I Read The News Today Oh Boy! 29-Nov-2018

29th Nov '18 by matylda

8 comments 2213 reads

Morning all!

Character ( Character (LON:CCT) ) – 495p – £105.0m – PER 10.6

Preliminary Results For The 12 Months To End August 2018 – Revenue down from £115.3m to £106.2m, PBT down from £13.4m to £11.6m, Underlying Diluted EPS down from 50.54p to 44.38p – On the bright side Cash is up from £11.5m to £15.6m, the Dividend is up from 19p to 23p and this years trading has been in-line with expectations.

Still a lot to like here but these results are hardly inspiring – I will keep an eye out for forecasts.

James Latham ( James Latham (LON:LTHM) ) – 625p – £123.1m – PER 10.8

Unaudited Results For The 6 Months To End September 2018 – Revenue up 10.2%, Gross Margin 17.1% (from 17.3%), PBT up about 15% (excluding one off sale of old site).

Seems steady enough, I think my main concern here is where any real growth kicker can come from.

Motorpoint ( Motorpoint (LON:MOTR) ) – 217.5p – £211.4m – PER 10.5

Results For The 6 Months To End September 2018 – Revenue up 9.4%, PBT up 13.3%, Adjusted EPS up 11.6% with Gross Margin up from 140% to 146%. The Interim Dividend is up and impressive 25%. Current trading is in-line.

I still have concerns about the sector but it does now seem to be holding up (even as we get nearer to you know what) - Getting more tempted but not quite over the edge yet.

Mycelx Technologies ( Mycelx Technologies (LON:MYX) ) – 230p – £86.5m – PER 15.1

New Project Award And Trading Update – New order and guides FY revenue of $25m - $26m in Revenue and $2.4m to $2.8m Net Profit.

I am long here and this is the kicker I was hoping for before year end – I will continue to hold for now as I quite like the outlook here.

Synectics ( Synectics (LON:SNX) ) – 190p – £33.8m – PER 9.80

Trading Update For The 12 Months To End November 2018 – PBT expected to be broadly in-line…

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matylda

29th Nov '18

And, by the way, those of you who said you were a little shy to post or thought you might post stupid questions - Don't be, we all learn from and generally help each other here.

MrContrarian

My morning smallcap tweet:

Dignity (LON:DTY), Synectics (LON:SNX), Coral Products (LON:CRU), Realm Therapeutics (LON:RLM), Character (LON:CCT)

Dignity (DTY) CMA interim report on funeral mkt concludes mkt not working well enough. Will conduct a full Market Investigation. "Its initial work indicates problems with the market that have led to above inflation price rises for well over a decade - both for funeral director services and crematoria services. The scale of these price rises does not currently appear to be justified by cost increases or quality improvements."
Synectics (SNX) guides FY U/L pretax broadly in line with market expectations. A weak performance in the UK on-vehicle security sector has been offset by strong results from global Gaming security. Will make a £2m write-off, most of which will be non-cash.The pipeline of expected (note) new business is somewhat stronger than originally expected, so "increasingly confident of solid progress in the Group's results in the coming year."
Coral Products (CRU) H1 rev up 10%, U/L EPS 0.87p (0.23p). Div 0.25p (0.0p). 'Delighted' but don't know if it's a beat.
Realm Therapeutics (RLM) update on formal sale process. "From among the several non-binding proposals, the Company has selected a short list of potential transactions and has advanced these to deal negotiation and due diligence." More news in Q1 2019
Character Group (CCT) FY looks like a beat with rev £106.2m and U/L EPS 45p (52p) vs F/C 39p. FY div 23p (19p).

andrea34

If one looks at the Character (LON:CCT) results on face value then the figures do indeed look rather lacklustre. However, if one compares them to the picture in H1, then comparing the H2 period they have actually increased profit by 10.9% and revenue by a more modest 3.5%. I'm not sure this is enough to get me excited enough to invest though, I would worry if their sales cold be affected if the most dire Brexit projections became a reality.

The update from Mycelx Technologies (LON:MYX) is good, though I think they are perhaps a little speculative for me with a wobbly long term record. I don't doubt your figures, Matylda, I am just wondering how you calculate a PER of 15.1?

Jeremy Rea

Whilst I do quite like Character (LON:CCT) as a company, from memory Management are very very generous to themselves with regard to salaries, relative to overall profitability.

Andrea, from the Stocko main page.

gus 1065

I think the problem with the Character (LON:CCT) remuneration is as much about the number of executive directors on the board (7) as the extent of the largesse that they scoop out of the pot for themselves. If you take a look at page 40 of the latest annual report it sets out the extent of the board pay for 2018.

http://www.thecharacter.com/Content/Images/uploaded/PDF/2017/TCG%20Annual%20Report%20year%20ended%2031%20August%202017.pdf

Three of the seven get £750k or more and the total for the board in aggregate is just shy of £4m. In the context of company net profit of about £9m and a £100m market cap, it seems excessive for a small mid cap, especially as it’s Peppa that is the one bringing home most of the bacon.

Gus

I wonder how accurate that data field is considering that, in the financial summary, the forecast PER for this year is 22.5?

Albertos

The PER figure quoted by Stockopedia is "12 month rolling forecast", therefore it's currently only taking 1 month of 2018 (22.5) but 11 months of 2019 (14.6)

Phil

I Read The News Today Oh Boy! 29-Nov-2018

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Matylda

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