Tag: VCP

Bad News from Crawshaw and ULS, Ideagen AGM, Victoria Doubts and Other News

The real bad news today is that butchers Crawshaw (CRAW) is going into administration, “in order to protect both shareholders and creditors”. They hope the business will be sold as a going concern but it is unusual for shareholders to end up with anything in such circumstances. The shares have been suspended and the last share price was 2p. It actually achieved a share price of 3425p at its peak in 2005. Revenue have been rising of late but losses have been also.

I never invested in the company although I do recall seeing a presentation by the company when it was the hottest stock in the market but I considered it to be a business operating in a market with no barriers to entry and likely to suffer from competition once the supermarkets had woken up to what it was doing. That’s apart from the difficulties all high street retailers have been facing of late. Well that’s one disaster I avoided at least.

Another AIM stock I do hold is ULS Technology (ULS) who operate a conveyance service platform. A trading statement this morning for the first half year said the revenue is expected to be up 3% and underlying profit up 5%, despite a fall of 4% in the number of housing transactions across the UK market. But the sting in the tail was the mention of a slowdown in mortgage approvals which “may well be short lived but is likely to have some impact on the Group’s second half results”. The share price promptly dropped 20% this morning. It’s that kind of market at present – any negative comments promptly cause investors to dump the shares in a thin market.

One piece of good news for the housing market which I failed to mention in my comments on the budget was that the “Help to Buy” scheme is not being curtailed as some expected, but is extended for at least another two years to 2023.

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Ideagen (IDEA), another company I hold. It was unexciting with only 4 ordinary shareholders in attendance so I won’t cover it in detail. But boring is certainly good these days.

It was the first AGM chaired by David Hornsby who is now Executive Chairman. One pertinent question from a shareholder was “what keeps the CEO awake at night?”. It transpired that the pound/dollar exchange rate was one of them simply because a lot of their revenue is in dollars (their US market seems to be a high growth area also). I suggested they might want a “hard Brexit” when the pound would collapse and improve their profits greatly. But the board somewhat ducked that issue. Note that this business is moving to a SAAS revenue model from up-front licence fees which may reduce organic growth slightly but increase revenue visibility. The point to bear in mind here is that even on a hard Brexit it is unlikely that trade tariffs would impact software income because there are no “goods” exported on a SAAS model.

Another question asked was about financing new acquisitions which the company does regularly. These are generally purchased for cash, and share placings are done to raise the funds required. Debt target revenue is only one times EBITDA so debt tends to be avoided.

It is worth comparing that with Victoria (VCP) a manufacturer of floor coverings who issued a trading statement on the 29th October which did not impress me or anyone else it seems. Paul Scott did a devasting critique on Stockopedia of the announcement. In summary he questioned the mention of a new debt being raised, although it was said that this would be used to repay existing debt, when there were few other details given. He also questioned the reference to reduction in margins to maintain revenue growth. The share price promptly headed south.

The company issued another RNS this morning in response to the negative speculation to reassure investors about the banking relationships, covenants and credit rating.

I have held a few shares in Victoria since the board bust-up a few years back and attended their last AGM in September when I wrote a report on it here: https://roliscon.blog/2018/09/11/brexit-abcam-victoria-and-the-beaufort-case/ . The share price was already falling due to shorters activities and my report mentioned the high level of debt. The companies target for debt was stated to be “no more than 2.5 to 3 times” at the AGM which is clearly very different to Ideagen’s!

I did have confidence in Geoff Wilding, Executive Chairman, to sort out the original mess in Victoria but the excessive use of debt and a very opaque announcement on the 29th has caused a lot of folks to lose confidence in the company and his leadership. Let us hope he gets through these difficulties. But in the current state of the stock market, the concerns raised are good enough to spook investors. It’s yet another previously high-flying company that has fallen back to earth.

One more company in which I have a miniscule number of shares is Restaurant Group (RTN) which I bought back in 2016 as a value/recovery play. That was a mistake as it’s really gone nowhere since with continuing declines in like-for-like sales. At least I never bought many. Yesterday the company announced the acquisition of the Wagamama restaurant chain, to be financed by a rights issue. The market reacted negatively and the share price fell.

I did sample some of the restaurants in the RTN portfolio but I don’t recall eating in Wagamama’s so it’s difficult to comment on the wisdom of this move. All “casual dining” chains are having difficulties of late as the market changes, although Wagamama is suggested to have more growth potential. The dividend will be rebased and more debt taken on though. With those reservations, the price does not look excessive. However, while they are still trying to get the original business back to strength does it really make much sense to make an acquisition of another chain operating in the same market? Will it not stretch management further? I will await more details but I suspect I may not take up the rights in this case.

One other item of news that slipped through in the budget announcements was the fact that in future Index-linked Saving Certificates from NS&I will be indexed by Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than the Retail Price Index (RPI). This is likely to reduce the interest paid on them. But it will only affect certificates that come up for renewal as no new issues have been made of late. These certificates are becoming less and less attractive now that deposit interest rates are rising so investors in them should be careful when renewing to consider whether they are still a good buy. I suspect the Chancellor is relying too much on folks inertia.

At least even with the bad news, my portfolio is up significantly today. Is the market about to bounce back? I think it depends on consistent price rises in the USA before the UK market picks up, or a good Brexit deal being announced.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Brexit, Abcam, Victoria and the Beaufort Case

Another bad day for my portfolio yesterday after a week of bad days last week when I was on holiday. Some of the problems relate to the rise in the pound based on suggestions by Michel Barnier that there might actually be a settlement of Brexit along the lines proposed by Theresa May. This has hit all the companies with lots of exports and investment trusts with big holdings in dollar investments that comprise much of my portfolio. But a really big hit yesterday was Abcam (ABC).

