Mbl Share Discussion Threads

[martinc] 31/1/2011 08:51

Surely the reason they spent money on their distribution centres is probably that it's necessary to do that in order to have any hope of keeping Morrison's

[davidosh] 31/1/2011 08:49

I will be trying to arrange a conference call or preferably a meeting with PC within the next few days. At least we are no longer in the ridiculous offer period. There are tens of questions now to ask and as FFT has already stated the business is now going to look very dominated by cash and we need to have far more confidence in our management to not extract it for their own benefit.

How those cash bonuses of just a few months ago can be justified after the recent updates is impossible to understand and there was a distinct lack of any mention of new non executive director to give some confidence on corporate governance.

[madmix] 31/1/2011 08:44

Before panic selling, it's worth looking at the current asset backing.

At 30th September 2010, Current Assets (Inventories, Trade and other receivables, Cash and cash equivalents) were £33.8m.

Current Liabilities (Trade and other payables, Current tax payable) were £21m.

So Net Current Assets were £12.8m. Subtracting £1.3m for the 7.5p dividend paid since then leaves £11.5m.

Market Cap at 54p is £9.3m. As long as you believe that they won't write down the value of the current stock, and that they won't waste any more of the cash, there does seem to be a lot of bad news now priced in.

[deswalker] 31/1/2011 08:42

Maybe they should buy another 15% of U-Explore ?

[fft] 31/1/2011 08:27

This really does become a dilemna and a half.

No more news is expected til the end of March. if all the stock is being bought by Morrisions, then it should leave MUBL as not much more than a cash shell with a few investments.

Will we then see asset stripping (or buying of sub-prime assets) and cash withdrawals on a huge basis by directors, leaving shareholders with F.A.

But, why would MUBL have spent so much ramping up there distribution centre and accounting / purchase order / distribution software unless they thought there was a use for it.

Of course, i am assuming that they have spent the money as they said, and its not another RCG type fiasco....

Very very disillusioned. Despite a call from PC last year after the 2 rns's in 3 days that were misleading to say the least, i am still very very unhappy with the directors. But not sure what we can do.

Not a closed period anymore, so no restrictions on questions if there is a conference call, but dont think i would trust the answers...

With, for myself, a reasonable holding i am really torn between holding on for the long haul or selling out and moving on. Made the mistake with LNG of holding on....

[liarspoker] 31/1/2011 07:45

Let's hope for MUBL shareholders that the share price doesn't reach my purchase target as it's a long way south of here.

[jonc] 31/1/2011 07:44

Well yes of course Steg.

The Board had promised greater transparency though.

It didn't last long.

[yump] 31/1/2011 07:44

At least that earlier bid rumour stuff allowed some folks to dump stock if they though it all looked a bit iffy.

[stegrego] 31/1/2011 07:42

Because they are horrid?

[typo56] 31/1/2011 07:30

Difficult to imagine how the statement could have been worse. No numbers either.

[someuwin] 31/1/2011 07:24

Sounds like they're resigned to losing Morrisons.

[ammons] 31/1/2011 07:16

Not very good trading update this morning with Xmas not going well for them at all. Wonder what they will do if they lose the Morrisons contract? 50% fall today?

[davidosh] 30/1/2011 21:28

I guess the great trade off would be keeping the Morrisons physical supply contract by offering to get them into a position of having an online presence of some kind if only in entertainment products at no cost to them and a share of the profits.

Incidentally Sainsbury do not seem to have started their digital download offering yet even though they flagged it up in November.

I am expecting turnover down 8% although I think they had a fairly good Christmas. I suspect the late Summer and early Autumn sales were poor due to few releases that caught the eye so sales fell maybe 25% to that point as the profit warning flagged. I am fairly hopeful that much of it has been clawed back though. Costs due to new systems, new initiatives, new staff, the returned stock issue and the pending move will be interesting.

[judgement] 30/1/2011 21:14

Presumably Digital will still be around £0, since they haven't really started it yet, although I concede it's a crude categorisation.

[bisiboy] 30/1/2011 19:19

thats funny i just thought i would check out the directors and noticed mr cowgill is also a directorof one of my other company investments united carpets.
at least i am making a liitle on those unlike mbl.

[jeffian] 30/1/2011 19:09

I daren't think! I can't help but imagine that the snow disruption before Christmas must have had an effect on the physical distribution chain and I doubt new web sales kicked in sufficiently to cover that. My greater concern, however, is the tactics of management and what they are up to; they turned good figures (2009) into a PR disaster and seem determined to highlight the negatives and downplay the positives, so I fear their tone in the next TS. I'm sticking with it for the moment, but I am in pain!

[rbcrbc] 30/1/2011 16:17

6 months to end Sept 2009:
Sales 78.2m
PBT 3.2m
EPS 13.2p

6 Months to end Spet 2010:
Sales 71.1m - 9% decrease
PBT 0.7m - affected by increased investment
EPS 2.9p

Trading update for 3 months to End Dec 2009
Sales 84.8m


My guess for tomorrows trading update therefore is 84.8 - 9% = 77.2m add some increase due to new web sales. I forecast 80m sales.

What do others guess ?

[maxcashflow] 27/1/2011 11:08

Yes, MS Dynamics AX requires SQL Server.

[edmundshaw] 27/1/2011 08:28

That would also tie in with recruiting a MS SQL Server DBA (database administrator of MS's prime database platform).

There again SQL Server could be used with bee.com's offering too...

[maxcashflow] 26/1/2011 17:43

That jobs vacancy info is very interesting, on two counts. Firstly, we had been told that bee.com operated from a Cambridge address, and now Bee.com employees are being recruited from Leyland. Perhaps not too much of a worry - perhaps they have relocated or simply the address field on that job description is wrong.

Secondly, looking at what the Microsoft Dynamics AX system does, it is an ERP system that does loads of stuff including managing accounts, inventory, customers, etc. I wonder if they are moving all their systems to it (we were told they switched to a new accounts system in August 2010) including management of their inventories. This might help them to run realtime inventory management to their white label and bee.com websites. I know they had problems with running out of stock when their sainsburys website was promoted on MoneySavingExpert.

There is more info on what Microsoft AX can do here:

[charliebrown2000] 26/1/2011 17:25

IT jobs vacancies at Leyland! Isn't this supposed to be GMVs remit and responsibility? Is TA about to cut them loose?

[davidosh] 26/1/2011 17:01

I am told that the Sainsbury Entertainment site has been so much busier than expected they are thinking of moving to 24hr cover.

[rbcrbc] 26/1/2011 16:37

It certainly looks as if they have some significant plans on the IT side of things:



hardly a sign of being cash-strapped or seeing themselves as in a dying sector.