Good morning. A share that I previously held (but currently do not, as I felt the valuation was starting to look a tad stretched) is Snoozebox Holdings (LON:ZZZ) - an innovative company which turns standard metal shipping containers into portable hotel or lodging accommodation.
They have raised £8.4m (before costs) at 55p a share, not bad considering that's a 13% discount to a fairly buoyant market price. Before the Placing the mkt cap was £34m. After the Placing the enlarged share capital will be 66.6m shares, so if they ease back to say 60p, that will be a £40m mkt cap. That looks a bit scary considering the company is still in its first proper year of trading, and profits are as yet unknown.
So I shall continue watching from the sidelines. My experience of exciting small growth companies is that it nearly always takes longer and costs more, to get where they want to go. Hence at some point a buying opportunity will probably arise from a profits warning. So Snoozebox is currently on my watch list, but I'm not interested in paying up at this price. Halve it to 30p or less on some bad news, and I'd look again.
A share I do hold is Scottish TV outfit STV (LON:STVG). It's a typical old media type of company - on a very cheap forward PER (of only 3!), but has lots of debt & a pension deficit.
I'm a bit rusty on the numbers, but from historical & broker forecasts, I came to the conclusion that the debt is manageable, and that the shares could easily have a nice run from around the 100p level to say 150-200p if we're lucky. Hence why I bought some around the current price.
They've put out a Q3 IMS this morning which sounds reassuring on every KPI that they mention, apart from the most important one which they don't mention, namely profit! So not a very well constructed IMS at all. It should have been shorter, and just said whether or not they're on plan with profit expectations. However, I suspect enough can be inferred from this IMS to assume that profits are on track, so could see a bit of a lift in STVG, although the futures are pointing to another down day overall, so not sure if STVG can fight against that headwind today? I'm happy to hold anyway.
Specialist recruitment company, Hydrogen (HYDG) has put out a profits warning, so expect a sharp fall there today. They say that their stronger trading period, from Sept-Nov has disappointed, and therefore full year profits, "will be significantly below current market expectations". Ouch. That looks like a fairly serious warning, so my guesstimate is that will probably hit the share price by around 20%.
My favourite pick in the recruitment sector remains Staffline (LON:STAF), because it's fairly recession-proof, supplying mainly low wage, blue collar staff to essential sectors like food production & retail. Hence less likelihood of a profits warning there in my view (famous last words!). Incidentally, STAF shares have had a good week because they were tipped in the MIDAS column of last weekend's Mail on Sunday, hence the flurry of buying on Monday morning.
Another small cap profits warning, from Swallowfield (SWL), a UK company involved in cosmetics & personal care products. They say that due to various factors their Board, "expects full year earnings to be significantly below current market expectations". So I would have thought that's probably a 20%-ish share price fall too. Although they do say that things are improving in H2, so the market might possibly give some credit for that?
Profits warnings can provide a good chance to buy good companies at bargain prices, on temporary setbacks, but you need balls of steel, and an ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. Also I tend to find that sitting back and waiting for the dust to settle (sometimes weeks, or months later) is the safest strategy.
In these unsettled times, not many shares bounce back immediately from profits warnings, and often a second fall follows after the initial dead cat bounce.
I don't like the look of either Hydrogen or Swallowfield, so am not interested in trying to catch those falling knives.
OpSec Security (LON:OSG) interims look pretty good, with adjusted operating profit up from £1.4m to £3.1m, although driven by a large contract, and an acquisition. So it would need more time than I have available to delve into the numbers there.
That's it for now.
Regards, Paul.
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Experienced UK small cap investor & independent analyst, Paul Scott (aka. "paulypilot"), casts his eye over results RNSs each morning. His reports are now published exclusively on Stockopedia in stages each morning - with a first comment just before market open at 8 a.m., then additional updates throughout the morning… ...read more or visit website »
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Snoozebox Holdings plc (Snoozebox) provides portable hotels and temporary accommodation. Snoozebox’s products are focused primarily at outdoor events and temporary staff commodation. The Company focuses to provide on-site accommodation. Snoozebox focuses to provide two types of accommodation: the Events product is hotel accommodation and the Contrax product is accommodation. As of May 1, 2012, the Company had 40 rooms in stock and ready for deployment. A Snoozebox hotel provides reception services, daily housekeeping and a 24 hour duty manager. For the Snoozebox Events product, it has identified over 150 annual events in the United Kingdom outdoor leisure market, which include sporting events, music festivals, county shows, cultural events and commercial events. The Company provides a marquee or similar facility for its guests where food and beverage is available. Provision of catering services will generally be outsourced. more »
STV Group plc is engaged in the production and broadcasting of television programs, Internet services and the sale of advertising airtime and space in these media. The Company operates in two segments: Consumer and Production. It creates and produces content for broadcast networks in the United Kingdom and overseas and delivers content to mass audiences which are sold to advertisers. The Company also holds the exclusive United Kingdom rights to co-produce formats developed and owned by Kinetic Content. The Company incorporates Website stv.tv, home to news, sport and entertainment; STV Player and STV Local, a network of hyper-local websites which is being rolled out across Scotland. It offers viewers programs hitting TV screens in the United Kingdom and across the world with commissions for ITV1, Sky Real Lives, BBC2 and Channel 4.STV. more »
Hydrogen Group plc is a recruitment company. The Company is engaged in the provision of recruitment services for mid to senior level professional staff. Its Darwin Park recruits specialist roles within the oil and gas, and power sectors. Darwin Park fulfils permanent and contract roles, using local, international or returning national candidates, depending on the client’s preference. Its Life Sciences Practice specializes in supplying candidates within the disciplines of clinical research and operations, regulatory affairs and biometrics. Its Mining Practice is finding project-critical candidates within geo-science and discipline engineering. Finance Professionals is a specialist recruitment consultancy, placing finance, accounting, audit and investment banking professionals, from newly-qualified through to board level, on a permanent and contract basis. Its Trading & Advisory Practice specializes in sourcing mid to senior level investment banking professionals. more »
