Morning Note – 13 May 2024

Carr's Group - Worth more than a lick!

Carr’s has significantly altered over recent years and is now focused on two activities: Engineering and Agriculture, having divested lower margin operations. The new management team has signalled it is looking at strategic options for the Engineering division, whilst Agriculture offers recovery in performance through its transformation programme against a steadily improving market backdrop. Carr’s maintains a strong balance sheet, enabling it to make complementary EPS-enhancing acquisitions, wh

Premier Foods+ (PFD, House Stock, 167p) - Setting out FY24F expectations

Strong operational and strategic progress

Greggs - Showing us how it's done

The second full year of Greggs’ five-year growth plan to double revenue by FY26 should be marked down as very successful, especially so given the challenging external environment. Unlike many consumer-facing companies, high selling price inflation was accompanied by volume growth, leading to good market share gains. The consumer is responding well to new initiatives to grow revenue in new dayparts and digital channels. Profitability was well-managed with better recovery of input cost inflation t

Hardman & Co Healthcare Index: 2023 – Capital demands dent performance

The Hardman & Co Healthcare Index (HHI) has been running since 2009. Its main function is to highlight the attractions of life sciences investments over the long term. For the second year running, apart from global economic influences affecting world markets, performance in 2023 was dented by the capital-intensive nature of the sector. The HHI fell 3.7%, to 483.8, underperforming the main London markets – FTSE 100 (+3.8%) and FTSE All-Share (3.8%) but outperforming the FTSE AIM All-Share Index (

Major European contract award

Re-run of the value screen and 10 focus stocks

We have completed another periodic refresh of our value screen, first established in our inaugural quant/screening note of 26 May 2015. As usual the screen selected the 25 stocks exhibiting the most extreme value characteristics (based on 2016 consensus P/E and latest price to tangible book ratio) from our universe, and we have chosen 10 stocks to focus on. Since inception last year the screen has outperformed the main small-cap and micro-cap indices (by about 8pp and 3pp respectively) and has p

Resilient NAV in Q1

We saw LSD NAV growth in Q1... ITM posted its Q1 set of results reporting 0.7% QoQ growth in NAV (ie EUR 2.2bn) driven by the performance of the non-core investments and the PE funds. NAV/ps closed at EUR 52.4/sh at the end of the quarter and discount (including the impact of the dividend paid last May) was c37%. ...with mixed trends across the industrial assets and strong energy Digging into the results of the main assets, industrial revenues (ex-energy and financials) were flat. We saw grow

Dekel Agri-Vision - Solid April for palm oil with strong extractions and sales volumes +46% YoY

DKL's April palm oil update shows that the main engine of the business (while the cashew activity develops to planned levels) continues to generate robust results. CPO (Crude Palm Oil) sales rose by 46% YoY, a strong number after the company stocked up during Q1. The extraction rate was encouraging at 22.5% (+5% YoY for the month) and these strong extraction rates have continued into May (margin upside). CPO production continued to be ahead of the prior year (YTD) by 5%, a further positive.

Initial Equity Trading Comments - 16 May 2023

Anpario+ (ANP, House Stock at 230p) - FY24F upgrades - recovery play

Carr's Group - A new team to take the group forward

Carr’s Group has announced a fully refreshed executive team, none having been in-situ at the start of 2023. This will enable the executives to have an uninhibited view of the operations, enabling the development and implementation of a strategy reflecting the different opportunities and challenges facing the Engineering and Speciality Agriculture divisions.

Carr's Group - Cautious optimism

Cyclical weakness in Carr’s Group’s Speciality Agriculture business has affected the company’s fortunes of late. However, the new management team, a strong net cash balance sheet and a record order book in the Engineering division offer optimism. Operational progress, particularly a reversal of fortunes in Speciality Agriculture, should rebuild confidence and a reduction in the current discount to our view of the underlying value.

Small Cap Feast

tinyBuild— a leading video games publisher and developer with global operations. tinyBuild's strategic focus is in creating longlasting IP by partnering with video games developers, establishing a stable platform on which to build multi-game and multimedia franchises is to join AIM. Offer details TBC. Due mid-March. AMTE Power, a developer and manufacturer of lithium-ion battery cells for specialist markets, announced its intention to seek admission to trading on AIM. Admission is expected to ta