Morgan Sindall Group (MGNS)

[Bouleversee]

Final results out today: https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1455542

Share price up over 11% which is pleasing to this holder.

[bluedonkey]

I've held it for years. It's extremely well run. Dividend reinstated at previous level.

[Bouleversee]

I noticed MGNS had put out a trading report this morning ( https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1470771) which sounded rather encouraging and made a mental note to look at the s.p. when I had time, thinking it might have recovered a bit. Before I got round to that, however (lots of things to attend to today), another RNS came in showing that the CEO and (presumably) his wife had disposed of 650,000 shares between them at £20.50 per share so I thought I'd better have a look to see what was going on. The price was by then £22.05 to sell, up 18.31% on the day, getting near closing time. One wonders why they would sell so many shares if all is going so well, but for all I know that may be just a drop in the ocean so far as they are concerned. What do others make of this situation and if holders would they be inclined to sell or top up?

[bluedonkey]

My first purchase of this company was in 2003 and I still hold that tranche. My experience of the company over many years is that it is conservatively run and their public statements never exaggerate. I don't know why the director sold but I don't see it as a red flag. The company generally under-promises and over-delivers.

[dealtn]

I noticed MGNS had put out a trading report this morning ( https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1470771) which sounded rather encouraging and made a mental note to look at the s.p. when I had time, thinking it might have recovered a bit. Before I got round to that, however (lots of things to attend to today), another RNS came in showing that the CEO and (presumably) his wife had disposed of 650,000 shares between them at £20.50 per share so I thought I'd better have a look to see what was going on. The price was by then £22.05 to sell, up 18.31% on the day, getting near closing time. One wonders why they would sell so many shares if all is going so well, but for all I know that may be just a drop in the ocean so far as they are concerned. What do others make of this situation and if holders would they be inclined to sell or top up?

The RNS will state the current position of the holding too

https://www.investegate.co.uk/morgan-si ... 33293558W/

[Bouleversee]

I noticed MGNS had put out a trading report this morning ( https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1470771) which sounded rather encouraging and made a mental note to look at the s.p. when I had time, thinking it might have recovered a bit. Before I got round to that, however (lots of things to attend to today), another RNS came in showing that the CEO and (presumably) his wife had disposed of 650,000 shares between them at £20.50 per share so I thought I'd better have a look to see what was going on. The price was by then £22.05 to sell, up 18.31% on the day, getting near closing time. One wonders why they would sell so many shares if all is going so well, but for all I know that may be just a drop in the ocean so far as they are concerned. What do others make of this situation and if holders would they be inclined to sell or top up?

The RNS will state the current position of the holding too

https://www.investegate.co.uk/morgan-si ... 33293558W/

Thanks, D. I missed that info in the small print at the beginning; too keen to get onto the deals. I did look for it at the end, which would seem to me to be the logical place to have it, but no doubt you would disagree. I see they have plenty left.

Thanks to everyone for their comments. It will be interesting to see whether the upward momentum continues or whether the buying spree stops.

[dealtn]

I noticed MGNS had put out a trading report this morning ( https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1470771) which sounded rather encouraging and made a mental note to look at the s.p. when I had time, thinking it might have recovered a bit. Before I got round to that, however (lots of things to attend to today), another RNS came in showing that the CEO and (presumably) his wife had disposed of 650,000 shares between them at £20.50 per share so I thought I'd better have a look to see what was going on. The price was by then £22.05 to sell, up 18.31% on the day, getting near closing time. One wonders why they would sell so many shares if all is going so well, but for all I know that may be just a drop in the ocean so far as they are concerned. What do others make of this situation and if holders would they be inclined to sell or top up?

The RNS will state the current position of the holding too

https://www.investegate.co.uk/morgan-si ... 33293558W/

Thanks, D. I missed that info in the small print at the beginning; too keen to get onto the deals. I did look for it at the end, which would seem to me to be the logical place to have it, but no doubt you would disagree. I see they have plenty left.

Thanks to everyone for their comments. It will be interesting to see whether the upward momentum continues or whether the buying spree stops.

No problem.

There will have been timing restrictions too since they are "insiders" so only have windows on when they are able to trade (both buy and sell) shares.

[bluedonkey]

Trading update today:

"Since its last Trading Update on 22 April 2021, trading has been strong and the positive momentum across the Group has continued to accelerate. All divisions have performed well and the results for the Group for the six months to 30 June 2021 are expected to show profit before tax1 in the region of £53m, reflecting growth of c238% on the 2020 half year result2 and up c46% on the 2019 'pre-pandemic' comparative period2.