Abcam issued their preliminary results yesterday morning. When I first read it, it seemed to be much as expected. Adjusted earnings per share up 27.1%, dividend up 17.1% and broker forecasts generally met. The share price promptly headed downhill and dropped as much as 32%, which is the kind of drop you see on a major profit warning, before recovering to a drop of 15.2% at the end of the day.

I re-read the announcement more than once without being able to identify any major issues or hidden messages that could explain this drop. The announcement did mention more investment in the Oracle ERP system, in a new office and other costs but those projects were already known about. Indeed I covered them in the last blog post I wrote about the previous Abcam AGM where I was somewhat critical of the rising costs (see https://roliscon.blog/2017/11/15/abcam-agm-cambridge-cognition-ultra-electronics-wey-education-and-idox/ ). The Oracle project is clearly over-budget and running behind schedule. A lot of these costs are being capitalised so they disappear from the “adjusted” figures.

The killer to the share price appears to have been comments from Peel Hunt that the extra costs will reduce adjusted earnings by 9% based on reduced margins. The preliminary results announcement did suggest that the adjusted EBITDA margin would likely be 36% as against the 37.8% that was actually reported for last year. Revenue growth of 11% is expected for the current year so even at the reduced margin that still means profits will grow by about 5%. That implies only a slight reduction in adjusted e.p.s. on my calculations which implies a prospective p/e of about 34. That may be acceptable for such a high-quality company with an enviable track record (which is why it is one of my larger holdings) but perhaps investors suddenly realised that the previous rating was too high and vulnerable to a change of sentiment. That realisation seems to be affecting many highly rated go-go growth stocks at present.

The excessive IT project costs are of concern but if the management considered that such investment (£33 million to date) was necessary I think I’ll take their word on it for the present. At least the implementation of the remaining modules is being done on a phased approach which suggests some consideration has been given to controlling the costs in the short term.

I attended the AGM of another of my holdings yesterday – Victoria (VCP). They manufacture flooring products such as carpets, tiles, underlay and also distribute synthetic flooring products (I think that means laminates etc). There was a big bust-up at this company back in 2012 in which I was involved. The company was loss making at the time but some major shareholders decided they wanted a change or management and lined up Geoff Wilding who is now Executive Chairman. After an argument over his generous remuneration scheme and several general meetings, it was finally settled. After meeting Geoff I decided he knew more about the carpet business and what was wrong with the company than the previous management and therefore backed him – a wise decision as it turned out. Since then, with aggressive use of debt, he has done a great job of expanding the business by acquisition and this has driven the share price up from 25p to 760p. Needless to say shareholders are happy, but there were only about half a dozen at the AGM in London.

I’ll cover some of the key questions raised, and the answers, in brief. I asked about the rise in administration costs. This arises from the acquisitions and investment in the management team apparently. I also questioned the high amortisation of acquisition intangibles which apparently relates to customer relationships capitalised but was assured this was not abnormal. This is one of those companies, a bit like Abcam, where the “adjusted” or “underlying” figures differ greatly to the “reported” numbers so one has to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is happening. It can be easier to just look at the cash flow.

Incidentally the company still has a large amount of debt because that has been raised to finance acquisitions in addition to the use of equity placings. In response to another question it was stated that the policy is to maintain net debt to EBITDA at a ratio of no more than 2.5 to 3 times. But earnings accretion is an important factor.

Geoff spent a few minutes outlining his approach to acquisitions and their integration which was most revealing. He talked a lot of sense. He will never ever buy a failing company. He wants to buy good companies with enthusiastic management. Thereafter he acts as a coach and wants to avoid disrupting the culture. He said a lot of acquisitions fail as people try to change everything wholesale. One shareholder suggestion this was leading to a “rambling empire” but the CEO advised otherwise.

The impact of Brexit was raised, particularly as there is nothing in the Annual Report on the subject. Were there any contingency plans? Geoff replied that if it is messy it will help Victoria as a lot of carpet is made on the continent and a fall in sterling will also help. He suggested they have lower operational gearing than many people think but obviously they might be affected by changing customer confidence. The CEO said that Brexit is on his “opportunity list”, not his “problem list”.

A question arose about the level of short selling in the stock which seems to have driven down the share price of late. Geoff suggested this was a concerted effort by certain hedge funds but he was confident the share price will recover.

Clearly Geoff Wilding is a key person in this company so the question arose about his future ambitions. He expects to do 2, 3 or 4 acquisitions per year and life would be simpler if he didn’t do so many. He tends to live out of a suitcase at present. But he still hopes to be leading the company in 5 year’s time.

In summary this was a useful meeting and I wish I had purchased more shares years ago but was somewhat put off by the debt levels.

Lastly, there was a very interesting article by Mark Bentley on the Beaufort case in the latest ShareSoc newsletter (if you are not a member already, please join as it covers many important topics for private investors). It seems that the possible “shortfall” in assets was only 0.1% of the claimed assets with only three client accounts unreconciled. But administrators PWC and lawyers Linklaters are racking up millions of pounds in fees when the client assets could have been transferred to other brokers in no time at all and at minimal cost. An absolute disgrace in essence. Be sure you encourage the Government, via your M.P., to reform the relevant legislation to stop this kind of gravy train in future.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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