Good morning! What can I say, other than a huge thank you to the lovely people who attended my Brighton investor event last night. It was an absolute hoot! I'm walking wounded this morning, so reviewing the RNS must take priority, albeit briefly.
So let's see what we have, and how much scorn can be thrown upon the usual nonsense that the combined brains of the City have created for us today! Here's a tip incidentally - if you want really good coffee, eschew posh places and instead buy Aldi Columbian ground coffee - it is superb. And it only costs £1.99 per pack. If I had to compare it with a share, I would call Aldi Columbian coffee the Portmeirion of taste, at a Portmeirion price. Translating that into English, that means superb taste, at a low price.
Right, back to shares, what horrors do we have to digest this morning?
Let's get the comedy things out of the way first;
Phorm (LON:PHRM)
$280k turnover, and an operating loss of $35.1m for the year ended 31 Dec 2013.
Moving on.
Hornby (LON:HRN)
At 76.5p it has a mkt cap of £30m. I have a bad feeling about this company, so let's check my previous notes on it. I don't know what people are expecting, but I'd be disappointed if I were a shareholder in this company on seeing the results this morning for the year ended 31 Mar 2014. It just doesn't look like a viable business at all - £51.6m turnover, and an operating loss of £4.1m. That has been squeezed down to £1.1m "underlying" loss.
I'd want a very good reason to even look at investing in this crock at any price above zero. Maybe that's too harsh on a P&L basis? There might be some Bal Sheet value. But why bother? Squeezing out value from a Bal Sheet is nigh on impossible in my experience.
So let's have a look at the outlook statement;
As 2014 continues, we will further review Group performance and capabilities. Improvements in manufacturing, new product development processes and sales and marketing capabilities around the Group are priorities and will receive immediate attention. As the stock situation that has held back the Group over the last few months is resolved, the opportunity to benefit from improvements in other areas of the business will rise in…
