Saturday, 5 October 2013

MacarthurCook Property Securities Fund (MPS)

Just a few points to update on this position in no particular order: 

1. Litigation

MPS has applied to head back to court after the recent ruling against it in favour of P-REIT. If leave is granted, the appeal is not expected to be heard until late 2014. If MPS is successful, the upside to shareholders is huge. I'm just treating it as a lottery ticket: not much downside, lots of upside. 

2. P-REIT (PXT)

PXT (another A-REIT) is very illiquid. The share price shot up from 13c to 20c following the legal case against it (see above) getting thrown out. PXT itself trades at quite a discount to NTA: including the potential liability for the legal claim NTA is 24c. NTA excluding the legal costs is 34c. So when the stock was at 13c, it was trading at 54% of NTA fully assuming it would lose the case and 38% of NTA ex legal costs. Talk about glass being half-full! . 

All is not lost. MPS holds a 10.9% stake in PXT valued at $3.6m as at 30 June. So with the PXT share price having increased by 25% since then, the value has increased to $4.5m albeit on very light volume.  

3. Arena REIT

Another MPS's larger holdings is the Arena REIT. The recent share price performance has been strong: it has increased from $1.02 30 June to $1.20. This has increased the value of the investment from $6.9m to $8.1m.  

3. Buy-Back

Still waiting for this to start... 

There continue to be plenty of catalysts in place to see the stock re-rated: distributions, buy-back, and maybe even an increase in NTA(?). 

Kristian 

Disclosure: own MPS

2 comments:

  1. Maybe I'm being overly cynical but i thought the wording relating to the buy back appeared very carefully written as if they wanted to give the impression they would conduct a buyback but didnt actually intend to...

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    Replies
    1. Hi,

      Interesting timing: MacarthurCook made the announcement regarding the buy-back and the resumption of distributions on 12 August. The unit-holder meeting was 4 September.

      Since then, the buy-back has not been started. Management have not provided ANY guidance as to distribution levels when they re-commence at year end. Just that they will start.

      I can't understand why you are cynical. (read sarcasm)

      Kristian

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