Good morning! Many thanks for all the charity donations that have been pouring in this week, for both my Half Marathon (for MacMillan & Sussex Beacon) on Feb 17, and my Dryathlon (alcohol-free) for January, in aid of Cancer Research. Very much appreciated!

Mecom (LON:MEC)

More trading statements this morning. Firstly I'll look at European newspaper group, Mecom (MEC). I wrote a detailed piece about it here on 18 Jul 2012, which generated a quick 30-40% gain, but I sold on the next set of results, as it was rather difficult to predict what the company would be worth in the future, due to sales & ad revenues declining rapidly at some of its titles.

Mecom is now effectively breaking itself up, and the various parts are up for sale, details of this are given in today's RNS. It remains strongly cash generative, with ongoing EBITDA for 2012 expected to be around E89m. At 82p the mkt cap is £97m (NB. the mkt cap is in sterling, but accounts are in Euros).

A bit like Trinity Mirror, cashflow is strong since the cost base is largely variable, so as revenues decline, they strip out more cost. There is good news in that a fine from Dutch authorities has been negotiated down from E20.6m to E2.2m. Year end net debt was E130m.

The problem remains that revenues are declining so fast, that the whole thing could become worthless in a relatively short period (within 5 years) if those declines continue. Q4 ad revenues were down an alarming 17%, which I feel is too steep a decline to make the shares investable - that's far more than a cyclical downturn, it's a rapid structural shift away from newsprint advertising (probably towards online & mobile advertising). So this one is not for me - it's too messy, and looks to be in rapid decline. There might be one last puff on the cigar butt, but it's not clear cut enough to be worth taking the risk.

AGA Rangemaster (LON:AGA)

AGA Rangemaster (AGA) is another share I briefly held in 2012, until the full enormity of the pension fund problems sank in with me. It's a nice cyclical…

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