Good morning!
In case you're interested, and missed it, I recorded a SCVR Extra video last night, covering 8 more companies that I didn't have time to type up during the day. There are clickable links in the description box which allow you to jump straight to companies of interest, if you don't want to watch the whole thing (which is under 14 mins).
It's very quiet today in my area of the market, with hardly any results or trading statements for small caps.
Styles and Wood (LON:STY)
Results for y/e 31 Dec 2014 - this is a property services company. The results look good - turnover is up 3.2% to £97m, and underlying profit before tax is up 200% to £2.1m. The order book is up 20% too. The market cap last night was only £3.7m last night.
So clearly there's a catch! It's the balance sheet - the company has an inappropriate capital structure, with far too much debt, in the form of convertible preference shares.
Refinancing - however, in a separate announcement, the company gives details of a clever refinancing which gets rid of more than half of the convertibles. It took me a little while to work through the details of the refinancing, to get my head round it, as it's not a simple deal.
By the time I realised that this is a very good deal, that puts the company on a much firmer footing, it was too late, and the shares had already shot up over 40%.
Anyway, as it's a real micro cap, or even a nano cap, I won't waste any more time on it, as most readers won't be interested.
Creightons (LON:CRL)
Results for the year ended 31 Mar 2015 - another nano cap, so again just a very quick mention. Underlying operating profit was flat against last year at £0.5m, but an exceptional gain was made on a disposal, of £375k.
Interestingly, another disposal after the year end bagged another £1.0m, of which £844k is profit. The balance sheet is in good condition, especially when you include the post year-end disposal boost.
Although the narrative refers to margins being squeezed by customers, and revenue investment being made. So it doesn't look likely that underlying profits have much scope to go up, from my very quick review…
