Good morning! Interim results to 30 Sep 2013 from Castings (LON:CGS) look pretty solid to me. Turnover rose 9.1% to £65.9m, and pre-tax profit rose 5% to £9.6m. Note the strong profit margin there, at 14.5%. Their Balance Sheet is very strong, including net cash of £25.8m. It's an engineering group, based in the Midlands.

Basic EPS drops out at 16.89p for the half year, so assuming no seasonality then that doubles up to about 34p EPS for the full year. Therefore at the current share price of 432p it is priced on a PER of about 12.7, which is probably about right in my opinion.

Broker consensus forecast is for 36p EPS this year, and 39p next year, so they look to be trading slightly below that currently. The dividend yield looks reasonably attractive at just under 3%.

The problem here is that the outlook sounds uncertain. The company comments today that, "it is impossible to forecast the outcome for the remainder of this financial year", due to new EU rules on product. I don't like the sound of that one bit, so unfortunately such uncertainty rules it out for me.

 

 

 

Recruitment company Matchtech (LON:MTEC) issues an AGM trading update. It says that they are trading in line with expectations. They say that demand for recruitment "continues to grow ... as the UK moves further into recovery mode". Turnover was up 13% in Q1.

EPS for this year is forecast at 34.3p, for the year ending 31 Jul 2014. So at 565p the shares are not cheap, on a PER of 16.5. I cannot see any upside on that price, as the shares seem to already price in a cyclical recovery. There is an attractive dividend yield of about 3.5% though.

 

 

 

Results from tiny £2.5m market cap Physiomics (LON:PYC) look awful - turnover of only £240k, and an operating loss of 548k for the six months to 30 Jun 2013. They have almost run out of cash, with only £179k left at 30 Jun 2013, which at a burn rate of almost £100k per month will in all likelihood have gone by now. They refer to financing being tight, and look to have agreed some sort…

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