Mercantile Ports & Logis... Share Discussion Threads

[diku] 30/6/2018 23:35

Nearly double the staff....what are they doing?...plenty of typing or photo copying?...think shareholders should seek clarification from company if family members are employed?..

[my retirement fund] 30/6/2018 16:41

Appraised present value is Spiv speak for Work of pure fiction

[baner] 30/6/2018 11:16

many thanks ! so what is in the accounts is the "appraised present value" of this indebtness. very strange way of running the accounts. and in accordance with all the criticism raised on this site!

[waterloo01] 30/6/2018 11:14

As at 31 December 2017, the Group's non-derivative financial liabilities have contractual maturities (and interest payments) as summarised below:


Principal payments Interest payments
----------------- --------------------- --------------------
Payment falling INR in INR in GBP000
due Crore GBP000 Crore
----------------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------
Within 1 year - - 52,73 6,134
1 to 5 year's 154.8 18,009 282.01 32,807
After 5 year's 325.2 37,832 91.42 10,636
---------- --------- --------- ---------
Total 480.00 55,841 426.16 49,577
---------- --------- --------- ---------

[baner] 30/6/2018 11:06

waterloo

i am sorry but i cannot find 104m of bank debt in the accounts - where do you see this?

[mount teide] 29/6/2018 20:59

Staff increased from an IMPLAUSIBLE 26 in 2016 to a totally UNBELIEVABLE 51 in 2017!

For a company where all port construction activity is outsourced this is simply mismanagement on an epic scale. It would not surprise many if they have put their families on the payroll and hidden the expense in OTHER Administrative costs which has gone up by a staggering £750k to an astonishing £2.2m, of the the breathtaking £3.4m total admin cost!


Shareholders will be interested to note the £57m fixed price contract won by ITD Cementation to build a 200 acre all weather terminal with a fixed 600m - 1,000m quay
at Karanja;

HAS TURNED INTO A

£121m contract for a 95 acre part developed terminal with a 360m lightweight coaster jetty and a heavily potholed dirt track approach road that is now in its 5th year of build out AND YET TO SEE ANY REVENUE.

Gandhi - where is the 100 acre logistics park that you were telling the market to expect first revenues from by Dec 2014! According to latest Google Earth images, some 4 years later you are still yet to commence the land reclamation to build it!
What a fraudster!

Do not worry about answering, i know how busy you must be dealing with the high court writs you received alleging the siphoning of tens of £millions of pounds out of another company you had executive responsibility for into companies owned and operated by your family.


AIOHO/DYOR

[my retirement fund] 29/6/2018 20:51

Attractive risk reward ? I agree 100% downside. 0% upside.The odds dont really get much better than that do the. All you need to do is try find yourself a spreadbetting company or broker who will let you short it for tens of thousands of pounds.....god luck with that tho.

[waterloo01] 29/6/2018 18:40

The bank may have agreed that 1st payment is in 2 years and extended to 13 years, but that means the total due, including all the rolled up interest, will be much higher than £104m as they have extra years of 13% compound interest (shocking again of the NOMAD as they say this was done in Sept 17, I don't recall an RNS!)

[mount teide] 29/6/2018 18:24

baker - 'is this not now beginning to look like a rather attractive risk/reward?'

With respect, I would urge you to carry out some research worthy of the name.

A Bengal tiger never changes its stripes - once a management has been caught out lying, their integrity is shot.

This management has carried out industrial scale fraud by false representation over many years - with these crooks at the helm and clueless II's who cant see the
wood for the trees - a total loss is guaranteed.

The venal management are doing everything they can to keep the scam and white gloved butler serviced expense account rolling for as long as possible - hence the 15 acres of additional land reclamation over the last two years - and hugely scaled back all weather quay to small lightweight jetty.


If you can see attractive risk reward here I would strongly suggest single company equity investment is perhaps not your forte - and that a professionally managed fund might help preserve more of your wealth.


AIMHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 29/6/2018 18:09

Waterloo - indeed, up to £104m presumably due to currency movements - a breathtaking figure considering the 'business' is now its ninth year without revenue and a reasonable estimate of the asset value to date is circa £30m.

[waterloo01] 29/6/2018 17:39

Actually it's much worse. You need to add principle (£55.8m and interest £49.6m) so actually £104m is owed to the bank. It's in the accounts.

