Good morning! Before I get into this morning's results, here are a couple of possible dates for your diaries, for London investor meet the management events (I will be attending both, so hope to see some of you there):

25 Sep, from 5:00pm - Equity Development Investor Forum - their usual quarterly meeting, hosted at Faskin Martineau's offices in Hanover Square. Companies presenting are: Nature Group, Global Energy Development, and Matchtech. Details of the meeting & how to book in, are here.

2 Oct, 5:30pm - ShareSoc Technology Company Seminar - similar format to last time, companies presenting are: Ideagen, Armour Group, and Regenersis.

Thank you to both ED and ShareSoc for organising these very useful events - personally I really enjoy meeting management of interesting companies, and they are also great fun to network with other investors over a few glasses of wine.

 

 

 

Results for the year ended 31 May 2013 have been issued by repair manual publisher Haynes Publishing (LON:HYNS). As you would expect, it's a declining market, and their turnover dropped 7.4% to £27.6m, with operating profit down a fair bit from £5.1m in 2011/12 to £3.8m for 2012/13. Basic EPS drops out at 16.4p (down from 20.0p). The dividend has been roughly halved too, to 7.5p, so it all sounds pretty disappointing. The outlook section of the narrative doesn't inspire much confidence either.

So at 193p, I think the shares look rather pricey, that's 11.8 times EPS, which is not cheap for a declining business. Having said that, they do have a very interesting niche, and the product is superb, as I know from personal experience rebuilding a Vauxhall Cavalier Mk I using a Haynes manual in the late 80's.

However, they seem to have used the cash pile sensibly, in making an acquisition post year-end which will pay for itself in four years, they say. This is a tricky one - declining sector, but making cheap bolt-on acquisitions. Overall, the dividend being halved puts me off, and I'd rather find cheap growth companies, rather than try to work out reasons why an old business might survive.

Oh, there's a pension deficit too, and I seem to recall there might be something funny about their share capital structure - two classes of shares from memory, so that would need verifying to…

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