The third in a series where I refresh my opinions on the portfolio's current holdings.
Getting closer!
I was tempted to do the final 5 in this post, but given the doubtless length it'd then get up to, and the fact that the last two are the ones I'm most uncertain about, I thought I'd stick with 3.
N Brown (BWNG)
Leaving N Brown (LON:BWNG) to this post allows me to comment on their results, released yesterday, which were met with positivity by the market. The shares closed up over 10% on what look, at first glance, rather uninspiring figures. Two things to say about that, I suppose - firstly, uninspiring compared to what? Boring, relatively flat results will be good for the share price if everyone was expecting a poor set of figures! Secondly, I wonder if much of the positivity comes from the bit the media seemed to have seized on - something in the outlook. The headlines, anyway:
| § Total revenue | £379.3m | +4.3% |
| § Operating Profit | £45.7m | -2.8% |
| § Profit before tax and fair value adjustments | £42.0m | -4.5% |
| § E-commerce sales | £196m | +12% |
| § Adjusted earnings per share | 12.48p | +3.1% |
| § Interim dividend | 5.45p | +3.0% |
| § Sales from newly recruited customers | +20% | |
| § Sales for the six weeks ended 13 October | +10.1% |
The price movement after these results means that N Brown now trades on a P/E of about 11, and a forward P/E of slightly more than that. The problem with N Brown is how bizarrely it seems to straddle the two worlds…
.png)
