Medcaw Investments Share Discussion Threads

[lbo] 10/7/2008 12:29

Abbey warns of wrenching adjustment

[hybrasil] 08/7/2008 14:55

How low can this go

[lbo] 03/7/2008 14:30

Looks like Mr Carrol is getting cash calls on his holdings and choosing to sell some





Developer in €20m loss on airline shares

[lbo] 02/7/2008 13:15

Price of a new home set to tumble

[lbo] 02/7/2008 11:51

McInerney bid to quell fears over finances

[lbo] 19/6/2008 14:45

strong whispers have been in the air that McInerney Holdings are considering such a move despite raising some €80m from a placing early last year when its shares were trading at above €3.

[lbo] 19/6/2008 14:42

House builders hit by lowest home sales in 30 years

[lbo] 12/6/2008 15:18

Builders buried in share slide

[lbo] 11/6/2008 13:22

Merrill Lynch reviewed the UK Housebuilding sector this morning, downgrading all the major players.

Barratt Developments, Bellway, Berkeley, Galliford Try and Redrow were moved from 'neutral' to 'underperform', while Persimmon was dropped to 'neutral' from 'buy'.

The broker has new price targets for Barratt at 90p, Bellway at 525p, Berkeley at 700p, Bovis at 300p, Galliford Try at 35p, Kier at 1,000p, Persimmon at 400p, Redrow at 170p and Taylor Wimpey at 70p.

In a note to clients, Merrill Lynch said it believes given the deteriorating market backdrop that UK housebuilders have experienced over the past three months, the early 1990s housing market recession has increasing relevance as a comparator.

The broker said it thinks unemployment levels will be of critical importance as the single most important determinant of consumer confidence and housing transactions as this was the case in the early 1990s recession.

If, as Merrill suspects, unemployment trends higher, then it thinks this will put additional pressure on housing transaction volumes and the broker advises, more than anything else, to watch this variable closely.

The broker has cut its volume and house price assumptions for 2009, with volume projections from flat to down 10% and house prices from 5% lower to a drop of 10%.

Merrill believes we have gone beyond the tipping point and are now clearly seeing a UK housing market being squeezed on opposing fronts, by a lack both of willing lenders, as well as willing purchasers.

[lbo] 11/6/2008 12:52

Housebuilder Barratt Developments saw its shares slump 29¼ to 91½p after brokers said there was no end in sight to the collapse in the housing market. In a savage note, Dresdner Kleinwort withdrew its target price on Barratt in a note titled: "Don't buy [at any price]," reports the Telegraph. Dresdner analyst Alastair Stewart said Barratt, which has debts of more than £1.7bn, would have to raise at least £1bn to survive. With a market capitalisation where it is, the company would have to embark on a rights issue of around five-for-one at a 50% discount, something it said was "possibly unfeasible"

[lbo] 23/5/2008 12:44

U.K. Homebuilders to Cut Tens of Thousands of Jobs (Update3)

[lbo] 18/1/2008 14:59

The economy may be about to enter a period of prolonged recession, writes Morgan Kelly , the economist who predicted the property slump



Quotes:

"My forecast has turned out to be wildly optimistic. In the past year Irish house prices appear to have fallen by around 10 to 15 per cent. While still short of the 20 per cent fall in Finland in 1991, this is on a par with the largest falls experienced during the Dutch and Swedish collapses."

"However, the Irish property market is giving signs of approaching a critical point where vague individual anxieties coalesce into a general panic and prices collapse. Should a collapse occur in 2008, it is most likely to start among heavily-indebted builders, many of whom have not sold a house in over a year, coming under pressure from banks to liquidate their large amounts of unsold inventory. "


"..with the recent bankruptcy of McEnaney Construction, banks have sent a definite signal to developers that their patience and liquidity are finite. Despite their understandable reluctance to initiate a downward price spiral, in the next few months increasing numbers of developers will be forced to follow the lead of Capel Construction and cut prices by 20 per cent and more."

"However, just as expectations of price rises were self-fulfilling, so now are price falls. Buyers know that the longer they delay the less they will pay, and have the added fear of negative equity to keep them out of the market. It is appearing increasingly unlikely that builders will be able to move their inventory at any price that can remotely cover their borrowings, making a wave of bankruptcies inevitable. "

[rik shaw] 16/12/2007 15:18

Sorry Hectorp where do you get 12.5% from ? D Look shows 4.5% based on 6.08 cent div. Maybe confusion with stock split earlier in year ??

regards

rik

[hectorp] 16/12/2007 15:04

I believe the yield on these is 12.5% now. No doubt the div will be cut, but are well worth buying on any further weakness -
Close watch.

