I Read The News Today Oh Boy! 3-May-2019

3rd May '19 by matylda

5 comments 1376 reads

Morning all!

Numis ( Numis (LON:NUM) ) – 265p – £282m – PER 11.5

Interim Results For The 6 Months To End March 2019 – Challenging market backdrop, Revenues down -24% (LFL but 3% higher than 2018 H2), the Dividend is maintained at 5.5p (also £7.5m of share buy-backs in past 6 months).

Remains too “lumpy” for me to invest in – For this reason I am going to put this on my Avoid list and cease coverage as I cannot see myself ever investing here in the future.

Symphony Environmental Technologies ( Symphony Environmental Technologies (LON:SYM) ) – 6.6p – £10.2m – PER 14.8

AGM Statement – Confident of meeting FY expectations with significant growth expected in H2.

Only covering this as it had a £53.1m Market Cap last time I covered it. I will now cease coverage until I see it above £30m again, which could perhaps be never!

Happy long weekend to all (who live in a part of the world where Monday is a Public Holiday) – Back on Tuesday.

As always, all comment most welcome!

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MrContrarian

3rd May '19

My morning smallcap tweet:

MySale (LON:MYSL)

MySale (MYSL) sells its UK business for £1.5m. It lost A$0.4m last year. Step to focus on home ANZ markets.

andrea34

That actually sounds like a dreaded H2-weighted announcement from Symphony Environmental Technologies (LON:SYM) to me. As usual, it's full of waffle, it also indicates lumpiness. I'm afraid that the most viable solution to reduce the world's plastic pollution is to actually use, and manufacture, as little plastic as possible.

Thanks for this week's reports, Matylda. A nice long weekend to you... and all.

matylda

Thanks for the kind words and wishes, you too.

Symphony Environmental Technologies (LON:SYM) - The market seems to have taken it well so far - Hey Ho !

LongValue

Numis (LON:NUM) is a company that has been sitting on my watchlist for some time. The one major failing that it seems to have is that it appears to act as a proxy for the broader market. It does well when the market is buoyant. Basically, it's cyclical. That said, the company clearly recognises this and has constructed a very strong balance sheet – it seems to have more than enough cash (£78.9 million as at 31st March 2019) to continue to pay dividends and to ride out the slump.

A major warning sign for me was the sell-off of stock by two key directors in 2017 – Oliver Hemsley (Founder) and Lorna Tilbian (She sold her entire 5.26% stake in September 2017). They clearly saw the writing on the wall.

The impression given is that it's not losing market share (Its corporate clients increased by 6 to 214 compared to H1 2018) but there is simply a dearth of activity in the small to mid-cap sector that it focuses on. With the result that EPS dropped 65.8% compared to the previous period. Interestingly, MIFID II seems to have had little impact with revenue from research described as “Robust”.

Just when the broader market will turn is anyone's guess but something I found a little concerning in today's interims was this statement “Once greater clarity regarding the UK political outlook is established, we expect a material improvement in corporate and institutional client activity”. Judging by the recent local election results that clarity could be quite a long way off.

I hear you - However the market is hardly sinking at present, anyway it is highly unlikely I will be going anywhere near it anytime soon.

I Read The News Today Oh Boy! 3-May-2019

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Matylda

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