Good morning!
I've got a half-written section on 32Red (LON:TTR) to finish off from yesterday, so will update that later. I've been ill this week, so it's all been a bit of a struggle.
Probably the most frequently asked question posed to me is this: "Why do Gattaca shares keep going down?"
There's a trading update this morning, so we might be about to find out.
Gattaca (LON:GATC)
Share price: 290p (up 0.3% today)
No. shares: 31.2m
Market cap: £90.5m
(at the time of writing, I hold a long position in this share)
Trading update - for the 6 months to 31 Jan 2017.
Gattaca is a staffing group, specialising in engineering & technology sectors. It was formerly known as MatchTech, and it bought Networkers International (formerly a separately listed company), and the combined group now trade under the Gattaca umbrella.
This looks fine to me, with the key bits saying;
The Group delivered solid results during a period of some instability in the UK, following the EU referendum on 23 June 2016.... the Board has confidence that profit for the full year will be in line with its previous expectations.
It throws me off balance when trading updates include the word "previous" expectations. What previous expectations? What has changed since? When was previous? 3, 6, 9 m or 12 months ago? Further back than that? It's too vague.
What this announcement should have said is that trading is in line with market expectations, which the company believes to be PBT of £x, and adjusted EPS of y. I do wish that we could have some consistency and clarity in trading updates.
Some data is given for NFI (net fee income), which was down -2% in H1, or -5% in constant currency. Not great, but that appears to have been what was expected.
Broker note - Equity Development (commissioned research) has put out an updated note this morning. I like the Gattaca notes, written by Paul Hill. His notes are always worth a good look, as they often contain much useful background. In the case of Gattaca notes, he also covers various other companies in the sector. Harvey Nash & Gattaca stand out as the cheap ones. Although personally I've never been drawn to Harvey Nash in the past, maybe I should have a fresh look at it?
Revised forecasts today from ED, for Gattaca show…
