at .80p last week and I am confident of a gain sooner or later...

Yes the balance sheet shows that the company has a healthy revenue but makes a loss. Still, the difference between loss and profit isn't too great.

I am watching this company, that's for sure. If Lord Ashcroft has lent a load of money to MVW with a view to getting it back by 2012 with interest, then it's a buy recommendation as far as I'm concerned. Plus MVW is only one of the 5 AIM-listed companies that he has a majority stake in and if Lord A has lost a lot of money, I'm sure he'll want to make it back. Plus note that the management has changed and now includes Andrew Wilson, who is on the board of Impellam (another Lord A company). I wonder if there is some market manipulation going on with the share price dropping. Could Lord A eventually want to merge the company with his services mothership (Impellam) and be trying to get a cheap price for it? I remember when Corporate Services Group merged with Carlisle Group to form Impellam, the share price appears to have been manipulated to drop from 9p to 2p with the offloading of lots of shares by one of the big institutions (Dresdner, I think). Thoughts ?

Bought some today - if it's good enough for Ashcroft, it's good enough for me. Plus he has recently pumped a load of money into the company, so he must believe in it.

The problem with the share price is that Ashcroft studiously avoids publicity and refrains from courting the City. There isn't a single analyst in the City who follows Impellam, nor any of the other Ashcroft companies for that matter. Ashcroft prefers to lie low (remember Impellam is quoted on AIM), bides his time while he turns the company round and then sells off at a huge premium and everyone goes "Where did that one come from?" I have researched Ashcroft in detail back to the 1970s and this is what he does, time and again. If you recall, Impellam was formed from the merger of the profit-making company Carlisle Group with the loss-making Corporate Services Group. If the Carlise Group bit of Impellam was at the current price, then it would be on a PE of less than 1. You will get your money back many times over, but you just need to wait until well into the next decade. As it is, Ashcroft has got work to do as IPEL has a debt of £60m which he needs to work the company hard in order to shift.

This is what will happen to IPEL, you just have to wait long enough. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2007/10/08/7903/michael-ashcroft-master-magician/ The PE of IPEL is currently less than 4, but they have debt of >£60m. I think it will take 5-10 years for IPEL to be turned round. Meanwhile, the share price will continue to stay low as Ashcroft doesn't like to publicise his companies or seek analysis in the City. But eventually the phoenix will rise from the ashes...

You will get your money back on IPEL but it will take about 5-10 years. Lord Ashcroft, who is chairman and has a majority shareholding, likes to keep things quiet. He will turn IPEL round to a good profitable company and then sell it off at a large premium. He has been using this technique for the last 30 years. See what happened to OneSource when he sold it to ABM and the share price went up 6 times overnight. Just put your shares away for a long time and you will get your money back. In the meantime, Ashcroft has got work to do !

Shellproof is due to be launched on AIM in early May. I suspect you would have to hold your Carlisle shares from 4 April through to that date, as I doubt it would be that easy to make money, unless the registrars (Capita) make a mistake. I would hang onto your Carlisle shares as they are bound to go up in the long term. The company is undervalued and makes a profit.

Carlisle is a good punt in the long term, as it is heavily undervalued with a PE of around 4, so it's still worth buying !

Re the special dividend. This is a dividend 'in specie' which means that £4m from the assets of Carlisle are being demerged from the main company into the company called Shellproof. The consequence however, is that the market cap of Carlisle will have to drop by £4m to account for the loss in value. So the share price of Carlisle will have to drop at the time of the dividend issue. You will therefore be no better off after the dividend than before. It's not that easy to make money !