Good morning all,
Apologies for the absence of a note yesterday, it was a busy day producing AIM Prospector and meeting a (very interesting) AIM-quoted company.
What catches my eye most this morning is five-a-side centre operator Goals Soccer Centres (LON:GOAL). The company has announced interim results:
http://www.investegate.co.uk/goals-soccer-centres--goal-/rns/interim-results/201409030700066733Q/
I have a lot of respect for the company and management team here, much has been achieved in the last ten years.
Highlights:
Like-for-like sales* up 3% (2013: 1%) - UK 3%, US 7%
Underlying Profit Before Income Tax** up 9% to £4.4m (2013: £4.1m)
Profit Before Income Tax £0.6m (2013: £4.1m)
Underlying diluted Earnings Per Share** up by 4% to6.2p (2013: 5.9p)
Ordinary dividend maintained at 0.675p per share
Net debt: ebitda reduced to 2.4x (2013: 3.3x)
Exceptional costs of £3.8m*** primarily relating to Balance Sheet restructuring
those exceptionals:
Exceptional costs of £3.8m, of which £1.1m is non cash, relating to expensing bank arrangement fees on pre-existing bank facilities (£0.5m), repaying the liability of the Group's interest rate swap (£2.7m) and providing against debtors due to launch of Goals app (£0.6m)
a lot of the debt reduction came from equity issues (at good prices).
Keep your eyes on the prize however, which is a successful US roll-out:
Our centre in Los Angeles, US, is trading strongly and profitably generating like-for-like sales growth of 7%, further proving the market demand. We now have a significant understanding of the Los Angeles market and our confidence in, and enthusiasm for the US opportunity has grown steadily. We are currently in discussions on a number of sites within the Los Angeles metropolitan area (population over 18million) and plan to open one centre in 2015 and a further two in 2016, in-line with earlier guidance.
AIM Prospector featured the company in March as Top Pick:
http://issuu.com/aimprospector/docs/aimprospector_201403/c/slslmno
The September edition of AIM Prospector was released to the public today. You can read here:
http://issuu.com/aimprospector/docs/201409_issuu_ap
or sign-up at www.aimprospector.co.uk to receive the monthly pdf before the magazine goes public.
David O'Hara
Editor, AIM Prospector
