Luceco (LON:LUCE) 

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  • Share price: 53.5p (-30%)
  • No. of shares: 160.8 million
  • Market cap: £85.6 million

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Lots of anger expressed by shareholders on social media and quite rightly so. Shareholders have been fooled multiple times since the company's IPO in Oct 2016 at 130p.  Share price steadily climbed until November 2017 with investors paying up to 265p per share. I will spare you all the tulip bulb analogy!

March 6th, 2018 Trading Update

December 15th, 2017 Trading Update

About the Company

Luceco is a manufacturer and distributor of high quality and innovative LED lighting products which include brands of Luceco (LED Lighting), British General (Wiring Accessories), Masterplug (Portable Power) and Ross (AV Accessories).   The company has manufacturing facilities in the UK and China.

Corporate Action

Aquisition of Kingfisher Lighting for £9.75 million in Sept 2017.  The Board of Directors expects the transaction to be EPS accretive in the first full year of ownership. Expect some sales and revenue disappointment given tougher expected UK conditions in 2018.

Kingfisher Lighting Acquisition RNS link

Kingfisher Lighting supplies over 70,000 lighting fittings and over 15,000 columns and masts annually to UK wholesalers, contractors, specifiers and local authority customers, and operates from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, with 71 employees. For the financial year ended 31 March 2017, Kingfisher Lighting generated net revenue of £11.7m and EBITDA (adjusted for non-recurring items) of £1.6m, with gross assets of £4.5m.


Trading Update

Reduced profits after tax forecast are reduced to £11m.  Presumably, this figure is now very accurate.


As part of the ongoing audit for the year ended 31 December 2017 and the review by our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer, we now expect to report profit after tax of £11.0m compared to the estimate of £13.2m given in December 2017.  Net debt at 31 December 2017 was £36.9m.


Why the shortfall in profits.  Two reasons were given, but not the exact money amounts.  Some capitalised costs are now expensed in profit and loss and the 2nd reason (previously stated by the company) was the strengthening of the Chinese RMB versus the US Dollar, alongside the ongoing weakness in GBP and increased commodity costs.  Margin pressure will presumably continue in 2018. …

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