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[gb904150] 01/6/2007 13:19

great title for this thread.

[driver101] 30/5/2007 16:30

Not in, is it worth a punt?

[professorsmsmith] 30/5/2007 15:09

Now perhaps you doubters will believe. This stock is either NIL or 20p. And it all depends on whether the bank panics!

They must be close to an announcement: let's hope it is better news!

[u813061] 22/5/2007 14:08

At least that was one company that Alison Leyshon didn't try to bankrupt !

[professorsmsmith] 21/5/2007 12:49

So you were finance director of Photobition were you?

[mrchigley] 21/5/2007 09:39

Don't pay the staff and its all over inside 24 hours. Any fool can see that.

Stop being such a muppet. Its a moronic choice.

[professorsmsmith] 20/5/2007 20:57

Very straightforward. The banks will be considering how they get their money back: nothing else. The payroll run merely focusses their minds on what their next move will be. It will be a very large outflow and they will want to be absolutely sure of their strategy before they let it go. Clearly, they will have to let it go to protect the goodwill etc; however, if the business is currently loss making (which it maybe) they may well take dramatic action at the same time.

Been there done it!

[jotoha1] 20/5/2007 19:20

Looks like we have another Sanctuary here, most frustrating when the banks call all the shots!

[boadicea] 19/5/2007 21:00

If the banks fail to meet the pay-roll they are shooting themselves in the foot.
The banks objective is to get their money back and causing the company to stop trading in present circumstances is the least likely way of succeeding.
If the situation is really dire they are more likely to go for trading under administration.

What is your motive, Prof?

[mrchigley] 19/5/2007 14:58

Is your doctorate in "Being a drama queen"

You've been talking about payroll for weeks and said they were about to be suspended 2 weeks ago.

Calm down dear - its only money. If staff weren't being paid they would have left weeks ago.

[professorsmsmith] 18/5/2007 12:52

Next Friday will be crunch time: when the bank decides whether to let the payroll go!

[h4rsh2] 18/5/2007 12:18

DAMN!!!! Should have fed the 'mice' to the cats earlier..YES.. i am out.

[pimp] 17/5/2007 20:10

ill be buying at 5p. Not too long to wait now.

[pbracken] 15/5/2007 09:23

Work in Progress.

[mr_chaps] 15/5/2007 09:02

excuse my ingnorance - what is "WIP"?
?Worldwide Intellectual Property?
?Work in Process. The inventory under assembly in an assembly plant.

>update. thanks pbracken

[guru11] 14/5/2007 22:17

Britishbulls has MEG today as a "confirmed buy"
Believe what you will - BB is more right than wrong,
but one has to have steel balls to buy!

[guru11] 14/5/2007 20:28

After reading the RNS's today I am certainly less confident than I first was with MICE. If one takes the debt as compared to capitalisation it is high. However the only consolation is the turnover, but one has to ask how long would it be to eliminate the debt, and how much of the debt is due to materials bought for work in progress. But all in all MICE must be at this stage pure speculation.

[professorsmsmith] 14/5/2007 15:57

The things we wanted to know is: how are they getting on with their negotiations with the bank? Are the bank supportive? Do the bank require immediate debt reduction? Why are the UK directors still there?

Total incompetance: the bad news is yet to come!

[stemis] 14/5/2007 12:08

The figures are additive.

[boadicea] 14/5/2007 12:00

If all the figures in the announcement are additive (perhaps an accountant could confirm) then we have a possible total of £30M to be written off. However, I am not clear whether the £15M figure first quoted under the UK heading may include either or both of the subsequent £6m and £9M (goodwill) figures.
We already know that the previously announced asset sales produced a fixed asset write-off of £4.5M which will (unless I am very much mistaken) be included in the £6M above and should not be double-counted.

If the board has any wisdom, the forthcoming results will be conservatively based, making for a clean sheet with all dubious factors removed so that some measure of crediblity is restored.

Operating cash outflow appears to be £7.8M since the end of February (i.e. 55M + 17M -64.2M). We have no way of knowing whether this is still continuing as under-costed UK wip under contract may still require completion and delivery at a further rate of loss.

A very unhappy picture and one that is still unclear.

[dunderheed] 14/5/2007 11:46

Not so bad RNS?

[stemis] 14/5/2007 11:43

I can't see a lot of positives in the statement. The UK looks a right mess and there seems to have been a collapse in financial management. Under normal circumstances the FD should put to the sword, but I guess it would achieve little at the moment.

The implication is that the UK has been losing money (otherwise how can you restore profitability) and haemorrhaging cash. They are planning to write off up to £15M of stock in the UK, which is pretty good going when the total value of stock at the interim was £30.6M. My guess is that because the UK was struggling, susbidiary management have taken on jobs which have turned out to be loss making (so the write down is from cost to net realisable value) or they have just been dumping cost into WIP to keep it from the P&L. Either way plc management have clearly not had their eye on the ball.

They look like they are going to break up the UK division, sell off some bits, close some bits, keep some bits, having failed to sell it as a whole. How much that will contribute to debt reduction is hard to say. The net asset value of the UK division at 28.2.06 was £34.3M. Its obviously grown somewhat during the year (which is why the debt has gone up). About £22.4M of UK assets went in the disposal of the leisure division/sale and leaseback and they appear to be writing UK assets down by a further £6M + presumably some/most of the goodwill impairment charge of £9M. So what is left? Maybe £20M compared to current debt of £55M. I can't see it being the silver bullet.

The US looks only marginally better. Although they might be reporting a profit in excess of £1.0M, they made £0.955 in H1 so that means H2 was probably breakeven.

I can't for the life of me see how they would have made anything like the £6M PBT, which only goes to reinforce the view that the FD doesn't have any control or feel for the numbers.

[scburbs] 14/5/2007 11:13

Gross incompetence in the UK. I was expecting board changes in the UK division. Who is responsible for spending up to £15m on irrecoverable WIP. This is appalling and clearly impacts cash flow (or it did when the money was first spent). No wonder the UK division was expanding sales rapidly as it was selling at below cost.

Good to see international division (the most profitable) doing well, but for the forseeable future (if the company has a forseeable future) the mess that is the UK division will be obscuring the performance of the international division.

[wiganer] 14/5/2007 10:42

The last results showed £57.3m of net assets. But £48.4m of that was goodwill. I usually exclude goodwill altogether, and MEG themseleves are now writing it down sharply.

So, exclude the goodwill and there was £8.9m NAV.

They've just announced up to £21m to be written off fixed assets and WIP, so the NAV excluding goodwill and before any other adjustments would be £12.1m Negative.

Bad, but redeemable with strong management action.