Yesterday was an interesting day, with the FTSE 100 down 100 points, yet my portfolio of small cap value shares was actually up on the day, helped by a further rise in Amino Technologies (LON:AMO) and good results from Walker Greenbank (LON:WGB). Long may it continue, although I'm very mindful of the reality that this excellent run we're having at the moment can't carry on forever.
OK, let's look at some results! Firstly, Allocate Software (LON:ALL) releases its interims to 30 Nov 2012. They provide "workforce and compliance optimisation solutions", whatever that means?
I like the way they have presented the breakdown of turnover on the face of the Income Statement, that's a helpful initiative, giving a subtotal for recurring revenue, and then showing licence revenue, and service revenue separately too.
The numbers don't look good though. Whilst turnover is flat, costs have risen by about £1.1m, meaning that the highlighted EBITDA figure has fallen by two thirds to £562k. Amortisation & other charges take them to a basic EPS loss of 3.48p. I can't see anything in the figures or the narrative that excites me, especially as the £51m market cap seems pretty racy, given these lacklustre results.
Alumasc (LON:ALU) is a £35m market cap (at 99p a share) supplier of premium building & precision engineering products. Their shares are up over 50% from the low in July 2012, but still well below their recent peak in Jun 2011. The headline figures for their interim results to 31 Dec 2012 look pretty good - underlying EPS has more than doubled to 4.8p, and the interim dividend has doubled from 1p to 2p.
Whilst net debt has fallen sharply to £8.4m, that is expected to partially reverse in H2. They are on track to deliver on "previous expectations for underlying results for the full year". I'm not sure what the significance of "previous" is, in that sentence? Perhaps there has been a very recent broker upgrade which should be disregarded?
The forecast PER of 10.5 looks reasonable at first, but when you factor in a fair bit of debt, and the pension deficit, it stops looking good value, so to my mind this is probably fully priced…
