Mears Share Discussion Threads

[dnfa1975] 26/7/2010 08:27

Cracking news for MER - should be able to pick up the juicy CNT contracts for nothing now

[rivaldo] 26/7/2010 07:19

Crikey - Connaught (CNT) are REALLY in trouble per today's RNS.

This has to be great news for MER - no-one's going to want to commit new business to CNT for a while yet, and there's the possibility that things might spiral completely out of control at CNT.

It appears that CNT's earlier statements were a smokescreen for internal chaos and mismanagement by the look of it.

[dnfa1975] 23/7/2010 11:06

last july went from 220p to 300p - hoping for a repeat

[dnfa1975] 23/7/2010 11:05

gap to 280p on chart

[dnfa1975] 23/7/2010 09:09

Con naught looks dead This is going to steal their contracts now,imho. Come on HOLTY

[dnfa1975] 21/7/2010 09:41

up she goes

[dnfa1975] 21/7/2010 07:28

haha

took me a while to work it out :-)

[geovest] 20/7/2010 10:36

you're not supposed to squeeze that hard :=)

[dnfa1975] 20/7/2010 10:22

going blue

[nfs] 17/7/2010 17:36

when a previous winner like Connaught falls down then its bound to impact others.But buy when others are fearful..................and be patient.Mears reliable earnings stream is valued very poorly just now.Times will change though I hope

[rivaldo] 15/7/2010 12:47

Making a comeback today - completely agreed trendfloor.

[cambium] 12/7/2010 09:27

yep they moved on the 23rd June 2008 to the main list

[dnfa1975] 09/7/2010 14:06

is this on the main list

[rivaldo] 09/7/2010 09:55

From today's Daily Mail:



"HSBC initiated coverage of social housing and geriatric care group Mears with an overweight recommendation and target price of 310p.

The shares, which were dragged sharply lower by rival Connaught's recent profits warning, rallied 6.75p to 235.5p.

The broker says recent strong order income bodes well for highly visible, growing earnings. Strong cash conversion and a tidy balance sheet gave confidence to investors."

[rivaldo] 08/7/2010 14:53

Good point EI - MER may gain on the commercial as well as on the investor front.

[essentialinvestor] 08/7/2010 13:53

rivaldo

Not sure about the re-weighting, what may be more interesting
is the opportunity to gain Market share.
This may also help margin, as I would imagine CNT had been
aggressive on price imv.

Not currently holding.

[rivaldo] 08/7/2010 13:46

HSBC's Matthew Lloyd is very positive today in a review of the business services sector - MER initiated at Overweight:



"We initiate Experian, Mears, Aggreko, Northgate, Regus at Overweight, retain
Overweight recommendations on Bunzl, Electrocomponents and Premier Farnell. We initiate USG and Ashtead at Underweight, and retain Underweight on Wolseley, Adecco, Randstad, Hays, and Michael Page. We initiate at Neutral on Capita, Xchanging, G4S, Securitas, Davis Service Group and Mitie. We retain Neutral ratings on Rentokil, Serco, SThree and WS Atkins."

Given CNT's obvious internal issues there must surely be a re-weighting of investment funds towards MER as the sector's safe option at some point.

[thickasmince] 06/7/2010 22:25

Trust me to go away and come back to this. That's the last time I take ill. We appear to be hovering around this level and may do so until MER give more updates on trading, something they are in a good habit of doing. Note, Bob Holt will be retiring this year so any takeover thoughts will no doubt linger with some of you. I would have to say, CNT is a very appropriate ticker code for that lot. I also note expressions of horror about their accounting habits by Evil Knieval, a long term shorter of CNT. Still a holder and have been since Dec'2000

[rivaldo] 05/7/2010 12:30

Enjoy steve!

Interesting - Breeden Ventures, the activist investors who bought 3.05% of MER last month, have now increased at Connaught with 7.02%. Could be some interesting corporate activity on the way per FT Alphaville this morning.

[stevemarkus] 05/7/2010 07:53

Thanks rivaldo. We do seem to have similar tastes. I am a happy bunny today - XP Power just released a nice statement, it's sunny, and we're off to my son's graduation.

Happy days (for now at least)!
Cheers,
Steve.

[rivaldo] 02/7/2010 14:11

Good to see you here stevemarkus, always a positive to see you holding one of my mid-caps :o))

Looks like a rally is starting.

[cambium] 02/7/2010 09:52

Blimey, theres a name from the past, say hi in return, hope hes well.

well done this last year, there has been some great gains to be had. and also some cheapies are developing as we speak.

good luck see you around