Good morning, 56 minutes late, faulty bogey at Effingham Junction. So there's been a fair bit of 'effin, and quite a bit of blinding too! Anyway, I've not had my first cup of tea yet, so this may contain typos. Getting straight into this morning's results, the big one for me is Norcros (LON:NXR). This share has been in my portfolio for quite a while now, it must be getting on for two years?
This column is effectively an investing diary of a private investor, so funnily enough, I write about shares that I own personally! This concept seems to confuse some people, but seems pretty simple to me. Nothing herein is a recommendation, just ideas for further research by you. Some shares will go up, others will go down. So, let's have a look at the interims from Norcros. I'm away from home, so unfortunately just writing this on my little Chromebook, so it's not possible to insert graphics, so apologies in advance for there just being reams of text.
Having had a quick skim of the interim results to 30 Sep 2013 from Norcros (LON:NXR), I am happy with them, and the 6% rise in share price to 21p today looks justified. Indeed, the valuation still looks quite low to me, since they have delivered underlying EPS of 0.9, so double that for the full year, and a bit of growth, and you're probably looking at nearly 2p for the full year. That could easily rise further on an economic recovery, so taking a long term viiew, I could see these shares going usefully higher if trading continues to improve.
Revenue for the six months is up 9.8% to £116.7m, and on a constant currency basis was up 16.3%, so that implies a fairly big movement in exchange rates, which is probably due to the depreciation of the South African Rand, which has fallen from 11 to the pound in 2011, to about 16.5 to the pound today.
Underlying operating profit is up marginally from £6.6m to £6.8m, although that presumably masks a deterioration in the existing business, as it will include the results from recently acquired subsidiary Vado (a maker of luxury taps).
The outlook sounds positive, with the company expressing confidence in the full year outcome, which broker…
