Sunday 15 November 2015

A safe investment?

Safeland is a micro-cap that has come to my attention this morning after they released their half-year results. It's not a company that I'm familiar with, but the half-year results look mightily impressive at first glance.

Turnover is up 61.1% at £12.5m. Profit before tax is £4.3m and up a massive 95.4% and they've introduced an interim dividend of 1.5p (2014: 0p). Net asset value per share is 106.0p against a current share price of 55.5p. The group has a current market cap. of around £9m. Cashflow was also impressive.
 
The outlook statement is non-committal for the full year, and for a tiny company they do carry a sizeable debt.
 
I'll leave it there since I don't really invest in this sector of the market, and this is not a company I am familiar with. The blog is simply a quick snapshot of my thoughts and observations. Some investors may like to investigate this company further.

Now here's a interesting little micro-cap company:-

Creightons

I thought I might mention them because from Paul Scott's small cap. value report, I notice that the company is presenting at an event called Mello Beckenham tonight.

The group describes itself as being made up of a select group of brands and companies specialising in the creation of high quality personal care and beauty products for the consumer and trade market.

It's a company that I have been monitoring for a while but as yet I've not been tempted to buy. On paper it looks cheap, and some micro-cap investors may be tempted. Personally, two things put me off a little. Firstly, they are operating in what I can only imagine is an extremely competitive market place, and secondly, despite a pretty good record of profitability, they don't appear to have paid any dividends. The company has been around since the early 90s.

Since 2011, EPS growth has been impressive. In fact 2011-2012, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 growth rates were 38%, 55% and 60% respectively.

At the interim stage this year, the profitability of the continuing business is at similar levels to last year, although with the sale of "The Real Shaving Company", the diluted EPS figure has already exceeded last year's full year figure at 1.57p.

The balance sheet is impressive with tangible net asset value standing at £6.2m against a current market cap. of £5.2m. Cash on the balance sheet is around £1m. Debt is negligible.

Last year's EPS figure means that the shares stand on a lowly p/e of around 6 with that figure likely to fall even further this year. In fact, on all measures the company appears to be very cheap.

Investors might like to ignore the exceptional items that flattered the EPS figure last year, but you could easily argue that the company appears to be making exceptional gains a habit rather than a one-off.

The general narrative of the half-yearly report reads well, although one sentence does infer some management caution for the full year,

"We continue to be cautious regarding the underlying level of retail sales and continue to see the trend of consumers in the UK focussing on value.  This will present sales opportunities but may impact on margins."

Interestingly while writing this report I almost decided to buy a few shares before publishing. If they paid a dividend I almost certainly would have. Possibly one I might regret not having bought in future months? We shall see.

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