Good morning! UK Investor Show tomorrow, so I'm starting to get into a flap about what to say in the two sessions that I've been asked to speak at. So will have to do some more preparation this afternoon.
As an aside, a friend sent me a book called "The little book of behavioural investing", by James Montier. If you haven't read it, you should! It's full of insights about the psychology of investing, and the subtitle is "How not to be your own worst enemy". Also, it's an easy & entertaining read, so is highly recommended.
I've just come off the phone with David Stredder, who ran through the companies which are attending his latest "Mello Workshop" event, being held in Peterborough next week, on Thu & Fri, 23-24 April 2015. Tickets are almost sold out. David's events are unique, in that they are organised by an experienced & successful investor, for investors, rather than having a commercial focus.
The list of workshops is fantastic. I know a lot of the speakers, who are experienced & successful investors in mine & David's network, rather than salesmen trying to sell you something. So I am certain this event, which is concentrated on investor education, will be a great success.
Stadium (LON:SDM)
Share price: 121.5p
No. shares: 31.1m
Market Cap: £37.8m
Trading update - this is reassuring;
Valuation - broker consensus is for 9.3p EPS this year, so that puts the shares on a PER of 13.1 times this year's forecast earnings, which sounds about right.
I flagged up this share as looking on a "very reasonable" valuation here on 8 Jul 2014, when the shares were only 67p, so they've nearly doubled since then. However, I also flagged the problem of this company's pension deficit, so that's something to watch out for when you're doing the research on this company.
A big pension deficit tends to use up cash that could otherwise pay divis, and that looks like the case here, where the forecast divi yield is only 2.2%. Last time I checked, Stadium's pension deficit required annual cash deficit recovery payments from the company of £866k, which is about a quarter of its forecast profits for this year, so it's quite a big issue.
Although this comment from the most recent results announcement is encouraging on this…
