Bloomsbury Publishing (LON:BMY) (BMY, 124p, £91.57m) Trading update for the second half sine 1 July reports resilient UK trading with the book Eat, Pary , Love accompanying the film and making No 1 in the Sunday Times non-fictional list. The Finkler Question book won the Booker Group Plc (LON:BOK) prize and has reached No 2 on Amazon UK and No3 on the sister US website, with other releases, such as River Cottage Everyday being boosted by the new TV series, contributing to a healthy Autumn outlook. Significant taxation and legal challenges are driving sales of the Professional publishing division. The group reports a net cash position of £30.6m at the end of September (£33.5m at the end of June). We maintain the BUY with 140p price target – noting books are a relative trade down for Christmas presents so should do well in these austere times.
Cyril Sweett Group Plc (LON:CSG) (CSG, 32.0p, £20.65m), the international construction and property consultancy, reports trading in the 6 months to 30 September have been robust, despite the tough conditions. The group is trading in line with management expectations. The group will continue to grow organically internationally and strengthen its UK position. The order book has strengthened to £76m (early July 2010: £58m) comprising 43% in the UK and Ireland and 57% in the rest of the world. We believe the group’s increasing international exposure and healthy balance sheet well places it to take advantage of any recover. We believe the stock is fairly priced in 8.6x 2011 earnings given the fragility of the UK economy. We reiterate our HOLD recommendation.
Lidco Group (LON:LID) (LID, 18p, £31.32m) has announced GE Healthcare has completed a development of a proprietary communications link between LidCo monitors and its Centricity Clinical Information System. The development mimics one already achieved in the US by GE. By enabling the integration of the LidCo data, patient data may be reviewed remotely. At 23p we recommended the share as a hold, and return the group to a SPECULATIVE BUY ahead of the interim results which are released on 26th October but have already been the subject of a trading update…
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