Good morning! I'm running a bit late this morning, as it's taken about half an hour to get a reliable WiFi signal here in the wastelands of Cheshire (I'm visiting family for Xmas). Plus we were up boozing until 3am, so hangovers all around this morning.

I like this time of year, not just because of getting together with family, but also because the stock market is thinly traded, so there are more opportunities - fewer people are paying attention, so you can gain first mover advantage when significant news is released, and thin trading can create erratic price movements - so more buying and selling opportunities tend to arise.

We're also likely to see a few profit warnings slipped out too - like this one;

Thorntons (LON:THT)

Share price: 91p
No. shares: 68.6m
Market Cap: £62.4m

Profit warning - the company mentioned two main reasons for a profit shortfall - reduced demand from supermarkets, and disruption from the move to a centralised warehouse.

549949dd30a20Screenshot_2014-12-23_at_10

That's a disappointment, and it badly undermines the investing case for this share - which was that earnings were in a recovering trend. If that's no longer the case, then really it's difficult to see any reason to invest here - since the operating profit margin is thin, the Balance Sheet has too much debt, and a pension deficit, and there's no divi (although I seem to recall there was talk of reinstating a divi).

Broker consensus was for 10.4p EPS this year (to 28 Jun 2015), but at a guess it looks to me as if perhaps c.8p might be closer to the mark. That would put the shares on a PER of just over 11, which isn't particularly cheap considering the Balance Sheet liabilities.

My opinion - I don't share the Board's confidence in their strategy. Also, bungling a warehouse move just smacks of incompetence. Overall these shares are not of any interest to me - I'd only be interested on a very low PER, so maybe at 50p per share or below. It's just not a very good business, in my view.

54994bbecbd9bScreenshot_2014-12-23_at_11


Cloudbuy (LON:CBUY)

Share price: 28.7p
No. shares: 119.9m
Market Cap: £34.4m

Trading update - I don't know this company well enough to be able to fathom what today's statement is telling us. The market has…

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