Mercantile Ports & Logis... Share Discussion Threads

[mount teide] 09/3/2023 09:48

Indeed.

Market Cap of £2.3m for a company with over £30m of debt, and annual Interest and Debt Capital repayments more than twice the market cap.

A carrying value in the books of circa £160m for an asset probably worth £15-£20m that could have been built in Europe, never mind India, for about £20-25m.

The AIM Regulators should resign and hang their heads in shame at what they have allowed to happen here to Pensioners Savings over the last 13 years......yet, despite over many years being handed all the data/information/red flags as to what has been going on here on a silver salver they have done NOTHING.

Moral of this totally unacceptable story? Never rely on a Regulator that is entirely funded by the very industry it has responsibility to regulate on behalf of investors, to look after your best interests!

[waterloo01] 07/3/2023 13:43

Umm. Big brother in da house!

[mount teide] 07/3/2023 12:58

Interesting that all my posts making reference to the former CEO getting arrested and charged by the FBI for carrying out a $300m securities fraud in the US have been removed WITHOUT ADVFN advising me!

[mount teide] 07/3/2023 12:45

The seller of that 41k share transaction today raised £2.5k, at the London IPO someone paid £1.1m for the shares.

The II's against better advice entrusted these shysters with a further £75m of their clients funds in two subsequent placings, supported by a Shareholders circular that were designed to mislead by suggesting a dramatic acceleration in the pace of land reclamation and hardstanding and infrastructure development.

The reality is there was virtually ZERO subsequent land reclamation of the outstanding circa 120 acres, that the management and NOMAD's representative said was necessary in order to ensure that the project met the actual project specification made in the IPO Documentation.

That the original £72m raised at the IPO was to cover the full 200 acres of land reclamation and yet, after raising and 'spending' nearly £200m in equity and debt, all shareholders have for their money is just 90 acres of very low cost foreshore land reclamation and a small jetty without any weather protection(with a build cost probably lest than £20m) shows the scale of the racket that has been going on here for over 12 years.

AIOHO/DYOR

[fft] 16/2/2023 12:06

Nikhil had the connections. He also had an 'empire', though from memory it turned out it was built on sand. He was always good for the money. The surname at one point was almost a guaranteed way in. Until he wasnt......https://www.skilgroup.co.in/board-of-directorshttps://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mumbai-loan-fraud-case-ed-seizes-jewellery-worth-rs-30-crore-skil-infra-chairman-nikhil-gandhi-1901020-2022-01-17https://www.vibesofindia.com/ed-raids-skil-infra-chairman-nikhil-gandhis-lockers-and-even-this-has-a-gujarat-connection/

[diku] 16/2/2023 11:32

But the bigger question is why banks falling for it?..

[pj 1] 16/2/2023 09:46

fft- certainly a learning curve wasn't it, in many ways, including witnessing the undying belief in any Co some investors can have even when evidence is in front of them to the contrary.

Never fall in love I guess was that specific point.

The 2nd lesson is never to blindly believe anything any Director tells you behind the scenes.

[mount teide] 16/2/2023 09:45

PJ1 - 'I know MT will support me in that the true facts didn't really materialise until a PI funded pilot flew over the area where the port was supposed to be.'

That was the canary in the coal mine - and the fact that the site for reclamation could not be developed until a bridge had been built to cross an adjacent tidal creek to enable access for heavy machinery and tipper trucks.

After finding buried in the results that £44m had been 'spent' a year before any onsite reclamation activity had even began, and that the reclamation work commenced at the high water mark and only went out to 60% of the distance to the proposed fixed quay line - it was as clear a night following day this was an industrial scale scam.

Think of marine land reclamation as a 3 dimensional triangle - if you only recover 60% of the land from the high water line, in effect the amount of material you need is a small fraction of the total material for a terminal with a fixed, all weather quay.

The dredging off the jetty and in the approach channel was actually carried out via a small pontoon with a tiny crane equipped with a bucket grab - and was working off the berth for the best part of two years according to management. The amount of actual dredging work that could be completed with this type of equipment is tiny and frankly laughable!

Such a service would cost peanuts compared to contracting a purpose built suction dredger(£10-£30m against $500k). Would pay good money to see the invoices that were paid by the management for 'dredging' services.

The way many such financial scams work in India by management to siphon money out of quoted companies, is that Company A is massively overbilled by Company B for goods and services. And then Company B pays a massively overbilled invoice from Company C owned by the management of Company A or their families.

AIOHO/DYOR

[danmart2] 16/2/2023 08:56

Fft

Remarkable and yet not an isolated case

[fft] 16/2/2023 03:48

Those were the days ! Reason the pilot couldn't find it was because he was looking for a huge landfill operation and it hadn't started yet !! Old fishing boats were disguising it :-). Always remember a conversation with a shocked NED after sending him the photos. Even funnier was when I hired a private photographer in the area to go and take pictures of the route the trucks were allegedly going in and out of. The bridge that had to be used was not capable. And there were no trucks....

