Member Info for londondan

"With Spire now trading below its freehold property value"

This is a critical point for me. It's clearly heavily oversold and is being hammered by short sellers. Doesn't change my view on the longer-term outlook and/or prospects for a bid situation whatsoever.

Just a handful of small sells today is enough to walk the sp back down to its all-time low. The clock is well and truly ticking in New York now, with just a few weeks remaining to save the project.

It looks like someone sold just under 40p's worth of shares, which I assume was iain selling his entire holding. Shame, he was good value here.

Another £300k down the tubes so far this year, with no prospect of a revenue stream any time soon. Just shy of 270m shares in issue now. The NY Wheel project is on the brink of collapse, Starneth hasn't signed a single deal (obviously), Star Sanctum is still drip-feeding back the interest-free loan it was foolishly given and Odyssey is years away from completion.

Same old, same old then. What a mess.

To my point...

https://www.silive.com/news/2018/09/mayor_wheel_wont_get_non-taxab.html

To his credit, de Blasio seems willing to listen. However, he's strongly ruling out NY Wheel's initial ideas.

Seems to be a bit of a poker game in its final stages. The lead developers have clearly been forced to start making public proclamations equivalent to 'we're bust if this doesn't get some public funding input'. This suggests that their attempts to raise private finance have not gone well.

Meanwhile, the Mayor is all over the press saying 'yeah, we won't be bailing this thing out'. So, on the face of it, it looks doomed. That's unless they can convince the Mayor otherwise in the coming weeks. I suspect we'll know for sure by the auction deadline, when NY Wheel will either have to put up the cash to buy the parts or presumably just call time on the project.

The only certainty is that Challenger has no control over the fate of its only meaningful investment and even if the project goes ahead, we have no idea whether our stake in the project would still be worth anything anyway.

'Mayor Bill de Blasio on why he will not support the NY Wheel'...

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/inside-city-hall/2018/09/25/mondays-with-the-mayor-why-bill-de-blasio-says-he-will-not-support-new-york-wheel

New headline article from NY Real Estate news site 'The Real Deal'. Mostly a re-tread of the Wall Street Journal article, with a few extra details. This one is a little less credible however, as it contains a couple of obvious inaccuracies, namely that the NY Wheel had already hired American Bridge.

https://therealdeal.com/2018/09/21/lloyd-goldman-jeffrey-feil-ready-to-pull-the-plug-on-the-new-york-wheel/

Keep an eye on the newswires I guess. New York is awake and starting its Friday morning now, so we may hear of any further developments in the hours to come.

Not quite a repeat. The WSJ story is based on quotes from the main investors themselves, Feil and Goldman, saying they're on the cusp of pulling the plug. The WSJ is a particularly credible news outlet, so I'd be inclined to believe it.

The ABC NY story (https://abc7ny.com/society/investors-scrap-staten-islands-giant-ferris-wheel-/4301092/) does seem to be a bit premature. Their headline (updated 2 hrs ago) says that the wheel HAS been scrapped, which hasn't been confirmed anywhere else. The article doesn't include any extra quotes which would seem to back up that assertion.

It's a real shame that this project looks totally doomed now, as I really don't see where Challenger goes from here. It's yet another major failure to add to the list.

Anyone posting a 'bear' view on a share BB tends to get slated, that's just the way it goes. The fact that our recent busload of rampers are now nowhere to be seen tells you everything you need to know about those characters. Anyone seen Deltoid, or whatever his name was?

Oh dear. The Wall Street Journal has an article, written yesterday, which claims that the NY Wheel project is on the brink of being permanently canned.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/effort-to-bring-observation-wheel-to-new-york-nears-futility-1537488459

To be fair Mulder, the main board members have mostly changed. The CEO was in his first week or two when the Mediclinic offer arrived and we have both a new COO and a new CFO arriving next month.

This was the fallback I was looking for and I'll take a few more shortly. There is an element of 'catching a falling knife' here as it could still drop back a bit further; I'm very happy with a buy in the mid-150's in any event.

A quarter of a billion dollars on a car park. You have to laugh!

The comments are a cracking read though. The individual posting on there as 'Lice' is so incoherent that it just has to be Jetski.

"One minority holder is quoted as saying a price “just north of GBP2.50 would probably be acceptable”

With an average of just over 160p, that would certainly be acceptable to me...

Agreed, 100%.

People panic when they see the price dropping and will follow the herd. Your comments about the NAV are spot on and the best opportunities often arise from staying calm when others are losing their heads.

Personally I'll be using it as an opportunity to add a few more. I have the benefit of a very low average here however, so I recognise that others here will have been badly burned in recent months. If I had a load at 250p / 300p type averages, I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to buy any more.

Down in to the 0.1's now and consistently hitting new all-time lows. Looking very grim here at this point.

Many of our new arrivals from the pre-NY Wheel news build up have vanished without trace. I'd love to say I'm surprised and shocked by this development, but... y'know.

I think most of that news was priced in already, after the profit warning drop. Hopefully 160p will provide a baseline now.

Hmm, well there goes the profit I'd built up in the last few weeks! Nothing new in there though, which wasn't covered in the last announcement; I think it's oversold yet again. Big mountain for them to climb but I'm happy being in here for the medium-to-long term, so not worried about a quick trade.

Annoyed I missed the 150's this morning as I was out at a meeting first thing. Will add a few more through the 160's. Not for the faint at heart at this stage however - I suspect there's more difficult news to come along the way.