Manganese Bronze Share Discussion Threads

[queeny2] 27/10/2008 12:00

a valuable order whichever way you look at it, shanks seems right too, no?

[shanklin] 27/10/2008 11:52

SHANKSAJ

Thank you for the correction. I have removed my posts.

Cheers, Martin

[davidosh] 27/10/2008 10:42

After the modifications, change of steering etc and export costs I still cannot see a profit on the deal and of course the weaker sterling will make the cabs prohibitively expensive to overseas buyers in the future. This still looks to be a one off to me

[shanksaj] 27/10/2008 09:35

Really sorry, but your calculations are wrong.

4,500,000 bd at 0.685748 bd per pound was 6,562,177 pounds sterling, divided by 200 makes £32,810 per vehicle. Must divide by .685748 not multiply.

With the falling pound exports become more profitable, not less profitable, and at .5859 bd per pound the figures become 7,680,491 pounds sterling, div 200 makes £38,402 per vehicle.

Sterling currently is crumbling and I guess could now be put at .5777 making 7,789,510 or £38947 per vehicle.

The way sterling is falling, we could see anything up to 4,500,000 bd (at .5 bd per pound) making 9,000,000 sterling or £45,000 per vehicle at time of payment. IF that WERE to happen Manganese would make a cool £2 million extra profit, extra to the profit they make on selling to London cabbies. In the not too distant future we could be seeing Manganese yet getting one of Her Majesty's awards for exports!

If they can't fix the hot-running of the AX4, must feel sorry for the drivers in Bahrain... Is air-con fitted as standard?

[davidosh] 27/10/2008 09:33

Maybe the order was delayed due to the TX4 fires....the cabs will have all needed to be modified too I guess. The conditions out there will not help the cooling of the engines that is for sure.

[davidosh] 27/10/2008 08:44

the deal is loss making and the vehicles have to be converted to left hand if using the existing surplus cabs. An RNS to announce this when it could have been included in the IMS last week suggests they are clutching for good news to help the share price

[judgement] 27/10/2008 08:40

Given the relative dates of the announcement, these 200 vehicles cannot have been included in the sales figures given in the recent IMS?

[verulamium] 26/10/2008 22:35

A small piece of nonsense in the Sunday Times today. I posted a correction (about the timing of the deal and its probable inclusion in the trading statement figures) in their comments section this morning...of course they couldn't print it and admit they've got the facts completely wrong:



Bahrain taxi deal hailed

THE black cab is coming to Bahrain. Manganese Bronze has agreed a deal with the Bahrain Development Board to provide 200 of its iconic automobiles to the emirate. The first 50 cars, all of which will be made at the company's Coventry factory, will be delivered to the Arabian Taxi Company in December.The order is Manganese's largest foreign sale to date. It will be a fillip for the company which saw its shares plummet last week after it announced a big drop in sales for the first nine months of the year

[davidosh] 25/10/2008 17:53

I find it difficult to feel sorry for the directors simply because...

1. They sold all their holdings at every opportunity probably aware of some of the issues and problems ahead. I do not think the first time they knew about Mercedes launching a cab was in July when they read the Daily Mail.

2. The directors went round the City handing out that dodgy broker note without reference to inaccuracies which they must surely have known and then the squeeze moved the price up enabling them to offload most of their options at far better prices. The shares are now a quarter of the price nearly.

3. The directors claimed that the introduction of the Mercedes showed the strength and demand in the great market they were in !! Not so sure that would be my view of the situation.

The real test of the directors will be if they can enable the company in the UK to survive with all the odds now heavily stacked against them and with the Chinese holding the cards. If Geely play hard then you have to ask whether directors with barely any shares will fight quite as hard for shareholders rights and value as they might if they still had hundreds of thousands of pounds at stake. I am not suggesting they will give up the situation but with all these current headaches being caused that are in some ways beyond their control you have to wonder a little what the final straw may be...

Just my honest viewpoint.