[baner] 29/6/2018 15:41

mount teide

you say MPL has bank debt incl accrued interest, at £95m. in the accounts announced today i can only find net financial debt of £30m - could you please help me to understand why and how you end up at a very significantly higher number - have i missed something - contingent debts of some nature?

i can only agree with all your criticism re the MPL past - it is nothing but a major scandal how money has been thrown away (or in the wrong direction) - however if indeed the net debt is "only" £30m and MPL start to earn income in august this year - given the restructuring of their loan terms - is this not now beginning to look like a rather attractive risk/reward?

if Gandhi only control a bit over 10% of the capital - is it not possible to call for an EGM to have him ousted if he is as bad as you state ( which i have no ground to object to)?

B.

[mount teide] 29/6/2018 13:31

To describe the value/build cost of a part finished 360m lightweight coaster jetty and 95 acres of very part developed open storage, serviced by a heavily potholed dirt track that routinely floods in the monsoon season making safe access either impossible or problematic at best for heavy goods vehicles - AS WORTH MORE than the build cost of Adani Port's new deep sea mega container terminal, designed and engineered to service the largest container ships afloat at over 400m in length, is as close to industrial scale Fraud by False Representation as its possible to get!

How these fraudsters are not already behind bars is a complete mystery!

We stand by our claim that the value of what is currently on display at Karanja, after nearly 4 years of 'construction'(we use this word in its loosest possible sense) is not even worth £30m. We again call out the II's to employ a reputable Marine Civil Engineering Consultancy to carry out a cost audit of the work completed to date to put an end to this industrial scale fraud once and for all!



£44m apparently 'spent' before the first aggregate truck arrived on site - for a port development project comprising: 200 acres of hardstanding and warehousing and an all weather 600m-1000m quay to be built under a £57m fixed cost tender! There are scams and scams but this is in a league of its own with daylight second!

[marvelman] 29/6/2018 11:23

"The Company was pleased that the impairment review performed indicated that the Value in Use of the port, once completed, has been calculated as being higher than the final expected cost of the completed port"


The impairment review was completed over lunch at the Ritz in London with all relevant gangsters present. A debit to the Travelling Expenses Account has been made in accordance with normal Indian accounting practice.

[mount teide] 29/6/2018 10:30

'2017 was a busy year for MPL, with work continuing uninterrupted throughout the year.'

The reality: Yes, very 'busy' - 15 acres of Land reclamation in two years!

ITD Cementation built the world Class 225 acre JNPT Container Port with a 1,000m deepwater quay capable of servicing the World's largest containerships, in 20 metres of fast flowing tidal water in the same two years!

'Since the year end, progress has continued, with more than 300 metres of the 400 metre general cargo jetty completed in all respects......of the all-weather facility ........'

The Reality: it is industrial scale Fraud by False Representation to describe the lightweight, open jetty as 'All Weather'. Even Stevie Wonder can see that it is no such thing - IT HAS NO weather protection whatsoever during the 5 MONTH Monsoon season BECAUSE the management changed the design from Royal Haskoning's ALL WEATHER design with a fixed quay adjacent to warehousing TO a low build cost, high operating cost, guaranteed commercial disaster of a remotely located lightweight coaster jetty, for their own self serving interests.

'As a result of the date of revenue receipts being later than anticipated, the Company SLOWED DOWN the level of expansion activity on site, particularly in the expensive work stream of land reclamation. As at today's date, the Company has reclaimed some 95 acres of land - this is significantly more than the 50 acres of back up land required to enable the facility to commence operations.'

Nearly 4 years after construction not even 50% of the Land Reclamation has been completed! And after raising more than £150m they are now saying funds are so low they are having to preserve what little cash is left! That statement suggests they have only the funds left to develop 50 acres maximum of the 95 acres into storage hardstanding!

So shareholders for well over £150m of cash the bank debt will getting for their money a lightweight 360m of useable length coaster jetty and circa 50 acres max of open storage!


Reading between the lines it looks like the Banks don't like what they have seen at Karanja and are making any further drawdowns of the £20m loan facility highly problematic! Cue the white collar criminal to come on and state he will underwrite it all - this from a man who previously was so short of cash he gave himself a £m company loan ! I wonder where he got the cash he claims is now available to underwrite the project when it took him 6 months to find a few £million for his November 2016 Placing Shareholding!

Answers on a postcard to the Mumbai Fraud Office.

The 99% investment destroyed totally un-investible fraud continues to slowly limp on to inevitable 100% wipeout !

