A host of smaller companies report final or interim results this week and there are three companies in particular that I’ll be paying close attention to, in order to assess potential investment opportunities.
Patisserie Holdings
Coffee-and-cake chain Patisserie Holdings (LSE: CAKE) reports its final results for the year ended 30th September tomorrow.
The company enjoyed an extraordinary 18 month share price run after floating in May 2014 at 170p, with the stock climbing over 180% to hit 483p in January this year. Since then, however, Patisserie shares have been locked in a firm downtrend and the stock has fallen back to around 270p. At this price, Patisserie’s P/E ratio is 24 times last year’s earnings, which is not unreasonable for a company that has grown revenues at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% over the last five years.
Interim results in May were strong, with group revenue up 14.4%, basic earnings per share up 21.5% and net cash of £8.9m on the books,. I’ll be monitoring full year results tomorrow to see if the company is still growing at such a fast pace. Consensus estimates are for revenue of £105.1m and earnings per share of 13.5p.
easyHotel
Budget hotel operator easyHotel (LSE: EZH) also reports its final results for the year ended 30th September tomorrow.
EasyHotel’s portfolio currently includes three owned hotels and 18 franchised ones, for a total of approximately 1900 rooms, and the company has ambitious growth plans to add significantly more hotels and rooms to its portfolio in locations such as Barcelona and Amsterdam. The company recently raised £38m to fund the roll-out strategy and tomorrow’s results are likely to give some insight into the progress of the expansion.
Interim results in May saw total revenue rise 11.6% to £2.59m and the group announced an inaugural interim dividend of 0.11p per share Consensus estimates for the full year results tomorrow are revenue of £6m and earnings per share of 1.1p.
GB Group
Lastly, identity specialist GB Group (LSE: GBG) will be releasing its interim results tomorrow and this is a set of results I’ll be paying particularly close attention to.
It’s been a rough few months for GB Group, with its share price tanking from over 350p to 230p after announcing in October that it was experiencing delays in the roll-out of its GOV.UK Verify project, despite clarifying that the board remained confident about the outlook for the full year.
I owned shares in GB Group several years ago, and made the mistake of selling my entire holding when the shares doubled from 80p to 160p. I’ve been kicking myself ever since and have been waiting for an opportunity to re-enter the stock, yet could never justify paying the kind of price multiple that the group has often traded at. Â
However after the recent share price correction, GB Group now trades on a P/E ratio of 21.7 times earnings which I don’t think is that high, given the company’s excellent track record and compelling growth potential. I’ll see what the comes up in the interims tomorrow and make a decision from there as to whether it’s time to buy back into GB Group.