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RM Plc and a Questionable Share Consolidation

RM, a provider of educational products and services to schools, has been through some troubled times of late. Revenue has been falling and is forecast to fall further after they made the courageous, if long overdue, decision to stop producing PCs. In addition there have been a number of changes among the directors in the last couple of years. But the company has been generating cash, and now has a healthy cash balance (£63m in the last accounts) so it has decided ...

Pets at Home -one for pet lovers?

Pets at Home Group is one of the few upcoming IPOs that will be open to retail investors. A "pre-announcement" that gives some details of the float has already been issued. Financial information so far supplied is not detailed but revenue was £598 last year from 369 retail stores and 246 small animal veterinary surgeries. The retail stores often include in-store grooming salons (for pets of course, not their owners). The business is currently owned by KKR and they seemed to have ...

ShareSoc Companies Seminar Report 2014-02-20

  This a very brief note on the ShareSoc Companies Seminar last night. The companies presenting were NewRiver Retail, Ilika, DotDigital and IS Solutions. They were all interesting companies in different ways, and there is nothing better than hearing from the horse's mouth what the management have to say about their own businesses. Note that ShareSoc is now running these seminars regularly so as to enable private investors to learn more about individual companies. The format enables you to hear directly from the senior ...

Essar Energy and Camkids – spot the connection

Essar Energy (ESSR) is a FTSE-250 Indian oil company where minority shareholders are none too happy about a proposal from the majority owners (the Ruia family) to make a bid for the company at 70p. It floated at 420p in 2010 on the London Stock Exchange and joined the FTSE-100, but it has shown substantial losses in the last two years. Standard Life has described the move as "cynical opportunism" and seem to believe that the offer undervalues the future prospects ...

Financial repression to continue

Are you feeling subject to financial repression? You should be because it's the phrase used to describe how the Government reduces it's debts by lowering interest rates to a level that is negative in real terms. Anyone saving in a bank account or building society is having their savings eroded this way because they are not getting a real return. Bank base rate has been at the historically exceptional rate of 0.5% for some time and high street banks are as ...