Good morning, Paul here!
It's a quick report here today, as I'm heading into London for a lunch meeting for a new IPO, called Quiz. It's in my sector, clothing retail, so should be interesting. I'll let you know if it's any good.
Talking of IPOs, I see that GYG has launched on the stock market today - it's a super yacht painting company. AIM admission RNS is here. I've not had a chance to look at it yet. It seems to be trading at about a 15% premium to the IPO price of 100p. Let's see where it ends up once the flippers have exited! First day premiums don't always last. Although we are in a bull market, so who knows? It looks a bit too niche, and cyclical for my liking.
I think super yachts are the pinnacle of vulgarity and are a way of the super-rich basically sticking 2 fingers up at the mass populace. History shows us that this type of thing is not a sensible way to behave, as it can ultimately trigger revolutions. Sensible rich people are a little more discreet about their wealth.
Taptica International (LON:TAP)
Share price: 376p (up 4.1% today)
No. shares: 60.6m
Market cap: £227.9m
Trading update - this is another Israeli marketing company (we looked at XLM yesterday) which keeps reporting positive trading. Taptica seems to focus on mobile advertising. It has issued a series of positive updates, driving a big rise in share price in the last year.
Today's update sounds very strong. It says that existing customers are spending more on advertising through its platform. Plus there is growth from new geographies, especially Asia-Pacific.
This has resulted in a successful H1;
...As a result, the Company expects to report H1 2017 revenue and adjusted EBITDA significantly ahead of the corresponding period in the prior year.
This is helpfully quantified;
Taptica expects H1 2017 revenue and EBITDA year-on-year growth of more than 25% and 40% respectively
It's great when companies give figures in RNSs, as that removes the usual guesswork. Clarity is always best, as investors can then make more informed decisions.
I'm less keen on the company using adjusted EBITDA as its default profit measure.
The market was already expecting quite big increases in revenues &…
