Good morning! Just a reminder that tonight is the inaugural ShareSoc Brighton investor evening, hosted by myself and Simon Cooper. We have about 50 guests booked in, so it should hopefully be an interesting & fun evening. Our speaker has confirmed (the CEO of Tracsis, John McArthur), so all systems go!

Also, just to flag up another Webinar, this time for today's interim results from Matchtech (LON:MTEC). Details can be found here. The webinar starts at 1pm tomorrow*, and enables us to listen and view online a live results presentation by management, and to submit questions. A terrific format, and much more convenient than having to make a trip into London.

So let's move on to today's small cap results and trading statements.

 * = My apologies, an earlier draft of this report mistakenly said that the Matchtech webinar was today. It's not, it's tomorrow, 9 April. 

 

 

Matchtech (LON:MTEC)

I might as well report on their figures first, being interim results to 31 Jan 2014. This is a recruitment group, specialising in placement of engineering and professional services staff. The numbers look good. Net fee income is up 19% to £22.1m, underlying profit from operations was up 32% to £6.2m (this figure strips out the newly acquired Provanis business, and other things like amortisation & non-recurring costs).

Including the acquisition, profit was up 48% to £6.2m - it looks as if that is a coincidence that unadjusted profit is the same as underlying profit - it must just be the case that profit from their acquisition offset excluded costs.

Net debt is reported at £8.6m. The outlook/current trading comments sounds encouraging;

 

Demand for contractors remains high while the permanent marketplace continues its recovery, we are seeing increasing margins and an improving NFI conversion ratio across the business. The integration of Provanis is going well as we focus on cross selling its services to our wider client base.  

 Trading in the second half is progressing well and we continue to invest appropriately to support our ambitious growth plans. The Board currently anticipates that the results for the year to 31 July 2014 will be slightly ahead of its previous expectations.

 

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