The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
Don’t stress buddy , it’s the worst thing that you can do as an investor . I only asked because I share your pain and it hasn’t been a pleasant experience at all seeing your paper wealth shrink so quickly as this has done since the RNS … but it is only paper money and patience I’m sure will be rewarded here in the end. Not with the profits that we’d hoped for investing in this dog but I’m sure we’ll both recover our losses if we wait it out long enough. The feeling that I’ve had recently on MCG is reminding me a lot of what happened when we were in the first covid lockdown and I was literally catching a falling knife on oil shares , kept buying daily as the oil price was tanking and Putin and Saudi were going at one another. I went in balls deep on Premier Oil and Tullow Oil , far more than I would ever normally do but kept thinking the bottom was in till it fell again. Eventually stress and probably fear got the better of me and I capitulated, sold the lot and took a £45k loss on them all inside a couple of weeks … two days later Tullow Oil shares jumped 42pc in one day. I’d have recovered all of my losses and more and was totally gutted of course but it taught me not to make emotional decisions with shares and to remember that this is a long game and losses or profit are only on paper till you sell. This business has been around for donkeys years , it’s not going bust any time soon , people will always need buses and most companies have a share price that goes up and down… though not as extreme as this one has sunk. My gut feeling is that inside two years if not sooner we’ll be sitting on paper profits on this ( my average is circa £1.05 over 100,000 shares ).
Well I’m about £60k in the red today on this which is by some distance my worse performance ever on a share pick so I’m hoping that everything I see happening here is temporary and will turn around eventually… I do expect it will but it’s a long and painful journey now and a lot of patience is needed I suspect.
Maybe a foolish strategy but I’m averaging down at these levels with a few thousand a couple of times a week and waiting for the eventual turnaround which surely will come in time unless MCG goes bust. Like others I’m heavily invested here and it’s painful looking at losses of over 50pc but this is no Cineworld and with better management should be fine in a 2-3 year timescale. I’m shocked at the cratering of the share price over the last week, 40pc down on the RNS is absolutely savage. I was thinking that it might be shorters at work again and possibly those with inside knowledge that more bad news will be dropping later.
However just watching Bloomberg today and totally non specific to MCG but they had an analyst commenting on the US market today and he said , to paraphrase, ‘ there’s nothing that the market today hates more than missed guidance and it will punish any company’s share prices severely that don’t meet guidance figures’…simply that’s what’s happening here. Complete lack of confidence in the management and will need a lot of time to recover lost credibility.
The CEO and CFO should have been sacked no question but this is not dead in the water , sentiment changes and things can turn around quickly if and when they can steady the ship. At todays valuation it’s looking well oversold.
Thegame316... like you I've topped up to average down today and probably will be regretting catching another falling knife in the morning when the market opens but a near 30pc drop today sitting here now seems like a big over reaction. Yes the management of this company is useless and a new CEO needs to be appointed urgently.... if he was in charge of a Premiership football team he'd have been sacked long ago and his credibility with the markets and the shareholders has been shredded , surely it cant be long before that decision gets made ? I'm now stuck on a near £50k paper loss on these and today was one of those horrendously sobering days when you realise that the stock market can be a brutal place for us retail investors who get taken to the cleaners by the big boys most of the time. But logic tells me that this has now been well oversold and eventually has to recover ... it was only a month ago that Berenberg were rating MCG as a buy with a target at £1.40... the debt is a huge millstone but they've re financed and the most likely trajectory for interest rates for the next 12 months is down.... maybe significantly down. Passengers arent going to stop travelling on buses any time soon and MCG provide an essential public service so surely the answer to increased costs in a business under pressure to improve its balance sheet might be to raise fares to cover rises in driver wages and fuel costs to recover margins ? Governments dont want to see companies like this go under and have to step in with public money to keep the buses running . From what I see / read / believe this is fundamentally a good business being run badly because of poor management and as such can be turned around with the right people at the helm. Plenty of other companies have done it and just look at the performance of the RR share price to see what a change of CEO messaging can do. The problem here , I believe ( hope ) is that the markets have lost faith in our board and a change at the top is the one thing that could be changed quickly and positively to support this now. This is not a company about to go bust , it can still be a long term profitable business and paying down a large chunk of the debt through the NA sale isn't the worst idea imo. But the manager has lost the dressing room here and surely it must be goodnight from him ?