The cash performance has again been strong, with average daily net cash for the first half of £294m (HY 2020: £153m). The net cash as at 30 June was £337m (HY 2020: £146m)."

[snip]

"As a result, the Group now anticipates that its full year results for 2021 will be significantly ahead of its previous expectations.

The Group will announce its half year results to 30 June 2021 on 4 August 2021."

https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/ ... id=1493437

Share price up about 14% today.

[bluedonkey]

Superb full year results from Morgan Sindall today. Dividends, cash, profits all up by roughly 40% compared to the pre-Covid year of 2019.

[BullDog]

Any Morgan Sindall fans in the audience? I regard Morgan Sindall as a quality company in a pretty poor quality industry. I did work for them as a consultant about 12 or so years ago on a project and kept half an eye on them since.

Presently, the yield is a tad below 5%, dividend looks well covered, share price well down from year highs, P/E looks undemanding. Compared to say Balfour Beatty, arguably another quality operator, Morgan Sindall looks pretty decent value. I think.

Thinking of adding some MGNS to my SIPP, predominantly for income and perhaps skme growth medium term. I have no other contractor or house builder or anything like it presently.

Before I click the "buy" button, just interested in hearing what the audience think of the company at the moment? Thanks.

[bluedonkey]

I've been a long term holder of this company (since 2003). Gone through recession, Covid, they always manage to come through. They are conservatively run, holding net cash rather than net debt. As you say, they tend to get overlooked because of the sector. You can check the fundamentals but one nugget is that my records show that the dividend is 5.7 times what it was in 2003.

Like any share, the price will fluctuate. My only advice is just hang on to it, don't set a stop loss!

If you are in/near London, you can visit their head office and meet the FD. He was very approachable when I contacted them a few years ago.

[BullDog]

I've been a long term holder of this company (since 2003). Gone through recession, Covid, they always manage to come through. They are conservatively run, holding net cash rather than net debt. As you say, they tend to get overlooked because of the sector. You can check the fundamentals but one nugget is that my records show that the dividend is 5.7 times what it was in 2003.

Like any share, the price will fluctuate. My only advice is just hang on to it, don't set a stop loss!

If you are in/near London, you can visit their head office and meet the FD. He was very approachable when I contacted them a few years ago.

Thank you. That's very good to hear. A purchase here isn't a trade for me. It's for the income generating portfolio in my SIPP. At around 5% yield today, I think it's pretty much as good as it gets with Morgan Sindall. I'm encouraged my thinking is echoed by you.

[SalvorHardin]

I was going to buy some last Monday. It's a well run company in an industry that often produces poor returns for investors. Its share price return and dividend over the last decade stand out from most of the rest of the construction sector.

It looks like an ideal candidate for anyone running a HYP.

But on Monday morning I woke up with the thought that I should instead buy some Manchester United. This has happened to me quite a few times over the years and have learned to trust it; it's almost certainly the subconscious thinking things through whilst asleep.

Not long after I bought Elon Musk tweeted about buying Manchester United and then other interested parties appeared on the scene.

Morgan Sindall remains at the top of my buy list for the near future. I will probably have bought some by Christmas

[monabri]

I was going to buy some last Monday. It's a well run company in an industry that often produces poor returns for investors. Its share price return and dividend over the last decade stand out from most of the rest of the construction sector.

It looks like an ideal candidate for anyone running a HYP.

But on Monday morning I woke up with the thought that I should instead buy some Manchester United. This has happened to me quite a few times over the years and have learned to trust it; it's almost certainly the subconscious thinking things through whilst asleep.

Not long after I bought Elon Musk tweeted about buying Manchester United and then other interested parties appeared on the scene.

Morgan Sindall remains at the top of my buy list for the near future. I will probably have bought some by Christmas

Maybe you can buy Man U some new players instead?

[Bouleversee]

I was going to buy some last Monday. It's a well run company in an industry that often produces poor returns for investors. Its share price return and dividend over the last decade stand out from most of the rest of the construction sector.

It looks like an ideal candidate for anyone running a HYP.

But on Monday morning I woke up with the thought that I should instead buy some Manchester United. This has happened to me quite a few times over the years and have learned to trust it; it's almost certainly the subconscious thinking things through whilst asleep.

