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Bondy123 - nothing conclusive to explain it. And remember that the marcap is only 10% more than the cash in the bank, with no debts.
My HIGHLY SPECULATIVE theory is that it’s orchestrated to keep the SP as low as possible for the final results of 31 Jan 2024, possibly for II buys or even a takeover offer.
Cash in the bank around £250m. Marcap £275m.
Proof that business turnaround based on the last two official updates.
It hardly gets better value than this company now, and one of the two (the other one being Marston's) that I suspect will get a takeover offer in the next few months.
ITM may have benefited from that news, because it suggests that there is at least still some life in the sector. Which might be the reason the share price deteriorated.
Dennis did deliver tangible results over 2023: the numbers showed he slowed down the rot (stopped it?) and refocused the business. Obviously we want big concrete contract news - the Shell deal is too open-ended so far.
This might the reason for the breakout of yesterday:
https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2024/01/09/Red-Oak-Taverns-acquires-four-pubs-from-Marston-s-Jan-2024
Not huge in the grand scheme of things considering Marston's scale but it demonstrates two things:
- Marston's can sell some of its pubs (although no price provided).
- Lenders are willing to support pub companies (the buyer had a large chunk of debt, yet its creditors agreed to lend it even more money for the purchases from Marston's).
Fairdealer - the calculation of the NAV takes all mortgages, charges and other agreements into account under standard reporting rules. So the Carlsberg "shackles" are taken into account in the NAV.
Likewise, you appear to claim that the Welsh estate has been misreported. What evidence do you have of that?
"You have commented on the declined offer made by Platinum in 2021. That offer was 107p at the 3 rd time and not put to SH's until completely declined by Ralph Findlay."
- It was turned down because it was deemed not to value the company adequately (as stated officially). Yet Platinum still made that offer in the first place, after placing two earlier (lower) offers, so they too clearly agreed that the business was at least worth that in spite of the above-mentioned "shackles".
The market not being confident about the company at present is an indicator of sentiment, it is not hard evidence of the company's health and NAV.
And this is where a takeover would be highly interesting for the company's new owners: if a consortium of parties that together don't need to borrow a substantial amount of money to pay off a large chunk of Marston's debt gets the business, then by indeed making that payment (or part-payment) of the debt, they would then enormously boost its profitability, especially in a period of high interest rates. As interest rates are getting increasingly likely to come down (albeit slowly probably) this year, it makes sense to buy the company sooner rather than later (so long as no money needs to be borrowed for that purchase of course).
Fairdealer - some of my response is in my reply to barchid. For the rest, I invite you to read all the RNSs since Spring 2020 and the Times article(s) from that year as well as the news of the rejected T/O offers of Q1 2021.
Barchid - assuming you are referring to this, https://www.voxmarkets.co.uk/articles/will-this-unloved-sector-perform-like-house-builders-did--907da66/ ,
unfortunately you have demonstrated that you listened to only one half of the material and publicly reported/ commented on the other half.
Key points:
1- the video covers several sectors, bars/pubs being only one of them.
2- the guest speaker said “lots of intrinsic value” for the pubs and bars.
3- The only moment he spoke of Marston’s was to say that it was the listed pub/bar company with the “highest margins” (at 23’00” approx).
4- However, when going beyond his factual claims, that guest comes across as an incredible idiot: when commenting at the majority of the pub/bars listed (NOT MENTIONING MARSTONS EXPLICITLY), he said that the high “NAV [was] offset by debts”. It’s an incredibly stupid statement: NAV / net asset value is literally [assets minus liabilities].
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nav So a high NAV means a business is comfortably solvent and can comfortably cover its debts.
Now there are other broader macro considerations also covered in that (very very amateurish IMO) video which do not necessarily paint a fully rosy picture but pubs / bars and Marston’s in particular are not particularly suffering from that direct and indirect (amateurish mostly) coverage, all things considered.
I genuinely believe Marston’s will get taken over above 90p per share by July, unless the SP rises organically to that figure before then.
Anyone who has researched this company and its history since 2020 will know why I’m saying that.
Tomorrow / 5th December's announcement is unlikely to be good (not particularly bad either admittedly) if we compare it with MAB's:
- costs / inflation were higher than the revenue rise.
- not necessarily any guarantee that Xmas will be good due to reduced consumer spending projections in general.
And MAB benefited from improved sales partly due to tourism. Marston's does not cater for tourists but local areas, so the return of tourism isn't something it can benefit from.
Thus, I suspect profits will be very low, or Marston's may even get back to being a loss-making company for this year - I'd wait for one more year to expect to see improved profitability.
So I don't expect bad results, but not good enough ones to be optimistic about the company in the very short term.