[pj 1] 15/2/2023 22:06

diku

Joking aside deepvalueinvestor didn't actually ramp it as such, he got suckered in by NickItAll Ghandi which reflected on his private clients

To be fair to him he did post photos of his visit to the creek where he raised certain questions as to how their was no physical development in line with what the RNS'S from the Co said.

I know MT wil support me in that the true facts didn't really materialise until a PI funded pilot flew over the area where the port was supposed to be.

Hi words were.....''what Port?''!

Investors such as azalea were as guilty as the BoD

[diku] 15/2/2023 20:35

I still remember a poster called deepvalueinvestor ramping this many moons ago...

[diku] 15/2/2023 20:30

Lots of gobble-dy-ghook in that RNS statement...just happens a barge was passing by during their visit...

[mount teide] 15/2/2023 20:28

diku - MOU's have 'Confidential Clauses', whereby both parties agree not to disclose any Confidential Information to third parties.

In addition they are not a legally binding document.

[diku] 15/2/2023 20:24

Can shareholders request to see details of MoU?...


In addition, the Company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (the "MoU") with the operator of a terminal at major international gateway port and with a logistics company. The MOU between the three parties relates to a collaboration on the movement of shipping containers and vehicles by coastal waterways between the two facilities, with MPL's facility at Karanja having favourable connectivity to the regional road network and therefore more efficient evacuation characteristics.

[mount teide] 15/2/2023 09:40

AR - thanks for your comments.

[mount teide] 15/2/2023 09:40

To describe unloading a few break bulk containers using a small mobile crane and then discharging them by hand/stacker truck on a terminal compound also covered in coal dust as a positive development, is being disingenuous in the extreme.

Take out the cost of hiring a mobile crane and the labour and equipment costs to discharge the contents of the containers and like everything else they handle it will probably be loss making.

No shipper of high quality goods in break bulk containers would ship them through a bulk cargo handling terminal covered in coal dust. The content of the containers will almost certainly be low value break bulk cargo that is expensive/labour intensive to handle, and attracts very low handling rates.

Why has the company failed to put a single photo of the terminal on its website for 6 years but, never hesitates to put photos of other port operators terminals in its Annual Report. What are they afraid of? That the market might question how they could have a £160m carrying value in the accounts for an unfinished, low quality jetty and open storage facility in a tidal creek with only 3 meters of water depth in the access channel, that probably cost less than £25m to build and is now worth around £15m?

AIOHO/DYOR

[danmart2] 15/2/2023 07:33

RNS out

Complete tosh

[diku] 08/2/2023 21:25

The site can be used for Bollywood movies...

[mount teide] 08/2/2023 20:45

Perhaps the shyster previously masquerading as the MPL CEO, who is due to go on trial next month in the US for carrying out a $300m securities fraud could shed some light on it, seeing as he's likely to be going down for a 20 year stretch if found guilty.

[mount teide] 08/2/2023 12:36

£2.54m Market Cap!

Cenkos, who helped the shysters raise circa £160m is currently sitting at 3.6p on the BID - seemingly, only willing to now buy shares at a 99.86% discount to the IPO price!

With the only asset having a value of $15-20m at best.....but having a laughable book value of circa $160m according to the shysters...... what the market wants to know is where the rest of the shareholders cash actually went?

Like the £44m 'spent' nearly a year before a small bridge was even built to allow access to the site so land reclamation operations could commence!

AIOHO/DYOR

[mount teide] 02/2/2023 08:57

JD - bulk commodities are extremely low paying cargo in terms of handling and storage fees. This type of cargo is mostly handled by terminals with specialist equipment equipped with automated cargo conveyors. MPL is handling it from barges using cranes and grabs - an expensive and archaic handling system by modern day standards.

Most bulk cargoes handled through the Port of Mumbai attract handling rates of less than £1/tonne. So, 1.2m tonnes of bulk commodities will have generated a pittance, that's why the Interim Results were so atrocious:

Interim Results:

Group revenue of £1.91 million (June 2021: £0.85 million) .

Loss for 30 June 2022 £6.52 million (June 2021: £3.40 million)

So, to increase their revenue by £1.06m losses surge by another £3.24m to £6.52m

Genius, sheer genius!

Cash: £2.01m !

'Management remains comfortable with market expectations' ....Lol!

Only cargo handled has been extremely low paying coal, cement, steel, olivine flux and project cargo.

Jay Mehta, CEO of MPL stated, "These financial results show an all-round performance aligned to a clearer business strategy".......yes, as we told you so, of losing ever more money the more you ramp up the volume of ultra low earning dirty cargo, that few else want to handle!

'The Group is expecting further strong operational and financial performance in H2 2022, which is extremely pleasing and does, I believe, show that our strategy is working.'

Really? By my reckoning, looks like you're going to soon run out of cash again, UNLESS you dramatically lower the volume of cargo handled!

Clueless, totally clueless!

The crooks may have departed the scene of the crime but they've left behind a bunch of fools to mind the banks 'assets '.

[danmart2] 02/2/2023 05:26

Thank you Tyler

In terms of MPL , this is a scam and is a danger to your financial health