[escapetohome] 25/6/2018 07:34

These crooks must truly be laughing at The English , europeans, and their political correctness, yes, laughing all the way to the bank!! in India the police would just close the operation down.

[diku] 24/6/2018 23:10

And what about that photo of board meeting with Coke & Sprite on table?...

[my retirement fund] 24/6/2018 23:05

I wonder what happened to Azalea ? He was totaly deluded wasn't he, he was so incredulous about the pictures he even refused to believe they were real. He must have lost so much money here jeez. I hope he recovered and can laugh about it now.

[diku] 24/6/2018 22:23

Are they building a port or a warehouse for storage?...more like a pit stop...looks like a low value storage...probably a man with a stick will be guarding at the gates!....

[mount teide] 24/6/2018 22:17

sophia1982 - How is it possible? Sadly because the II's invested here like the executive management have no experience of the highly specialised Ports and Shipping Industry - or hold any professional qualifications for these industries.

The II's were led up the garden path by the two UK NED's (neither of whom held any Ports or shipping industry professional qualifications) before departing recently with nearly £400k each safely tucked away in their offshore bank accounts for doing sweet FA for shareholders for 7 years!


The level of misrepresentation by the MPL executive management is truly breathtaking for a London Stock Exchange quoted company, and incredibly continues to plumb new depths despite a catalogue of complaints to the Nomad.


Until our complaint alleging Fraud by Misrepresentation forced the Nomad to get it removed, the MPL website had for 7 years, the following introduction describing the activities of the company for prospective investors, :


Mercantile Ports & Logistics was established to develop, own and operate port & logistics facilities.

Its maiden project is the development of a multipurpose terminal and logistics facility at Karanja.

The Terminal will be comprised of:

* A 1,000 metre quay which will be serviced by a combination of ship to shore and multipurpose cranes

* 200 acre back-up area for cargo storage.


Of course, this is what shareholders were also told they were going to get when they paid 250p a share back in October 2010, to enable the company to raise £73m to fund the project. Ah, the benefit of hindsight! In 2013, in Arden Partners 2013 Note investors were again given the same terminal specification, supported by detailed plans drawn up by Royal Haskoning the principle engineers appointed to design the all weather terminal.

Then, some 7 years post IPO, after endlessly telling shareholders the company were not in anyway cash strapped, the company asked the market to put their hand in their pockets for another £37m at an eye-watering 96% discount to the IPO share-price, in order to implement modifications/enhancements(the Directors preferred design) to the basic specification all completed by Q3/2017.


Incredibly, some 6 months later what shareholders foolish enough to support the additional fundraising find out they are actually going to get is:

No 1,000m All weather Quay
No ship to shore cranes because the all weather quay has been replaced by a light weight jetty
No 4.5m dredged access channel
No 200 acres of storage
No new 2 mile port access road to replace the current heavily potholed dirt track


Instead, shareholders for £150m are to get:

A 360m lightweight Jetty - mostly unusable during the monsoon season
Small mobile jetty cranes
A 3.5m dredged ship access channel
Around 90 acres of land reclamation for storage.


What shareholders will not is anything resembling the port image that was displayed on the front page of the MPL website, or in the video made of the proposed port development, or in the Arden Partners Note, or the IPO documentation.

Shareholder dissatisfaction/Formal Complaints should be forwarded to the FCA and London stock Exchange AIM Regulator.

In any reputable company, the executive management would not have lasted 12 months in the job, never mind 8 years! They must be delighted to have such a wonderful group of mugs as II shareholders!

AIOHO/DYOR

[my retirement fund] 23/6/2018 20:01

Hirco. Yes I remember that fraud. If you recal with Hirco a few institutions got activist and whent out there to try and find out where the money had been spent and secure any assets.You will recal they got no where and returned empty handed simply because fraud is so rife and laws are to difficult, complicated and often unsuitable for helping a comercial enterprise which has been subjected to fraud.I think we can safely expect that no one in their right mind would waste their time trying to bring this lot to account based on the many previous frauds including Hirco.Im afraid its investor be aware and dont go anywhere near a London listed off shore registered enterprise that has supposedly been set up to conduct business in India.

[sophia1982] 23/6/2018 12:35

Hi Mount Teide and others,

I have been previously involved in an Indian horror story (Hirco) and I am totally surprised that nobody does anything here where there are so many red flags...

How is it possible?

Thank you all for keeping me out of this!