Small Cap Value Report (Mon 5 Oct 2020) - SAGA, CALL

Good morning, it's Paul here, with the SCVR for Monday.

A very unusual RNS list this morning - there's literally nothing in my area to report on, so I had a lie in.

We do have a couple of loose ends from last week;

Saga (LON:SAGA)

(I hold)

A reader queried my comment that the ship loans are "ringfenced". I had that in my head, but went back to check, and think I might have got that wrong. There was a mention of covenants re the ship loans (to finance its 2 new cruise ships, which Saga owns). If there are covenants, then it sounds like the ship loans may not be ring-fenced after all, so my apologies for what looks like an error on my part.

I've emailed the IR contact for Saga, querying the terms of the ship loans, and will pass on any details that they furnish me with, if I get a reply.

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Cloudcall (LON:CALL)

91.7p - mkt cap £35.6m

(I hold)

The share price has been creeping up since recent results. I had a quick skim of the interims, and didn't see anything of interest, but since it's a very slow news day today, I'll circle back to it & review the numbers here.

Thanks to harrinr for pointing out, in the comments below, that a US investor has increased its disclosable stake in CALL. There are now several US investors holding notifiable stakes, which augurs well (I hope) for a rising share price, and possibly bidding interest from America. They value growth/tech companies at multiples of what AIM does. CALL has successful operations in the USA (42% of H1 revenues), as well as the UK.

AIM investors may be rather tired of the story, characterised by missed targets & frequent fundraisings in recent years, but new investors coming in fresh probably see it a lot more optimistically. That could be getting rid of the stale bulls keeping the share price down, so all good.

Interim Results

CloudCall (AIM: CALL), a leading cloud-based software business that integrates communications technology into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, is pleased to announce its unaudited interim results for the six months to 30 June 2020.

RESILIENT FIRST HALF GROWTH DESPITE IMPACT FROM COVID-19

I'm not entirely sure I would call these numbers "resilient". With largely recurring revenues, and a benefit from the work from home trend, I was hoping CALL would have been a bit more resilient.

• H1 revenues up 11% on LY, at £5.8m
• £811k R&D tax credit received
• Launched in Australia, winning a substantial client post period end
• H2 to date is in line with expectations
• Commentary highlights recovering sales trend after initial covid hit
• Cash of £8.3m (down from £11.1m 6 months earlier), but it also has £3.0m of borrowings

My opinion - I'm still holding, but can't say these figures excite me. It sounds as if H2 should be better.

I think the growth rate really needs to step up a gear, to justify a higher valuation.

Let's hope we get a bumper payday from a US takeover bid.

Looking at the 5-year chart below, it's not been a disaster by any means. Not great either though. The Stockopedia algorithms have remained determinedly negative throughout!

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There's nothing else of interest for me to comment on today, so I'll leave it there.

Best wishes, Paul.