Morning!

News has been a bit hectic over the past few weeks, as companies updated for trading to the end of 2017.

Edit: Thanks for your requests, I am now also looking at Computacenter (LON:CCC) and Learning Technologies (LON:LTG).

I am updating my schedule today as follows:

To cover everything, my usual article length will have to be cut - apologies in advance!

Graham



Accrol Group (LON:ACRL)

  • Share price: 36.5p (+1%)
  • No. of shares: 129 million
  • Market cap: £47 million

Interim Results

To recap: this loo roll cutter listed on AIM at 100p in 2016, ran into financial difficulties last year, and has now resumed trading at a much lower level, after raising fresh equity.

The major cause of the difficulties was that the commodity Accrol uses, hardwood pulp, increased in price by 40%. Passing on this price increase to discount retailers couldn't happen fast enough to prevent a serious deterioration in the company's performance.

Indeed, Paul went back to the company's admission document, and found the risk warning where they stated in black and white that hardwood pulp was currently experiencing "oversupply", and that if its price increased, it would adversely affect the company's performance.

So it's another classic example of a well-timed IPO as investors got caught out by temporarily strong earnings, just before it floated.

Anyway, what next?

These results show revenue +13% to £72 million, but loss of margin results in a 35% reduction in gross profit, pushing the company into an operating loss of £5.7 million.

The company has a new CEO and COO, and has received £16.8 million in cash from investors through a placing.

The key debt-related figures are as…

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