I watched the Capital Markets Event webinar yesterday of GB Group (GBG), a company whose shares I have held for a number of years. As one of the speakers said, identity verification is the key for trusted e-commerce and GB has exploited the growing demand for that.
The event lasted over 2 hours and was full of marketing hype including four presentations from customers saying how wonderful the company was. But I learned very little that was new about the company’s activities.
Future guidance was reiterated. According to Stockopedia that puts the company on a prospective p/e of 19.2 for the current financial year (year end of March) and 17.1 for next year which does not seem expensive. The half-year results recently announced showed positive growth in revenue but earnings per share down and debt risen no doubt due to the recent large Acuant acquisition.
I would have liked much more information on their competitive position, market share, integration progress etc.
This morning there was a trading statement from Spirent (SPT). This said 2022 results were in line with expectations but also included the comment “the Group’s performance is now likely to have a heavier than usual weighting to the second half of 2023”. That was enough to scare the market and the share price is down 16% at the time of writing. Investors have learned to be very wary of such comments – it usually simply means sales targets are not being met.
Yesterday did produce some better news at another of my holdings – Paypoint (PAY). They said “Group net revenue from continuing operations increased by 9.8% in the quarter to £32.5 million”. The share price perked up yesterday and it looks fundamentally not expensive but a large holder (Sanford DeLand Buffettology Fund) has been selling recently and still holds a big stake so the share price may remain under pressure.
The other good news yesterday was that inflation fell slightly to 10.5%. Will it continue to fall? Probably but at that level it’s still rapidly eroding the value of the pound in our pockets. Food price inflation is a particular problem. Killing off inflation is not going to be easy as labour shortages and strikes means there will be pressure to increase wages and hence prices for some time.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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We have held GB Group for several years .I have felt the the market for their product will do nothing but grow and the recent poor share perfoormance was partly due to the company buying more share of a growing market ( albeit expensively)..I suspect this is a pretty sticky busines in terms of client retention so it would also be interesting to know the client attrition rate.
Yes churn rate would have been another useful bit of info to disclose.