Good afternoon! My last report of the week, and the last one from Las Vegas. I was out & about again last night, having a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, and playing on machines a little at the Rio casino. Rather over-did it on the aperitifs, so it's all a bit of a blur.
Caffyns (LON:CFYN)
Share price: 565p
No. shares: 2.76m
Market Cap: £15.6m
Interim results are out today, for the six months to 30 Sep 2014.
Underlying EPS is up slightly from 33.5p to 35.6p, which looks a tad disappointing, but the company says that trading was disrupted with four sites having major upgrades.
Note that Caffyns is family-controlled, due to a strange share capital structure. Some investors may not like this, as these type of skewed control structures (where one class of shares has additional voting rights) are frowned upon these days.
I particularly like the Balance Sheet here, as it has a lot of freehold property, which gives opportunities for releasing value, as has been done from one site where surplus land was sold for £1.4m. Freeholds also make the company much more secure in any downturn - banks are usually happy to lend against property, and it protects the company from rental increases which would otherwise happen if property was rented.
Pension deficit - is £9.4m net of tax, and requires modest overpayments of £358k p.a.+inflation.
Outlook - sounds encouraging.
My opinion - I was hoping for a stronger increase in profits, so the share price is probably up with events for the time being.
Omega Diagnostics (LON:ODX)
A Director bought 173,500 shares at 15p, a meaningful but not huge purchase for a small cap, and that seems to have put a rocket under these shares, which are up 30% today. Maybe it's also a delayed reaction to results earlier this week?
There's nothing else of interest today, so I'll sign off.
Monday's report will be late, as I'm flying back into the UK overnight, arriving mid-morning. So jet-lag permitting, I'll hope to get a report up here on Mon afternoon or evening.
Best wishes, Paul.
(of the companies mentioned today, Paul has a long position in CFYN, and no short positions. A fund management company with which Paul is associated may hold positions in companies mentioned)
