Good evening/morning, it's Paul here again.

Let's start today (Weds) with a few leftovers from yesterday.

Once I've toned down some of the comments from last night, then I'll move on to the biggest story of the day - a shorting attack on Burford Capital (LON:BUR) - looks very interesting.

Estimated time of completion today, is c. 6pm.




Gattaca (LON:GATC)

Share price: 145p (down 3% yesterday, at market close)
No. shares: 32.1m
Market cap: £46.5m

Trading update

Gattaca plc (LSE-AIM: GATC), the UK's leading specialist Engineering and Technology recruitment business, today provides the following trading update for the 12 months ended 31 July 2019.


I noticed that Gattaca's share price dipped sharply in the morning after this update, but recovered to almost flat on the day. Although, as with so many companies I report on, the liquidity is so minuscule that price movements are almost meaningless in the short term. Only 79k shares changed hands in total yesterday.

This sounds rather encouraging;

Underlying PBT is expected to be slightly above market expectations and net debt also lower than expected levels. 

The company bolded the whole thing, and I can't work out how to get rid of the bolding. The key words are clearly slightly above expectations.

Divisional analysis is given, but I find this rather over-complicated. Maybe the company and its advisers could come up with a better format for presenting this information in future? What about some pie charts?


Net debt - this has impressed me - that the company is completely open about a favourable factor affecting cashflow;

Net debt of around £25m (July 2018: £40.8m) benefitted significantly from the year end falling at the most opportune day for working capital receipts and payments. Nevertheless, allowing for this factor, net debt was below expectations.

Isn't that refreshingly honest? A firm thumbs up for this.

Directorspeak - sounds reassuring;

"The Group delivered NFI growth both in UK Engineering and our International businesses, partially offset by UK Technology where we are refocusing on profitable business. These improvements will flow through to profit before tax.

In addition net debt has come in comfortably below expectations, despite the exceptional restructuring and other costs incurred in the year.   

We are making good progress…

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