Member Info for John33

"To say all that and raise equity would be poor form, but I've seen it before."

The last five years, the BoD have been the equivalent of a premier league team relagated to non-league.

Only difference a football manager is shown the door in one year or less!

It's already known the firesale will be debt neutral it hasn't moved the needle.

A rock and a hard place!

Are the concern because it was an absolutely appalling low amount of cash for NASB firesale, the hybrid £500m off balance sheet financial engineering hokus pokus due Nov25/Feb26, and they have stated idealy they want to keep it, will push up interest rate charge from 4.25% to 8.5% extra £21m. The alternative if redeemed is I believe would push borrowings to breach the banking covenants 3.5.

Some would be more in the know through their banking chums than others, it's not a level playing field, all in my opinion.

"To give the Directors power to disapply pre-emption rights - general"

That line worries me if you care to Google it! Garat did say all options are on the table without being specific, could be looking at major dilution here.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=disapply+pre-emption+rights

It basically means they can quickly raise cash in a placing etc with institutional investors (90+% who own MCG shares I would think) and cut out the small sharholders ie. private investors. They did this during covid when they raised/diluted the shares by 20%

What are pre-emption rights?

Pre-emption rights give existing shareholders the right to purchase new shares issued by the company before they are offered to the public or other parties. This protects them from having their ownership stake diluted.

Why disapply them?

Companies may want to disapply pre-emption rights to raise capital more quickly, to make a specific acquisition, or to attract a new investor who might not be interested in purchasing shares on a pre-emptive basis.

About c.600K shares closed but they and others have been going up and down sometimes criss crossing the 0.5% threshold for some time

There will no doubt be numerous shorts open we do not know about which aren't notifiable as they will be under 0.5%

FFS no it has not scroll down the shorts page and you will see it is 0.48%

0.59 > 0.48%, not fully closed

Cosmens could step in a la Sidar for WG. It's looking like it is playing out this way.

Rob, yes it will affect the covenants to close to breaching, which could mean the banks will want their pound of flesh to maintain the loans in opearation. MCG will need to head off this scenario if they can. The recent FY24 results/video presentation stated that all options are on the table,..what does this mean, firesale price of quality assets? cash raise?

it really needs interest rates to come down very soon,..but likes the genie inflation is proving difficult to get back in the bottle!

............................................................................................

Does anyone know if the x2.8 covenant includes 50% of the hybrid? If so that +0.7x net leverage means without the hybrid is x3.5 EBTIDA covenant coverage

Https://uk.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/fitch-lowers-mobicos-rating-citing-higher-business-risk-93CH-4119838

MCG is also considering refinancing options for its GBP500 million hybrid, callable between November 2025 and February 2026. If MCG opts to keep the existing instrument outstanding beyond February 2026, it will cease to receive 50% equity credit, leading to an immediate increase in EBITDAR net leverage by around 0.7x and making a downgrade highly likely.

Fitch anticipates EBITDAR to be GBP315 million-350 million a year during 2025-2027. MCG faces ongoing operational challenges with its Rhine-Ruhr Express contracts through 2033, with severe train driver shortages increasing service cancellations and penalties.

None of those fund managers named are listed as having bought in the last 12 months let alone since April, what are you two smoking!

ALSA is the main business

Positioning themselves to take ALSA off MCG as another distressed sale, they can clearly block any other buyer so they will get it for a song when the BoD have run out of options re. the debt mountain.

Could call it a conflict of interest but that is the perilous position MCG are in. Germany will never make a profit even if there is some agreement with the German PTA, at best it will start to break even. £2B of debt and higher interest payments have finished this company off

I can only surmise mkt clearly hates the drag on earnings by the two ugly sisters and the huge debt burden, the assets must barely cover the debt/covenants, regardless what happens with PTA in Germany shorters are betting on some sort of recapitalisation shares for debt.

At least P white has put his hands in his pocket but he is new and perhaps naive .

Are trading well off since the NASB debacle, near 5yr lows, and as someone preiously pointed out Moody's I think has them under review, the BoD said they wanted to keep the bonds as investment grade but that may be out pof their hands with the UK/German debacle.

Ratnam, I must be posting out of boredom, but

Ratnam,

"Firefpower1, why are you so worry about we loosing money ? if this company goes bankrupt or not, it will bounce back to 58p within 6 months"

If bankruptcy were to transpire can you please elaborate as to how it will bounce back to 58p!!!

Cosmens are probably waiting for the next shoe to drop and a forced sale which won't cover the outstanding debt owed. The video conference Helen mentioned that net debt will rise FY25.

it's either a sale of WeDriveU or ALSA coming up next probably when the SP is single figures.

The UK is probably worth £zero, Germany the same, as are the shares.