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Investor Forum, 26th June: PureCircle, Vislink and Cranswick
Meet the management of 3
leading companies: Wednesday 26th June
We are pleased to invite
you to our next Investor Forum, on the evening of Wednesday 26th June, to meet
the senior management of PureCircle, Vislink and Cranswick.
There is significant and growing attention globally on combating obesity, with leading food and drinks' manufacturers launching or remaking products with significantly fewer, or zero, calories, eg the Sprite brand of Coco Cola. PureCircle is the world's leading producer of high purity ingredients derived from the stevia plant, and leading the global expansion of stevia as the next mass volume natural sweetener. William Mitchell, Finance Director, will outline the scale of this opportunity.
Vislink (VLK)
The group has global reach
in selling secure communications solutions into the broadcast and surveillance
markets. 70% of all outside broadcast video comes via Vislink products
overcoming technical challenges to give, for example, 'in car' views in Formula
1. They have set ambitious revenue and operating margin targets, progress
towards which will be explained by John Hawkins, Executive Chairman.
Cranswick (CWK)
'Horsegate' dramatically underlined the importance to leading food retailers of using best practice, vertically integrated suppliers of meat. Cranswick is focused predominantly on the supply of fresh and processed food to UK food retail, food manufacturing and food service categories. In addition Pork provides essential protein at a fraction of the cost of beef or lamb: Cranswick have an admirable history (9% compound EPS growth over last decade) and are ideally placed to capture future opportunities. Mark Bottomley, Finance Director, will be presenting.
Due to anticipated interest
and limited space availability, interested attendees are encouraged to register
(below) as soon as possible.
Venue: Fasken Martineau,
17 Hanover Square, London, W1S 1HU (click here for a map)
Time: 5.00pm for 5.30pm
start, 30 mins for each company to present and answer questions, and drinks and
canapés to follow at 7.00pm.
Date: Wednesday 26th of
June.
Click here to accept
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Previous Investor Forum, Wednesday 17th April, with the senior management of Corac, Stadium Group and Porvair.
Corac (CRA, market cap £45m)
Corac comprises both advanced technology and engineering companies. It has a long history of building an Intellectual Property portfolio of patents for innovative compressor work in resource drilling and energy systems. Last year they made a transformational acquisition (of two profitable businesses from the Wellman Group). Partners include Baker Hughes, BP, ENI, Saudi Aramco and the MoD. Group Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Crawford, presented.
Stadium Group (SDM, market cap £12.7m)
Faced with slowing traditional markets, Stadium Group changed its management team, rationalised its cost base and made an acquisition to broaden their digital offering. By combining traditional electronics manufacturing services with value added design for interface and displays, the business is now positioned for growth. The shares yield 6%, and are on a forecast 2013 PER of under 7x. Stephen Phipson, CEO, and Joanne Estell, FD, presented their strategy.
Porvair (PRV, market cap £89m)
Porvair is a leading player in two growing sectors; specialist filtration and environmental technology, where regulation is a driver of demand. Profits grew by 40% last year and the embedded nature of their products means there is excellent visibility of future revenues. CEO Ben Stocks talked about Porvair's opportunities to grow the business, market share, and margins.
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NEW CLIENTS
We are delighted to announce that we have recently begun work on behalf of a number of new clients to help improve their profile with investors at both an institutional and private client broker level. They come from a diverse range of sectors and domiciles, including:
Porvair
Porvair manufactures advanced filters that serve niche markets and satisfy mission critical and/or regulatory driven demand. There are major barriers to entry, and customer usage tends to be non-discretionary, with 80% of sales relating to consumables. The 2 divisions are: Microfiltration in the aerospace (20% sales), energy/industrial (20%) and environmental laboratories (20%) sectors; and Metals Filtration (40%). Industry growth is approximately twice that of global GDP.
WH Ireland
WH Ireland is a financial services company serving Private Clients and providing corporate broking services to institutions from a national network of offices. WHI is valued at an unreasonable discount to the rule of thumb valuation of £30m for its private client wealth management division, ignoring its Corporate Broking division which now ranks number 3 among NomAds, the £9m net cash and the £3m net property value.
