AEO have just released their year end results at 11:15 today (Friday). They often tend to do this which gives the impression that they are trying to bury bad news. However, this isn't the case. In fact I'm suddenly a little more excited about AEO.
It's the best set of results they've put out since I've been interested in this tiddler.
The market may be slow to wake up, but if AEO execute well going forward then this could be primed to get very exciting.
It's a clear change of strategy as they try and move more towards growth than income (although a small dividend is always welcome). Dividend reduced from 2p last year to 0.5p this year. Was this why the two founders left the company earlier this year since their substantial shareholdings provided sizeable dividends?
The £469,489 of cash they added to the balance sheet over the year could have been used to pay shareholders a 5p dividend (i.e. 20% return) if they had wished and still retain a healthy £1.4m on the balance sheet. Which brings me on.
If they can prove they can generate growth by retaining the cash then that will be very exciting going forward. If not then the business if a great cash generator and can go back to being a terrific dividend payer. A win win situation surely?
I'm tempted to say that at these prices AEO is a no-brainer, although the caveat would be that it's a very small company. It has no debt and the cash on the balance sheet is almost equivalent to the current market cap. (£2.2m)
In fact the market cap. is less than 5 times the FCF for the year. If you take the last 6 months in isolation then it's even more impressive where they have generated almost £750,000 of FCF.
I don't think I've seen a cheaper company valuation since Avesco, albeit AEO is much smaller. The results have exceeded my expectations and then some.
Interesting times ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment