This week: A pharma aspirin’ for greater things, a marketing group with digital brainpower and no stain no gain for a dry cleaning outfit.
Alliance Pharma plc (APH 16.8 p / £27.1m)
The specialty pharmaceutical company issued a pre-close trading update this week. Trading has been strong with half year sales in the region of £13.2m, an increase of 33% over the first half of last year. The margins have improved and profits are expected to be not less than £2.7m. Alliance Pharma’s shares have increased five-fold this year. Independent research house, Hardman & Co, has upgraded its FY09 sales and profits forecasts to £26.9m and £5.3m respectively (previously £25.1m and £4.1m). Alliance Pharma has its own brand of aspirin, a range of emollients and other Over the Counter products that can be found on pharmacy shelves. Alliance Pharma gave the markets every hope that its share price would continue to do well; certainly the last ten days have seen a good rise in its share price (+30%), perhaps one where investors and company are truly “Allied”, particularly with a dividend payment promised for 2010.
Bglobal plc (BGBL 16.3 p / £12.8m)
The market-leading provider of smart metering services to the UK energy market, this week said it has secured a substantial new source of meter asset funding from Barclays which has made up to £15m of funds available to provide ongoing lease finance arrangements to customers buying Bglobal's innovative smart meter services. A lack of available funds to drive forward Bglobal's smart meter installation programme has held the company back, but we now fully expect it to go on to “be global” at some point, although this boost from Barclay’s should enable them to crack the UK at least. Separately on 6th July, BGlobal announced its new Energy Counts campaign for business customers seeking to comply with the government directives on carbon reduction. Don’t forget, the government has stated it wants all energy meters in the UK to be swapped for new smart devices by 2020; this is a massive opportunity for BGlobal and with the asset financing in place, what is there to hold them back?
Brainjuicer Group plc (BJU 130.0p/£16.8m)
Brainjuicer, the group that ‘juices’ the ‘brains’ of its in-house analysts to come up with innovative marketing ideas, has seen revenue growth of…