[queeny2] 24/10/2008 11:16

1 reRead the statement this week. the directors only see the future in the shanghai project! maybe the brits like china and the chinese like britain, but somehow doubt it.

2 somewhat irrlevant imho. it's clear they will prob need refinancing, plenty of time to buy in that case even for directors.

2 again. feel some pity for directors, the perfect storm of recession, zero financing, mercedes (out of the blue this year, first report was mail on sunday that i picked up), and now TX fires. i wouldn't buy, don;t hold it against them!

2 again and i would have sold some - price was way ahead on the china story

[davidosh] 24/10/2008 10:04

Queeny...those are my thoughts entirely and any shareholder concerned about the current situation only needs to ask the directors these two questions...

1. If financial help is required would Geely 100% assist the UK business or do they ONLY see the future in the chinese jv and more likely just sales in China ? If there were a rights issue to raise say £15m I doubt it would be underwritten by anyone other than Geely so without their help the business here would be in real trouble in that scenario.

2. The directors have all sold out their holdings at every opportunity in the last year. Why are they not buying NOW if the future is fine and certain as the share price is about an 80% discount to their average selling prices ? My view is they are far from confident especially with all these legal liability cases on the horizon.

[shanksaj] 23/10/2008 13:37

Added bit more to short this am, with IG Index again.

I suppose the share is overdue a bounce. But it'll go sub 100p sooner or later.

Anyone like to guess the bottom? I guess the looming question is will it be able to get sufficient funding to survive? Will Geely want to bail it out.. can't see any good reason why they should want to be Santa Claus, what would be in it for them?

[davidosh] 22/10/2008 21:16

Featured in the Times...



I still think that £4m is on the very low side and almost certainly would only be if the company received a contribution from either insurers or engine manufacturer. Previuosly it was expected to be £4m total and then a possible contribution to reduce it. So the story is getting worse and then there is the driver compensation on top !!

[davidosh] 22/10/2008 21:16

and on Bloomberg...



Manganese Bronze has cut its workforce and curbed output to bring down costs. The actions have reduced the break-even level of manufacturing operations to about 2,000 cars a year, the company said, without specifying how many vehicles will be built in 2008.



It is a wee bit late now.....the company have already built far too many in 2008.

[queeny2] 22/10/2008 18:32

I think the terms from Geely would be pretty commercial! The only question is whether they get hurt by MNGS/LTI getting hurt, or whether they can walk away with their jv intact - I don't think they have any interest in the UK, they may have got what they want in the form of licensing the TX4. MNGS have marketing rights for the Chinese cab outside certain Asian areas, prob worth very little.

dyor imho etc etc

[macansy77] 22/10/2008 14:50

cash at bank was £8.8m in Jan 2007, at June 2008 it was £4.3m and with net debt of over £7m (from a position of £0.6m net funds at Jan 2007). With the rate of business deterioration from June 2008 and the subsequent problems I'd say they're going to need funds soon, very soon...

[davidosh] 22/10/2008 13:27

There is no suggestion yet that funds are needed but the credit funding for all these unsold cabs must be difficult now and the company have said that they have had three areas of increased spend.

If there is the need for a fundraising and Geely do not take part then it probably would not be able to go ahead. UK business goes to the wall and the chinese offer say £10m to buyout their share of the jv and pass it over to help pay the huge debts here. Lloyds get some money back ....A Newco buys the servicing and repairs arm and agreement to supply parts for UK cabs for next ten years.

Those at prime risk here are the shareholders in the UK and the cabbies who are looking for compensation against a UK company that may have folded before it gets to the courts or an agreed compensation deal.

[queeny2] 22/10/2008 12:28

no, not unusual. I think the whole statement was factually more or less as expected.

The part i picked out i highlighted earlier, which i found very interesting.

[macansy77] 22/10/2008 12:10

KBC seem in a hurry to offload, they upped their NMS to 2k this morning and have been agressively on the offer all day...