Norcros (LON:NXR) issues a planned IMS (Interim Management Statement) covering the 18 week period to 3 Feb 2013 (which is the bulk of H2, since their year-end is 31 Mar 2013). They are the maker of Triton showers, and Johnson Tiles & adhesives, with operations in the UK and S.Africa. I am an enthusiastic holder of Norcros, and believe the company has excellent value & recovery characteristics, especially when you work out how strong normal cashflow is, once one-off factors are stripped out, and the large depreciation charge added back.
There seem to be a lot of positives in today's IMS. Group revenue is up a surprisingly large 15.1% in the 18 weeks in constant currency terms, but that dropped to a still impressive 10.8% in reported sterling terms (the difference being due to a weaker S.African Rand). Not bad going when they describe conditions as "subdued", so clearly NXR is gaining market share strongly - a very good sign in my opinion, as that effect is likely to be multiplied once the economy recovers.
The outlook statement says that they, "should continue to make progress in line with market expectations for the current year". Market expectations are for 1.9p EPS, but that forecast hasn't changed throughout the last year, as can be seen by this snippet from the Stockopedia StockReport on Norcros:
I particularly like the 5 graphs above which enable you to instantly understand key long-term trends in Revenue, Profit, EPS, and valuation.
As the 1.9p EPS forecast hasn't changed for a year, and given today's strong IMS, I would have thought that NXR is likely to out-perform this target. Their interim results showed underlying EPS up from 0.9p to 1.1p, and given that they achieved 1.9p underlying EPS for the last full year, it doesn't make sense to forecast unchanged EPS for this year, given that they were 0.2p ahead at the interims, and trading strongly in H2.
So I suspect that the full year results to 31 Mar 2013 are likely to be ahead of the 1.9p forecast, although perhaps they want to keep something in the back pocket until preliminary results are announced in mid to late Jun 2013?
The pension deficit at Norcros should also now be reducing, given that Gilt yields have risen in recent months, and in…
