Nobody can accuse James Crean of operating at the haute end of the American cuisine market, manufacturing such delights as its Freezer Queen frozen turkey & gravy with dressing meal, not to mention its Salisbury steak meal.
This is the sort of nosh pitched directly at the cook-in-six-minutes, couch potato, TV dinner, bottom end of the market, so it's not altogether surprising that Freezer Queen's sales volumes have fallen to such a degree that it is now in breach of the covenants covering its $40 million bank loans.
Against this background, it's hardly surprising that Ray McLoughlin has decided against finding a buyer for the frozen foods business. Crean says it has ruled out a sale because of the capital gains tax liabilities that would be triggered, but there are other reasons why Freezer Queen can't be sold. No American food company is going to buy a company like this, which is going downhill fast.
So now we hear that Ray McLoughlin is talking to a potential buyer for the company, but that any offer will not exceed 35 cents a share - or a total of €16.9 million.
If you believe that Ray McLoughlin will really find somebody to pay 35 cents a share for Crean, then taking a punt at the current level of 17 cents mightn't be a bad day's work. But then, there have been so many false dawns for Crean shareholders that maybe having a punt like that mightn't actually be such a good idea. You have been warned.
It's a long way back to the halcyon days of the 1980s when James Crean was seen as a blue chip investment with Ray McLoughlin also having a huge institutional fan club, when the shares were in the stratosphere and the sky was the limit.
