Melrose Industries - Releasing the potential

Melrose’s demerger of the automotive businesses and the listing of separate entities (NewCo and Melrose with Aerospace) will provide greater transparency of valuation. Using listed peer ratings for the two entities, we estimate a combined valuation per current Melrose share of c 200p. In addition, both companies will be able to accelerate their strategic pathways with greater potential access to capital markets. Melrose shares have declined 25% since the announcement of the demerger despite mana

Melrose Industries - Two are better than one

Melrose has started the GKN businesses realisation process by announcing the demerger of the automotive businesses. This will permit automotive to prosper as a standalone listed entity, developing growth, including in electric vehicles, and corporate opportunities within the automotive arena. Melrose will continue its ‘buy, improve, sell’ strategy, including completing the restructuring of the aerospace business with the flexibility to undertake the next deal. This should release value while als

Melrose Industries - Aerospace rising

Following the disposal of Ergotron, Melrose has now completed four transactions since 2005 with an average IRR of 28%. Focus now turns to the fifth deal, GKN Aerospace. Recovery in the aerospace market and management confidence to lift margin expectations from 12% to 14%+, along with greater disclosure on the engine contracts, suggest GKN is recovering strongly, albeit value realisation is likely a few years out. In the shorter term, the fully restructured GKN Powder Metallurgy and GKN Automotiv

Melrose Industries - Accelerating sustainability

Melrose embraces sustainability through two avenues: internally through continuous development of its ESG practices and externally through the development of enhanced or completely new products that assist global decarbonisation. The former offers the potential to improve the internal operations of acquired businesses, an inherent part of Melrose’s ‘buy, improve, sell’ strategy, and the latter offers accelerated growth opportunities through the increasing push to reduce global emissions. Improve

Melrose Industries - Short-term trading versus long-term value creation

Recent weakness in the share price (down 25% in Q122) reflects investors’ macro concerns. Melrose Industries’ value realisation occurs through disposing assets to vendors aware of the longer-term value. We expect disposals in 2022 (Ergotron and possibly GKN assets) to prove Melrose’s ‘buy, improve, sell’ model once more and support our valuation.

Melrose Industries - A proven, high-value creation model

Melrose has a proven track record for creating shareholder value through its ‘buy, improve, sell’ model. Focus on financial returns and close management alignment with shareholders ensures tight discipline in the acquisition and disposal phase to combine with the key value enhancement achieved in the improvement phase of the strategy. The circularity of the model provides clarity: monies are raised to finance individual transactions with the disposal proceeds subsequently returned.

Ford enters electric car race, Melrose sees good aerospace growth, Spectris reports lower LFL sales in North America & China

Melrose (MRO LN, £10.8bn) | Trifast (TRI LN, £201m) | Spectris (SXS LN, £3.0bn) | Elementis (ELM LN, £994m) | TT Electronics (TTG LN, £401m) | Renishaw (RSW LN, £2.8bn) | Oxford Instruments (OXIG LN, £904m) | Gooch & Housego (GHH LN, £295m) | Scapa (SCPA LN, £358m) | Trifast# (TRI LN, £201m) | Dialight (DIA LN, £88m)

Boohoo Group plc (BOO LN) - Controlling the controllables

• Trading update: Group revenue of £637.7m is 10.7% lower YOY (P3 FY22: £714.5m), in line with previous guidance and Zeus forecasts. Performance was softer across all markets and almost all Group brands and reflects the normalisation of the channel shift online over the last twelve months. UK revenue of £400.8m is down 11.1% YOY (P3 FY22: £451.0m) suggesting a softening in demand versus H1 FY23: (4.4)%, but against a strong prior year comp (P3 FY22 UK revenue growth: 26.4%) as the outbreak of Om

Top Picks for 2023 - 2022 review and outlook for 2023

On 10 January last year, we set out our ten top stock picks for 2022, in what turned out to be a very poor twelve months for global equities, due to war, accelerating inflation, political instability and recession fears. Between 7 January 2022 and 31 December 2022, the AIM All-Share Index declined 30.0%, whilst the average performance of our ten top picks was -24.7%, a modest relative outperformance. In this note we discuss the performance of our 2022 top picks, equities trends in 2022, and our

Surface Transforms - Pre-close trading update, short-term production glitch

The group’s year-end trading update highlights that revenue for November and December was affected by some technical production issues, occurring as production was being significantly ramped up. These issues have been addressed and the wider capex of phase 2 is on track to be operational by Q3 2023. The group is capacity-constrained in H1 2023, not demand-constrained, with customers fully supportive of the remedial actions and planned capacity expansion. We reduce revenue expectations for FY22 b

LIBERUM: Accrol Group Holdings Plc* - A journey of growth, profitability and returns

Frontier Developments (FDEV LN) - Superior strategy

Frontier is a leading developer and publisher of simulation, management, strategy and non-linear games. These genres allow Frontier to continuously offer additional content, attract loyal fanbases and face less competition. Our analysis confirms Frontier’s games have higher player retention after twelve months (28% vs. average of 14% for peers) and engagement (162% higher average playtime), and that its chosen genres generate over 50% more revenue per game whilst facing half the competition of a

LIBERUM: Superdry* - Retail surging, progress made but work required to re-ignite wholesale

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 25 Jan 23

25 January 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment object

Accrol Group Holdings (ACRL LN) - Growth in every area

Accrol has delivered strong H1 results, reflecting impressive market share gains with strong growth in volume, revenue, and profit. Cost recovery and margin control has been impressive in what remains a challenging inflationary backdrop. We are upgrading our forecasts in anticipation of a strong H2 performance. The outcome of the Strategic Review sets out a clear roadmap to Accrol emerging as a £250m+ business over time in our view, including confirmation of plans to construct of its own paper m

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 12 Jan 23

12 January 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment object

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 23 Jan 23

23 January 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment object

Morning Note – 16 January 2023

Character Group - Update

The Character Group (Character), which reported full year results in December, has issued a trading update ahead of its AGM being held today. In essence, the announcement states that in what is a challenging year for the industry, sales and profit before tax are expected to be marginally below current market expectations. We are therefore revising down our FY23 revenue and PBT expectations by 7% and 9% respectively. Given typically strong cash generation and a sound balance sheet our dividend fo

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 18 Jan 23

18 January 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment object

WHI Support Services Sector Comment: Challenges and opportunities

Bleak expectations for the UK economy in 2023 anticipate underperformance against other G7 countries based on factors such as (a) the UK's higher than average mortgage rate sensitivity and (b) relative exposure to high gas and energy prices. Some measure of political / economic stability has returned, though this arguably remains a brittle quality, given the scope for dissent within the Conservative party and the unpredictable impacts of industrial action, among a range of factors. All of this s

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 24 Jan 23

24 January 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment object