Acm Shipping Group Plc (LON:ACMG) , the leading international shipbroker, announced decent preliminary results for the year ended 31st March 2010 but for us there was news of somewhat unexpected diversification into dry cargo. Pre-tax profit of £6.2m and basic earnings per share of 24.5p were below consensus estimates of £6.38m and 26.06p respectively but apparently moderately ahead of management expectations – not sure these were ever communicated to the public though! The total dividend of 9.5p was marginally ahead of expectations and equates to a yield of just under 5% at the current share price. Given this slight miss and the fact that the time charter forward order book at US$18 million (2009: US$25 million) was down due to market uncertainty we were surprised that the share price actually rose on the announcement, however, a volume of only 13,600 shares traded hardly offers a great indication and simply illustrates the lack of interest in micro-caps in the current market.
The Group retained their usual strong cash position with £4.3m net cash at the period end and this after the Group acquired 500,000 of its own shares through its Employee Share Option Plan for a cost of £1m. Unfortunately the pension deficit for the defined benefit scheme increased to £2.1m from £1.2m. In line with the Group's (new) strategy to become an integrated shipbroking service provider they are now diversifying into the dry cargo market worldwide through the acquisition of Endeavour Shipbrokers Pty Limited for AU$10 million (£5.8 million).
ACM originally floated on AIM selling their oil specialism but who says you can't change strategy! CEO Johnny Plumb commented how demand for oil is growing and returning to levels of two years ago with the start to the new financial year encouraging. One can only hope that investors regain their enthusiasm for high quality AIM stories such as ACM.
