Media Square Share Discussion Threads

[costapacket] 18/10/2006 09:01

Been watching for weeks but missed the jump yesterday. Am now in but had to pay a premium - great prospects and what a positive statement from Jeremy Middleton i.e. we can get you better value than a quick firesale ever would.

[guppyworld] 18/10/2006 08:54

ANY BUYING AND THIS WILL ROCKET,

[guppyworld] 18/10/2006 08:41

nice find, so the business has got to be worth at least 50% more than that!!

[chap1889] 18/10/2006 08:36

From the Indy:

Media Square rejects £45m offer
By Saeed Shah
Published: 18 October 2006
Sir Peter Burt, the chairman of ITV who fought off a private equity bid for the broadcaster earlier this year, has seen his bid for the marketing services group Media Square rejected as an attempt by private equity to buy the business on the cheap.

Sir Peter's Promethean investment vehicle, which is unrelated to his role at ITV, made a £45m offer to buy most of the businesses of Media Square.

Media Square, which is chaired by Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, has seen its stock market value plunge after it put out a profits warning last month. The company is struggling to integrate a major acquisition, though it has stated that it has won a multimillion-pound contract and the second half would be much stronger.

Even though the offer for some of Media Square exceeded the stock market value of the whole company, it said: "The board unanimously concluded that the offer, although substantial, materially undervalued the group as a whole and was not in the best interests of its shareholders." Jeremy Middleton, the chief executive of Media Square, said the offer was "one-sided" and "does not reflect the value of the business".

Media Square bought the marketing division of Huntsworth for £63m last November, trebling the size of its business, but leaving it with a large amount of debt and a headache with integrating the business.

Sir Peter Burt, the chairman of ITV who fought off a private equity bid for the broadcaster earlier this year, has seen his bid for the marketing services group Media Square rejected as an attempt by private equity to buy the business on the cheap.

Sir Peter's Promethean investment vehicle, which is unrelated to his role at ITV, made a £45m offer to buy most of the businesses of Media Square.

Media Square, which is chaired by Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, has seen its stock market value plunge after it put out a profits warning last month. The company is struggling to integrate a major acquisition, though it has stated that it has won a multimillion-pound contract and the second half would be much stronger.
Even though the offer for some of Media Square exceeded the stock market value of the whole company, it said: "The board unanimously concluded that the offer, although substantial, materially undervalued the group as a whole and was not in the best interests of its shareholders." Jeremy Middleton, the chief executive of Media Square, said the offer was "one-sided" and "does not reflect the value of the business".

Media Square bought the marketing division of Huntsworth for £63m last November, trebling the size of its business, but leaving it with a large amount of debt and a headache with integrating the business.

[addas99] 18/10/2006 08:35

Media Square rejects £45m offer
Published: 18 October 2006

Sir Peter Burt, the chairman of ITV who fought off a private equity bid for the broadcaster earlier this year, has seen his bid for the marketing services group Media Square rejected as an attempt by private equity to buy the business on the cheap.

....from today's Indep.

[guppyworld] 18/10/2006 08:25

where to next?

[bletherer] 18/10/2006 08:21

Nice rise again first thing this morning. Shame I didn't top up at 13p but hindsight's always a wonderful thing.

[spaceparallax] 17/10/2006 20:16

I believe that the big mistake in the profits warning was to loosely use the word 'significantly' in reference to the lower profits. It would have been better to qualify this to some degree i.e. we expect a shortfall of upto 10%, 35% or whatever.

[peteh1] 17/10/2006 20:03

You have got to blame the Media Squares management here for this bid.The management is very strong when it concerns the business but they have let the share price drift to a well over sold position without any comment.Some investors always sell when ther is a profit warning in case there is more to follow.Management have done nothing to stop the share price sliding to these ridiculous levels and it is pretty obvious,that at these levels other parties are going to be interested,in what will be a very large profitable company in the not too distant future.Management are again very good at telling us when the have acquired a company but what about disposing of some of the not so clever bits of the empire? Look forward to the next results,where I think we will find things are not as bad as some thought they were.Again if only the management would have told investors.

[rcktmn] 17/10/2006 17:38

should be 23p+ by the end of this week and nothing less!

[guppyworld] 17/10/2006 16:52

space, good prediction there, I would hope for another little rise tomorrow to about 19p?

[spaceparallax] 17/10/2006 13:13

Good to see the rise consolidating toward 16p - I'd be surprised if we don't see 17p by close.

[bletherer] 17/10/2006 12:35

Or in other words "look how undervalued our company was..." Never mind, even without details this should help improve sentiment and lift the share price back towards 20p.

[one for the money] 17/10/2006 11:49

The RNS stated "...although the approach only concerns part of the Group's business the Offer received is for a sum in excess of the Group's entire current market capitalisation").

I note the following AFX news items did not properly pick up this point.

I wish they'd tell us the percentage of the company that the bid was for.

Cheers
John

[monis] 17/10/2006 10:47

Guppy- I was in first thing this morning and am now out with a profit (very small admitedly).

I like the co though and any fall back I am going to be straight back in.

It may well carry on rising but a profit is a profit and all that.

[spaceparallax] 17/10/2006 10:30

Wig,

Good to see you here - you won't regret buying at that price.

[guppyworld] 17/10/2006 10:27

monis, shuold have added at 15p doh!!!

didn't realise Kelvin had acquired!!

[wiganer] 17/10/2006 10:18

A bit late to the party, but bought a few at 15.42p.

[rcktmn] 17/10/2006 10:16

should think so as well... it needs to go to 23p+.... the price I got in at and at the level it was before it starting falling !

[spaceparallax] 17/10/2006 10:10

If nothing else, it appears to be providing a wonderful tonic for the share price

[monis] 17/10/2006 10:05

Kelvin Mackenzie bought nearly £100,000 worth of shares at 23.5p in July.

Here we go another move up....

[spaceparallax] 17/10/2006 09:48

I am convinced that, having toiled for the last 18-24mths, MSQ would be very reluctant to sell out at this stage. They are IMHO just beginning to turn the tanker onto the right path - let's not forget the magnitude of the task undertaken and that was straight after the prior development of MSQ in its original form. At the time of the reverse takeover, they'd hit a high somewhere in the early 30s - surely it's not unreasonable to expect that once the well oiled machine is working smothly, we might expect a tremendous turnover and commensurate profit. Personally, I would be very reluctant to accept an offer of less than 50p at the moment and see an share price closer to the 100p in 2-3 years time.

[addas99] 17/10/2006 09:30

Interims next month and hopefully an encouraging forward looking statement issued.
That and progress since, contract wins etc will be key to re-building confidence after last months profit warning...we may well see this back in the twenties prior to year end with everything to play for next year.

[monis] 17/10/2006 09:20

Guppy- I also stumbled across this today so probably don't know any more than you. I think as an entry point this seems pretty good as the majority of investors to state the obvious bought at 23p plus so I wouldn't have thought many are going to want to sell short term. They seem to have some excellent businesses and some which are dragging them down but the excellent ones do seem to be really booming. I'm still researching so would welcome any feedback.

[guppyworld] 17/10/2006 09:03

MONIS,

GOOD TO See you on this BB, stumbled across this today, no rampers here which is great...

offer for part of the business, which was more than the whole MCAP, would have expected a bigger re-rating than this, is this worth investing in?