The CEO an his team have been an absolute disaster for the shareholders. Compare with First Group who are in the same business and have seen a share price increase of over 50pc this year while MCG has cratered by half.. the change of name , the misleading trading forecasts and what looks like constant leaks to short selling hedgies ...like some others on here I'm balls deep in this one and completely fed up with the constant surprises and disappointments that we've seen in the long term share performance. Surely Garat should do the decent thing and resign to allow someone else a chance ? The markets have lost total confidence in the way that this company has performed and just when we thought it couldnt get worse they now surprise us with another 25% drop today ... I cant bring myself to take such a big loss on the chin right now and hope that this is now in oversold territory but a new CEO would surely be the right thing to do now ?
2 pc down again this morning already and the last blue day that we had here seems a long time ago now...still no director buys. For those of us sitting on very large losses on this its been a humbling experience . I've been averaging down with top up buys from 140 down to 80p but am kicking myself now that I didnt accept the first loss and sell out a few months ago and don't have the stomach to invest another penny in it to just see it drop again day after day. I'm still wondering why its been driven down so hard by the big boys , its being priced more or less at zombie co levels now.
So that big M&G disposal , has that happened in one hit today or does it look like they might have been steadily selling on the way down ? If that's the case then it might go some way towards explaining while the prices always seem to drop in the afternoon even on days where the FTSE has been in green rather than red territory... like most others on here I'm sure I'm gutted to see money drip away daily like it has done on MCG over the last few months... when will it end ?
The ironic thing is that I sold a large chunk of shares held in RR after the new CEO made his burning platform comments and used those funds to load up on NEX at the time ...hindsight eh ?
Paddy ..if you're referring to me as a twat because I've recently joined this board then excuse me for having any opinion different to yours ..the fact is that Ive stupidly as it turns out held an investment in NEX/MCG for more than a year , sitting on paper losses of circa £35k today on a holding of circa 100,000 shares and occasionally of late feel the need to share my frustration with others who might be in the same boat to a greater or lesser extent... just because you might have been posting on here longer doesnt make me a twat and you the expert...
JG68 ... Totally agree , the lack of director purchasing at these seemingly bargain basement prices is starting to ring alarm bells ... if there's nothing to hide and the profit forecasts are to be relied on why are they doing nothing to send a signal to the market that this share is being oversold ? We're not talking about mortgaging their houses to buy shares but surely if they were confident of delivering their promises any sort of director buy after the half year results would have given shareholders a bit of reassurance that there are no further skeletons hidden away in the accounts cupboard. I feel that their inaction has simply added to the bad news feel that we all have around this stock today.
The lack of director buys in this is concerning. Yes there were some modest amounts bought around 115p but the share price has tanked by another 25pc since then . The name change coupled with the nasty little surprise that came in the HY results has obviously done the share price no favours but if the FY profit projections are to be trusted then todays price appears to be at bargain basement levels. So why arent there any director buys ? Nothing. Its starting to make me wonder what the shorters have known about the real state of the companies finances that we cant see as retail investors...has someone been able to have a peep behind the curtain and been filling their boots shorting the stock while the rest us lth have been getting our pants pulled down ? I'm heavily into this one and have decent volume holdings in a few other recovery travel type stocks... and most of them have had more good days than good lately. Unlike MCG which isn't even a rollercoaster , its been on a one way elevator ride down for months. I really hope that my suspicions prove to be wrong but the lack of a signal buy from the directors I think is odd given the trajectory of the share price .If there was some belief in what they say publicly then surely there would be be some even small buys to reassure shareholders ? It seems odd.
