Good morning,

Quite a few announcements today.

I provisionally intend to cover:

I'll update this with a link to Part 2, if there is a Part 2 today.

Regards

Graham




Haynes Publishing (LON:HYNS)

Share price: 138p (+13%)
No. shares: 15.1m
Market cap: £21m

Interim Results

A really mixed bag of results here but the overall tone is encouraging (and hence today's share price increase).

I'm going to focus on the constant currency results, since they are more reflective of the company's competitive positioning and those elements which are under its control.

North America & Australia: sales down 20% to $7.5 million. Small operating loss (from small operating profit last year). Has been restructured. New sales initiatives being implemented.

UK: Sales up 17%. Excellent result.

Europe: Sales up 25%. Excellent result.

UK & Europe operating profit: £1.1 million.

Big picture: excluding FX movements, revenue was 1% higher in this period.

Other bullet points:

  • Huge investment in the product range (vs. the market cap) of £3.3 million.
  • Pension deficit up to £21 million after lower interest rate assumptions.
  • Interim dividend maintained at 3.5p (same level since 2013).

My opinion: I am really warming to new management here (though still part of the Haynes family).

Even though the FX-neutral revenue gain was very modest, I like the online direction the business is headed in. Digital products were 36% of revenue in this period.

A lot will come down now to the returns made on £3 million + of product investment, and synergies on acquisitions.

The pension issue shouldn't be ignored either.

Overall, an interesting and potentially lucrative value stock. If you can satisfy yourself that demand will be resilient for these products (on balance, I tend to think it will be), and if you could have faith in the management and in the balance sheet, it could be worth a closer look.




CMC Markets (LON:CMCX)

Share price: 111p (-2.4%)
No. shares: 288m
Market cap: £320m

Q3 Interim Management Statement

[Update: After writing this report, I took a long position in IGG.]


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