Member Info for lejjb

"Just read the official releases and ignore anything else. "

Yes, like the share price.

Thanks for this - and me who thought ITM was in auction due to overwhelming demand for the shares!....

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.

I'd add that Friday's huge volume suggests the market was very very very happy with the new CEO's appointment.

My (speculative) view is that this scale of enthusiasm suggests the market see something more behind it, i.e. an open path to a takeover - but this is speculative, I don't claim to have any inside knowledge!

The markets are up for most consumer shares, drive by the decrease of inflation (aka "disinflation" - NOT "deflation" which means prices are actually going down, vs still going up but at a lower pace).

And there is a new CEO.

So it is a fallacy to state that today's rise is due to Stonegate. It might have contributed, but there are more obvious factors at play.

Thanks for this correction FD20.

This may actually be the step before agreeing a takeover of the company very soon. IIRC wasn’t it Andrew Andrea who turned down the 95p per share (IIRC) offer from February 2021?… Please can someone correct me if my recollection is wrong.

There's no rights issue, you are confusing shares.

Carlsberg does not run pubs, it has no reason to acquire Marston's - running pubs is expensive and logistically challenging.

Marston's debt is a problem, but if it can show it can sustainably grow profits (so not just be reducing headcounts, which only works for a limited time) at a level above inflation, then the market is more likely to respond positively. Right now, we only have sales (i.e. NOT profits) figures, and such sales figures are not clearly above inflation, they just seem to be broadly in line with it. So the business is stable.

But as originally raised by Barchid, we don't know if the estate valuation has taken a hit or not, and Marston's estate is likely what keeps it afloat for the PoV of creditors.

So we want to know profits and estate valuation. The rest is largely noise.

Barchid - interesting points re: pub estate sale Vs debt reduction. And as to whether the pub estate was sold at a discount.

Certainly the market isn’t crazy about the update either (after the brief games and euphoria of the early morning.).

All these figures looked in line with expectations, broadly positive. And yet MAB dropped after posting comparable figures a couple of weeks ago approx. So who TF knows…

(I’m still out, to be 100% clear.)

Https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/it-s-soul-destroying-to-have-one-customer-on-a-saturday-is-the-party-over-for-the-uk-s-pubs-and-clubs/ar-AA1hSldO?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=39ec9818bba54c7aa79944646b19dcb6&ei=29

Even my visit to a (usually decent) garden pub yesterday in suburban London (but not a Marston's) was not impressive. In spite of it being the only pub (and even restaurant) in a 15 min walk radius in an affluent residential neighbourhood on a sunny Sunday, the place was only about 55-60% full between 1-3.30pm, and yet still understaffed with a collection of missed orders, 45min wait for incomplete food etc.

Sure, this is only anecdotal evidence but that support the contents of the above article. I'm staying from all hospitality shares for the foreseeable future unfortunately. Best wishes to all, whatever you end up doing.

Yes, look up Marston’s website for the investor calendar - around mid October IIRC.

But what we really want is the measure of actual profits, not just sales, which will come in the unaudited results of 5 December IIRC.

Again, all in the calendar published my Marston’s.

Overall it augurs very well for us, bearing in mind that MAB has a much more balanced portfolio of pubs and bars while we are much more focused on suburbs and small towns / villages.

Nevertheless, MAB's confidence in the easing of inflation and costs is probably the most relevant (and encouraging) information for MARS.

The (stock) market likes cost-cutting.

Supercharger - sorry but what you write is all over the place, you jumble together various points with very tenuous connections.

For example, re: ULEZ, people don't necessarily drive to go to the pub, it's for their shopping. Pub-going is largely local (whether local to your home, or to you work), especially in towns and cities. Those who drive to go a pub typically do that because they don't live in a city and generally have to drive to go anywhere in the first place.

"rising costs" means rising costs to pubs. Like most retailers / on-trade businesses, earnings aren't high enough to cover the rise of costs.

So they are banking on the bulk of their consumers for the busy periods to still be able to cough up 20p more or so per pint rather than having to close down branches.

It's not just out of greed, they probably don't have a lot more options.

Not necessarily. If you study how retail works, you often see backlashes when the prices of key or iconic products rise, and sometimes after a brief dip, customers adjust and buy again as before.

That applies to non-luxury products / small purchases.

Larger buys like black goods / brown / white goods or cars are different.

So after a bit of noise from some consumers for a couple of months, history suggests that Stonegate's earnings will not be adversely affected in the medium term, and other pub chains will probably follow suit.

Pure speculation. Whetherspoons has been “slimming down” too and it’s highly unlikely to be taken over.

Which exact hedge fund?

Without specifics, it's total wishful thinking, sorry.

If it's in reference to the Coltrane Master Fund (1 and 15 August RNSs), those were not large acquisitions - and they were partly offset by Morgan Stanley offloading some of its holdings.

Right now, I noticed several 10+k and 50k buys, but I don't have any conclusive info as to the source.