Member Info for Merciaman

At the risk of repeating a post from some time back, Aston Martin has a hard to resolve dilemma.

Ignoring for a moment the costs of depreciation / amortisation, and the finance charges, it is carrying too much operational cost / overhead for the number of cars it makes. If needs to sell more cars to reduce the opex per car, but in so doing it risks diluting the exclusivity of the brand.

The planned reduction in workforce numbers suggests this dilemma is understood, and they're trying to go down the cost cutting route.

Quick numbers - if they could sell 6,000 cars (as they did in FY24), at an overall ASP of £220k per car (as per the last 3 or 4 years), and could achieve their stated margin target of 40% (it was 39.1% in FY23), and keep the total operating cost to around this year's £260 million I reckon they'd make about £250 million profit. BUT, with D&A running at around £300 million per annum they still wouldn't be profitable pre-finance - so they wouldn't touch their debt and attendant interest costs.

They'd need to be excellent in all their execution to break even operationally but would still have the millstone debt to deal with. That's why I can't see a way forward, and is why I sold my shares a while ago.

Genuinely good luck to everyone who still has some faith, but I don't see any sort of way forward for long term shareholders.

I admire your optimism, I suspect it is misplaced.

Even at £100k per month cost base they would need to triple last year's turnover of £400k to breakeven - and such a reduction would have to be in people, when they rely on people to (manually) accomplish their ad inserts.

Hope I'm wrong but I suspect administration is not far away.

Results largely as suspected as the company has changed as per the commentary from the chairman and CEO.

It's more about commercial execution over the next 12 months. Fingers crossed there can be something dramatically positive along the way.

As such I think it makes Haydale a less risky but also less speculative investment, with less opportunity for a dramatic rise in the share price - unless something dramatically positive (eg vehicle seats or data centre cooling contracts ?) does occur.

It would be nice if it did, although I suspect that the actual numbers for last financial year are unlikely to excite.

Really interested in the company strategy going forward, whether the board sees the use of its product in building heating as a core business, what other more (currently) speculative applications can be realistically pursued, a path to breakeven and profitability etc. Hopefully there will be a positive surprise or two in this regard. Fingers crossed.

It'll be interesting to hear what the board have to say.

As per a previous RNS, the FY results are unlikely to be much affected by the changes of the past 2 or 3 months. Of more interest will be their thoughts or plans for a share consolidation, and what, if anything, they say about prospects for the next 12 months.

In case anyone hasn't seen the RNS (and it doesn't seem to have registered here as yet), Haydale will be announcing their FY (15 month) results next Tuesday, 17th February.

I think comparisons of current cash vs current market cap are often pretty meaningless - but in any case I doubt that's the case with Mirriad anymore, given their cash is probably down to about £1 million vs a £1.2 million mkt cap.

Agreed downagain - I saw the section from the research note that Billy points out, and expected an official confirmation from the company regarding date for the deal.

In the absence of that there is clearly some uncertainty - does the 31/1 date still apply, or is it indeed a case of both deals now having a longstop date of 16/3 ?

I think AIM rules require that any company listed on the market must issue an RNS should they win or lose any contract / business that would impact their turnover negatively or positively by 10% or more.

Given turnover last year of £400k that's a low bar for an RNS, and - as of yet - nothing has materialised.

It is Pumpky, 31/1 deadline for Pleiades to buy Lyramid from Midkine Investments.

The reverse takeover of Roquefort to form Coiled Therapeutics has the 16th March deadline.

No surprise in the results compared to the late December update.

Admire the board's efforts but I see no reason to change my view from then - expecting administration at some point in the Spring.

Financial year end was 31.12 I think, so I'd expect something about the full year results sometime during the next few weeks.

Good spot Hamilton - but does it not now suggest, with 15.7 million shares, that it's 1 Midkine share for every 10 Roquefort share held as per the record date ?

It was 1,000 for 1 with the initial Midkine set-up of 157,445 shares, but the number of Midkine shares has now been increased 100 fold ?

No surprises in the update. Realistically with annual revenues of £400k, costs of £2.6M, and cash of £1M plus £350k tax rebate, the business has got about 6 months of life left.

The share price has long been priced on the basis that the business will fail, and we seem to be approaching that point. I'd expect administration in the Spring.

I'm not, although should a sufficiently large new contract be signed then they'd need to issue an appropriate RNS.

Last couple of years there's been a full year trading update in January, so my expectation is for something similar at some point in the first 2 or 3 weeks of the new year.

"The Company therefore intends to report the 15 months' results to 30 September 2025 during the early part of February 2026, though these results will not reflect any period of SMCC ownership by the Group and as regards trading performance will reflect the largely transitional nature of the period since completion of the strategic review last December."

Roberson, I think they did indeed "trail" the FY results as being unspectacular when touching on them in the 12th December RNS -

Thoughtful comments, particularly from Roberson and Albatross.

From what I can see, the business has changed very significantly over the past 12 to 15 months - now focussing on commercialising its existing graphene applications, and focussing more on the UK. In so doing it has sharply reduced its cost base and, arguably, improved its chances of success in a (graphene) sector that has seen, let's be honest, much failure and little success.

The company we now have doesn't seem to have the structure that could drive incremental growth in fragmented sectors (like housing), and hence the acquisition of SMCC seems sensible - to provide such a structure. The price tag still seems high, but fingers crossed it will succeed.

From a shareholding perspective I think this makes Haydale a less speculative punt (though still speculative to a degree) with a greater chance of incremental (but less spectacular) success. I imagine that will please some shareholders and not others.

And of course they can still develop other commercial applications that might be more spectacularly successful. Let's hope so.

Crystal ball time I guess, but with a lot of shares due to hit the market at a price of 0.5p in the near future, I doubt the share price will move too much in the coming weeks - unless we have some surprising / positive news.

There'll be activity in w/c 5th Jan with the the EGM on the 6th and the admission of consideration shares that week. Then there is the final results announcement scheduled for "early February". Suggest things will be clearer then.

Indeed - positive but unsurprising.

As per a previous post I'm holding the shares I have and waiting to see before buying any more. It will be interesting to see who owns how many shares after all the consideration shares are issued in the new year.

With regard to the upcoming acquisition, I can see the sense strategically in, basically, buying a route to market for existing just heat applications, allowing the business to focus on other applications - which may prove to be a step change or a damp squib, who knows. My quibble is it seems to be a lot of money being paid for a loss making SMCC, and I suspect it'll need plenty of work and focus to make this at all profitable.

Hope my concern is misplaced.