[lbo] 07/12/2007 11:28

Abbey reports 19% profit fall


One of Ireland's second-biggest publicly traded homebuilder Abbey posted a 19 per cent decline in first-half profit and said cooling Irish and UK markets may lead to a "very poor" performance over the next two years.

Pre-tax profit declined to €18.2 million ($26.6 million) in the six months through October from €22.6 million a year earlier, Abbey said today in a statement this morning.

Increased borrowing costs in Ireland and the UK have curbed demand for property, while the fallout from the US subprime crisis has made it more difficult for potential home buyers to obtain loans.

UK house prices fell for a third month in November, the worst performance in more than a decade, while Irish house prices have fallen for the last eight months.

"The underlying conditions have been steadily deteriorating and 2008/2009 may well be a very poor trading period," the company said in the statement.

[lbo] 21/11/2007 09:47

Housebuilder Barratt trades at a discount to the group's net asset value of about 580p a share and at a price/earnings ratio of some 4.4 times 2008 estimated earnings, compared with a sector average of 7.8 times. This is cheap considering the underlying need for new housing in the UK but Barratt, like its rivals, depends on the financial services sector working through the credit squeeze. Until sentiment recovers the tough times look set to continue says the FT.

[lbo] 21/11/2007 09:26

McInerney falls 12.5pc
Wednesday November 21 2007

MCINERNEY Holdings, Ireland's biggest publicly traded housing developer, fell the most in almost two months in Dublin trading on concern over Ireland and UK housing markets.

McInerney fell 12.5pc to €1.05, extending its decline over the last six months to 62pc.

British customer-owned lenders approved 14pc fewer loans for house purchases in October as tighter borrowing markets sapped demand, a report by the Building Societies Association showed. Charles Gallagher, chairman of McInerney's Irish rival, Abbey, said the outlook for the British and Irish real estate market has worsened in the last six weeks as a credit shortage pushes debtcosts higher. "The house building sector is out of favour right now," said Flor O'Donoghue at Davy Stockbrokers in Dublin. "McInerney is suffering in line with that." (Bloomberg

[lbo] 20/11/2007 15:14

By Dara Doyle

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Abbey Plc Chairman Charles
Gallagher said the outlook for the U.K. and Irish real estate
market has worsened over the last six weeks as a credit
shortage pushes borrowing costs higher.
Gallagher who heads Ireland's second-largest publicly
traded homebuilder, wouldn't comment on the company's own
outlook and said he will provide an update next month.
``The credit crunch is biting,'' Gallagher said after a
shareholders meeting in Dublin. ``We're in slightly uncharted
territory, the outcome is difficult to read.''
The rate that banks charge each other to borrow euros for
three months has climbed by half a percentage point since May
to 4.62 percent. U.K. home values dropped this month in every
part of the country except London, while Irish prices fell in
September for a seventh straight month.
``The patient is probably sickly, but not dead,''
Gallagher said of Ireland's housing market. ``People want to
buy, but they struggle to sell their own houses. The overall
background is more difficult because mortgage companies are
tougher than before.''
Abbey will probably build 750 houses in Ireland and the
U.K. during the fiscal year ending April 30, the company said
last month, repeating an earlier forecast.
Shareholders approved a plan to buy back as much as 15
percent of its stock.

[lbo] 15/10/2007 09:25

Banks face €30m 'fraud' loss
Industry-wide audit to be held in wake of solicitor's alleged mortgages scam


And an industry-wide audit of bank loans to property developers and big-money clients is to be carried out amid fears that these people have raised multiple mortgages on their properties to finance risky investments.

It is further claimed that the remortgaged properties were grossly over-valued before the solicitor drew down the funds

An industry-wide audit of loans extended to property developers and "big money" clients is now expected amid fears that others are engaged in the practice of raising multiple mortgages to finance risky investments.

It is feared that banks that may have relaxed strict due-diligence rules to facilitate property developers and others, may now be over-exposed as the global credit crunch bites and rising interest rates slow down the property boom.

[ben gunn] 28/9/2007 12:47

BBJL

I did look and I bought in....looks a bit silly today but this is a holding, not a trading position. The Chairman should be shot for failing to stem the concerns with good news or a decent buy.

[bigbobjoylove] 26/9/2007 10:50

look how macinerney has plunged this last 2 days!!

[cordwainer] 25/9/2007 17:05

Investors are perhaps concerned about the possibility of lower margins as stricter mortgages are brought to bear, and perhaps an expectation that, in england at least, falling prices for flats could spread to houses and more areas. These latest results do not do much if anything to allay such fears.