Not long after I bought Elon Musk tweeted about buying Manchester United and then other interested parties appeared on the scene.

Morgan Sindall remains at the top of my buy list for the near future. I will probably have bought some by Christmas

Didn't Musk say he was only joking about Man. Utd?

[AsleepInYorkshire]

Any Morgan Sindall fans in the audience? I regard Morgan Sindall as a quality company in a pretty poor quality industry. I did work for them as a consultant about 12 or so years ago on a project and kept half an eye on them since.

Presently, the yield is a tad below 5%, dividend looks well covered, share price well down from year highs, P/E looks undemanding. Compared to say Balfour Beatty, arguably another quality operator, Morgan Sindall looks pretty decent value. I think.

Thinking of adding some MGNS to my SIPP, predominantly for income and perhaps skme growth medium term. I have no other contractor or house builder or anything like it presently.

Before I click the "buy" button, just interested in hearing what the audience think of the company at the moment? Thanks.

Well ... how long have you got. Book value looks high to me. And if you look at the chart that tends to agree with a suggestion of high book value. I'd also suggest that Balfour Beatty aren't a quality operator. They came unglued significantly in the last 10 years (or was it 15 - sorry I'm getting old).

Civil engineering companies and "builders" rely heavily on government capital spending. Boris rolled out the notion that we could build our way out of our economic problems. Probably because it seemed to have worked in the past. Boris is leaving office. Inflation, resource shortages and a host of other issues such as Ukraine are all threats to the amount of money our government can commit to the construction industry.

As we left the EU we "dumped" our cheap labour resource. We created inflation, but that was delayed by Covid. And Covid exaggerated that inflation.

In my opinion we have a recession looming on the horizon. That may be a better time to buy certain stocks such as civil engineers and builders and perhaps even house builders

Take care

AiY(D)

[SalvorHardin]

I was going to buy some last Monday. It's a well run company in an industry that often produces poor returns for investors. Its share price return and dividend over the last decade stand out from most of the rest of the construction sector.

It looks like an ideal candidate for anyone running a HYP.

But on Monday morning I woke up with the thought that I should instead buy some Manchester United. This has happened to me quite a few times over the years and have learned to trust it; it's almost certainly the subconscious thinking things through whilst asleep.

Not long after I bought Elon Musk tweeted about buying Manchester United and then other interested parties appeared on the scene.

Morgan Sindall remains at the top of my buy list for the near future. I will probably have bought some by Christmas

Didn't Musk say he was only joking about Man. Utd?

Yes he did. But his tweet has drawn attention to the company and seems to have flushed out several potential bidders.

The market capitalisation was about $2 billion when I bought. In a trade sale, even with the current squad and taking into account what Chelsea were sold for, Manchester United are probably worth something in the region of $3.5 to $4.5 billion. That's a big discount and I can be very patient. So I bought.

Anyway, I'll probably be buying a few Morgan Sindall by the end of the first week of September. Enough dividends should have arrived by then! I suspect that whoever is our new PM they will authorise some major infrastructure projects, which will support the share price.

Politicians love to be photographed wearing hard hats on building sites, and to pass new laws, rather than making existing things work and enforcing the current laws.

[BullDog]

Couldn't resist buying some more MGNS at <1400p. Quite a wait for the next dividend as they're presently ex dividend. As usual, I was too early buying this share. Seems to have been trashed alongside the general house builders despite MGNS being a quite different company to Bellway, Barratts etc.....

[BullDog]

Couldn't resist buying some more MGNS at <1400p. Quite a wait for the next dividend as they're presently ex dividend. As usual, I was too early buying this share. Seems to have been trashed alongside the general house builders despite MGNS being a quite different company to Bellway, Barratts etc.....

A rather perky MGNS share price today. Good to see.

[SalvorHardin]

Finally bought in a few minutes ago at 1,493p. Though I've mostly stopped investing in the UK, due in large part to excessive NIMBYism and the political chaos, Morgan Sindall remained on my watchlist as a future buy given how well it is run compared to most of the rest of the industry.

The half year results, which seemed pretty decent especially when compared to much of the construction sector, so to use a football term I "pulled the trigger".

As to my earlier comments in this thread about my choosing Manchester United instead of Morgan Sindall back in August, I recently sold half my Manchester United shares at just over 50% profit. Some of that money went back into Morgan Sindall