Molins
Molins is a global precision engineer and service provider, organised into three autonomous divisions: Packaging Machinery, Tobacco Machinery and Scientific Services. Its recent 2012 results showed an increase in Earnings per Share of 19% to 20.5p.
Molins stated recently that the current financial year had started well, with the opening order book up 6%. Their next update will be their AGM / IMS due on 25th April.
On a forecast December 2013 P/E of just 8.6x, Molins look good value against peer group multiples of 10 to 16x.
Regenersis
Regenersis, the provider of an integrated, brand support, outsourcing solution to product and service providers, has emerged strongly following an overhaul of strategy and a comprehensive reorganisation in the wake of Hanover Investors sweeping board changes in 2011.
A streamlined, more profitable UK operation, a roll-out of the successful Polish and Romanian model to other emerging markets in South America and South Africa, and the commercial launch of In-Field Testing (IFT) and other Advanced Solutions services, point to Regenersis pursuing ambitious global goals and succeeding.
17th JANUARY INVESTOR FORUM COMPANY PRESENTATIONS
Here are the presentations from the evening:
Regenersis presentation click here
Vp plc presentation click here
Tracsis presentation click here
The Companies:
Regenersis (RGS, market cap £63m)
In the last 2 years a new management team led by the Chairman, Matthew Peacock, has successfully refocused Regenersis, improved margins, and accelerated growth. Regenersis could feasibly become the de facto standard for outsourced product repair, refurbishment and diagnostics for electronic consumer and business products.
Tracsis (TRCS, market cap £40m)
Tracsis provides market leading software that helps train operators deliver a more efficient service while at the same time optimising their resources. The original technology was developed at Leeds University, allowing John McArthur, CEO, to subsequently build an impressive list of blue chip clients for Tracsis, as well as adding to core capabilities with complimentary bolt-on acquisitions.
VP Plc (VP., market cap £138m)
Many investors like to see multiple years' historic growth and delivery on stated ambitions before investing. If so, they should already be well aware of VP Plc. As a specialist equipment hire company they are very focused on the quality of Group earnings: Neil Stothard, MD, and his team having recently taken steps to avoid low margin activities, leaving them better placed while sluggish economic conditions continue, but also to be beneficiaries when the UK economic recovery arrives.
PRIVATE INVESTOR SURVEY RESULTS
Our recent survey into the Private Investor market, their investing habits and preferences has elicited some interesting responses and confirmed the importance of Private Investors in today's equity markets. With over 70% of investors focusing on quoted businesses capitalised at under £500m market cap, it appears particularly important for these small and mid cap companies to both attract and inform this body of capital.
While institutions continue to play an important role in providing capital, it is private investors who are responsible for regular trading. In the Survey, over 45% of respondents are trading more than once a month and a third of those will trade on a weekly basis.
It is regular trading that helps to establish a realistic price in a company's shares, as opposed to blocks of shares being crossed between institutions. Unfortunately companies are less likely to benefit from regular trading in their shares if the bid/offer spread is more than 5%, according to 70% of our respondents.
The current, depressed economic environment is also, unsurprisingly, contributing to investors appetite and investing habits. With over 50% of respondents investing more in equities because of low interest and deposit rates, companies have a clear opportunity to benefit from this new availability of private capital. Those companies most likely to gain private investor interest and reap dividends from this flow are those paying dividends: 70% of respondents are looking for income.
How are companies to attract and inform these investors? Good communication has always been, and continues to be, very important. Over 75% of survey respondents were rarely able to get hold of brokers research and forecasts, yet over 80% would be more inclined to buy into an investment proposition if such information was available. And over 50% would value the opportunity to meet management once a year to discuss corporate developments.
We conclude that, with plenty of other market headwinds to contend with and a severe contraction in the headcount of City Brokers, attracting the attention of the 50% of investors who regularly invest between £5,000 and £50,000 into an equity should be seen as an easy win. Those that first embrace this audience will gain the most benefit.