JG68. If its of any comfort you're not on your own here almost every holder on this board has been smashed investing in this dog. Personally I'm just over £30k down now which is p*ssing me off every time I look at it ( which is several times a day on the phone app ). Luckily my gains on RR shares have offset the losses on this one but it still hurts and I'm kicking myself to have kept buying on the way down ( 120's/110's / 100's / 90's ) and at each point convincing myself that was the bottom and the bounce would come. Who bloody knows how much lower this can go now... what does seem apparent is that the sell off is being orchestrated for whatever reason by someone with a plan ...shorters have had a field day on this stock and maybe its being hammered for a takeover offer. Imagine how much more stupid we'd be feeling in a few months time to sell out after taking all this pain to see it suddenly rocket ? I might be wrong and have been so far , but believe this is going to drop further and then will have a big rebound at some stage over the next few months. Unless of course the BOD are hiding more skeletons in the closet that the shorters are aware of and there are further impairments to come ahead of FY results ? On the face of it the share should be nowhere near this price but for whatever reason it seems like its being forced down , so what do they know that we dont ?
JG post 29/7 ...I feel your pain buddy. I have close to 100k of these at an average of 115p. After making so many mistakes in selling early and crystalising losses on dips during the madness of covid times on other shares by making emotional decisions to later miss out on so many rebounds my strategy on investing in the past couple of years has principally been to buy and hold long term. You get some bad days and weeks obviously and question yourself at times but Ive got some great performers in my portfolio now , 3x up on a couple and heavily into RR which has been fantastic. The wins on those last week well outweighed my losses on MCG. However I'm really starting to doubt my strategy on this one as it just feels that something isnt right with the behaviour of this share price compared to many other recovery stocks coming out of covid weighted down with debt ...for instance I hold CCL and IAG and wish I'd bought FGP , they've also been hammered during lockdowns . None of their share prices are anywhere close to covid time lows like this one. It really feels that this share isnt just unloved by the retail investor - or not recognised with the name change which seems ill timed to say the least in terms of a tanking share price. The shorters knew that this wasnt the bargain entry price that most , not all of us , on here seemed to believe that it was , and have helped it on its way down. It has the feel of a share which is being manipulated down for whatever reason which one can only assume is a future takeover bid. The hy results and eoy forecast were not the disaster that should have taken another 15% off the already battered share price in 48 hours - and paying a 7% divi - it doesnt make a lot of sense to me in terms of the trend of other share prices in the sector. If my guess is right we'll see further pain to come and who knows where the bottom could be in... £1 looked cheap a few weeks ago , could we see the 70's in August , or even the 60's I wonder ? At least at this rate the fall is so pronounced that we should find the bottom sooner rather than later , this isnt a dotcom business , its a real company with a solid business model and growing revenues that can recover income by raising fares and controlling overheads , a good CFO/CEO could turn this around quickly imo. But if the retail investors like us are being rinsed by someone with deeper pockets and there's manipulation of the share price going on in the background ( looking at some of the recent trades it seems likely ) then what to do ? Average down , hold , or drip sell weekly ? I'm starting to think that small daily sells reinvested in better performers might be a better strategy at least for peace of mind and if done over some months then we may eventually see a bounce. Possibly.
First time poster on here but LTH of NEX/Mobico and have been regularly topping up / catching the falling knife averaging on the way down ... and now feeling pretty stupid to have done it looking at 25pc losses on a large holding . After the events of the last 24 hours it now seems clear that the hedge funds who have been shorting this dog had more of a clue about the companies finances than the retail investors and like many on here I had felt pretty comfortable about long term prospects before yesterday and felt that this was a fairly solid long term recovery play. Unlike RR who changed their CEO and not their name the market seems to have little faith in the management being able to effect promised results and turnaround of the business and are voting with their feet. I'm now wondering how much lower this can go... we're already pretty much nailed on for the mid 80's next week and though my head tells me that these should be bargain basement levels I thought the same in the mid 120's , the 110's , the 100's and was buying more up till yesterday. As were others on here. Now I'm thinking its going to become more of a slow drip exit strategy . The BOD area before talking a good game but dropping surprises like they did yesterday when the share has already been absolutely battered for months is going to continue to slaughter the share price. I'm hoping eventually that the worm will turn but its now becoming a serious concern that the money we all have parked up in these shares will be showing big losses for another year or two. Especially galling to consider that a £100k investment in NEX from 1st January this year is now worth less than £70k ...but would've given you closer to £150k had you put it into FGP their nearest competitor. The joys of investing eh ? Maybe the BOD will put their money where their mouth is and add some shares again if they're confident on delivering the full year results they've promised...in which case the slide on the share price could be arrested as they do look undervalued on the profit forecasts. But the market doesnt believe them so what to do ?