3 sets of figures out this week for companies in the portfolio - Howden Joinery, Tullett Prebon and Trinity Mirror. My most recent discussions of the three companies can be found at the following links:
Howden Joinery
Howden Joinery (LON:HWDN) have appreciated further versus a pretty flat market since my last post, having added about 10%. They dropped about 6 of those percentage points since the results, which came on Thursday morning, though in reality it's just a blip in what has been a rather smooth upward trajectory since the start of the year. Given the evident quality of the business, though this is very easy to say in hindsight, I think this was certainly one of my safer shares.
The results were wholly uninteresting, though seem to indicate some slowing momentum - revenue is up 4.3% for the year so far, though only 2.2% in the second half. The remaining two 4-week periods account for about 10% of their remaining revenues, and so we can fairly easily see how that figure for the year will pan out, but a slowdown in growth makes another unexciting year likely. Not that any fireworks were particularly expected. On the physical growth front, the company reckons it'll finish the year with 20 more depots than it started with - 4% more - which is a positive given the minimal up front cost (they lease the depots and estimate the fit-out cost at £170,000 - seems extremely cheap to me!) and good returns on capital. The company says they break even at, usually, about 2-3 years, though maturation is much longer given the lack of advertising and the organic way they grow. There's plenty of scope for continuing locational growth - they think room for about 150-200 more - and there's a good deal of free growth built in to the way these depots do take time to mature.
Revenue per depot peaked at about £2.2m in 2007, and now sits at about £1.7m; even though openings has slowed, meaning a maturer profile of stores.
Depot growth, locational growth, unit growth, cohesive business model. A slowdown for this IMS doesn't really concern me - times aren't fantastic. They're not expensive against the profit of not-fantastic-times, though, and so I…
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