Very late comments
Please accept my apologies for being so late with today's report. I've been travelling home, and finally have got a spare few minutes to review today's small cap trading statements and results.
Andrews Sykes (LON:ASY) is a wonderful business that I've followed for many years, and used to hold shares in. It's a niche hire products business (including pumps and aircon), and generates wonderful cashflow every year, with good dividends being paid over the years (it's paid special divis every now & again too).
The main drawback is that 89% of the shares are held directly or indirectly by the Directors! So to many people that will make it uninvestable, but to me I would consider it because they have never behaved in a way which has harmed minority shareholders - who in fact have done quite well along the way.
Their results for the year ended 31 Dec 2012 are superb, although boosted by some one-off sales re the Olympics. It generated 26.4p basic & diluted EPS, so at 223p the shares are on a bargain rating of 8.4 times. The balance sheet is also ungeared (unusual for a hire business), and their depreciation policies have proven to be conservative in the past. It's just a cracking business, and if you can live with the ownership issue is well worth considering as a long term holding.
If the ownership was more conventionally diversified, then I think this would probably be on a PER of 12-15, so that implies a share price of 317-396p. So at 223p there is a deep discount (perhaps too large?) for the ownership issue.
A positive-sounding trading update from Hayward Tyler (LON:HAYT) has put their shares up 10% to 30p today. Management presented to a group of us at a Mello Central evening last year, and didn't create the best of impressions I think it's fair to say. There were some question marks over a rescue refinancing in the past, where a major shareholder had inexplicably injected fresh equity at a premium to the then share price. We didn't really get to the bottom of that at the meeting.
They still have too much debt, but it has fallen 12% to £8.5m. I might put…
