SP tip24 Mar 2017 08:40
'Minoan (MIN) has been something of an AIM uber-dog for many years. It is a stock that I have tipped with success once and with lack of success more than once. Its failure to deliver on gaining planning consent on its Cave Sidero site in Crete over more than a decade is perhaps why its shares languish at 6.25-6.5p. But 2017 will be THE year.
In my own small way I am fully aware of what a horror the Greek planning system is. It was back in June 2014 when the Mrs bought a run down old farmhouse (the Greek Hovel) in the Mani region of Greece. Here we are on the first day of 2017 and we now need to pay another visit to the Greek consulate in Birmingham to get him to stamp yet another form before we can apply for the third phase of planning approval.
I can live at the hovel. I shower under a hosepipe ( in summer) and built an eco-loo. But the Mrs, for some reason, says that such facilities are inadequate and the rats, snakes and scorpions are not her favoured bedfellows. After dealing with AIM CEOs I regard the snakes and rats as honourable and innoffensive beings. I digress. Our hovel is in the middle of nowhere, We get on well with our neighbours ( the nearest of whom is a mile and a half away) and yet a simple application will have taken three years (best case). That is the way of Greece. It is a total nightmare trying to get anything done.
The Cave Sidero scheme is rather larger. The site is wonderful - I have visited it many moons ago, although it is not in the part of Crete where I normally hang out, and indeed where I met my wife, that being the area around Chania. If the project goes ahead it will create thousands of much needed jobs paying way above the average Cretan wage. There have been a very small number of Nimby objectors who have used every part of the Greek planning minefield to stop this.
But now Minoan has final sign off, a Presidential Decree. There is one last appeal underway but it is a play for time, it looks 99% certain that by the end of Q1 the process will be over and Minoan will have its consent. Greek politicians are corrupt and/or spineless traitors if we think of our loathsome PM Mr Tsipras. But they know that Greece needs jobs and foreign investment. Youth unemployment is 60%. Actually it is worse since the smart kids have emigrated. The percentage of Greeks aged 18-30 who were born in Greece and now work in Greece is perhaps 15% at most. So Cave Sidero will get the Green light.
This scheme has been valued many times but I reckon it is worth at least £100 million. I could be wrong by a good margin and Minoan still looks cheap if it is pregnant with planning approval. The current market cap is just £12.41 million.
And the company has a Travel & Leisure business which has now reached the critical mass where it should be running at breakeven or better. It, on its own, probably justified the current market cap.
Ahead of the final green light from Athens, Minoan is my fifth share tip of the ye