One penny per share is the treat in store for investors in - well, the word ‘troubled’ doesn’t even begin to describe its plight – UK infratstructure services BPO play, Mouchel. As portended earlier this year (see Mouchel investors dump stock), management have had to resort to a debt-for-equity swap which will see Mouchel exit the London Stock Exchange and pass majority ownership into the hands of its lenders. Mouchel’s shares have yet again tanked on the news and are now worth – you guessed it – one penny.
I have been leafing through the many, many posts we have written about Mouchel over the years and was bemused by one back in April 2008 entitled Mouchel - the BPO competitor to watch. Then we had high hopes that Mouchel might grow into a support and IT services hybrid along the lines of Serco. But within a couple of years it all appeared to go horribly wrong, with management (fatefully as it transpired) spurning bids by VT as high as 260p a share (see VT ups the ante for Mouchel), which then bailed out of the bid as a condition of selling itself to Babcock (see VT cuts bait on Mouchel fishing trip).
All that is history. As for the future? Well, who knows whether the bank bail-out will be enough to save the business in any recognisable shape. Hard to see how.