The_buzz
14 Sep 2018
2018 AGM Report I was the only shareholder (again) at the AGM. Resolutions passed with no discussion apart from a brief chat about the choice of auditors when I asked if they were rigorous enough (bearing in mind recent controversy with inadequate audits by the some auditors such as with BHS). Plenty of re-assuring words ensued. After the formal meeting there was he usual wide ranging discussion with me raising several questions. Topics included:- The uncertainties of Brexit and taking a currency financial position. The changing retail environment and the outlets for CFX products. The UK housing market and the resultant trade for CFX products. The markets: USA market is booming but lots of headwinds in UK and Europe. Why CFX is still doing well whereas WGB has fallen from grace with a share price about a quarter of its peak value. Pension deficits - how they are now shrinking (opportune as BA had a big announcement about their pension scheme that day). Unlike WGB, CFX will not do royalty deals as they are considered to undermine their top end brands and the income would be too small to be worthwhile pursuing - plus loss potential of control of where the brand was used. The decorating business has been doing very well with its new shop. They are very pleased with how that is going. However they think that the size of the business model is about right. Availability of shares on the market after so many share buy-backs. How small the world is - one of the directors has a house in a very rural part of Norfolk very close to where my parents had a shop and sub PO. She said that she would have been in that shop many times and I might have even served her many years ago!! If anyone would like me to expand on any of these topics, let me know and I will try to augment what I have already said. The Buzz ps The coffee was good, the biscuits were OK but had been better in previous years. However I was given the rest of the packet of biscuits to take away so I must not moan too much!!
The buzz
08 Feb 2018
Share Buy Backs Again 413,000 at £5.25= £2.17m. Sounds a good price with spread of 525-545p.This is 4% of issued shares!!Half yearly report stated cash was £9.5m, so still lots of firepower to buy some more! Where on earth do they find these shares as there are progressively fewer and fewer available on the free market? Agreed there was a bit of director selling, but the numbers are a drop in the ocean compared to the 413,000 shares bought.I have been tracking the fall in the number of shares for some years now (see my earlier posts) and these buy backs have made a significant difference to the issued number of shares. I keep wondering when the are just not any free shares available in meaningful quantities? Perhaps that is why there were no purchases in 2017 as there might not have been any sellers in the market??The current (not updated web page) says that 76.54% of the shares are not in public hands. I wonder what the figure is with 4% of the shares removed from the market (did an II sell or were they shares that were in public hands??).The B
The buzz
29 Jan 2018
Great Half Year Results! What was really pleasing to read was the turn around in the fortunes of the decorating division.: £213k first half profit and a strong order book. No doubt helped by the move from their old shop (that seemed to me to be a bit out of the way.) Throw in the expected (by me) improvement of the fabrics division due to better sales in the USA.Even Kingcome sofas did better - no doubt helped by MultiYprk going into administration.Cash pile up again to £9.5m from £8.0m (don't forget that market cap is only £52.6m!!), so there might be some more share purchases soon? So things look much better than last time, especially with a remarkably upbeat statement on prospects by the Chairman:-"Prospects The Group has made good progress over the last six months helped by improving trading conditions in our core US market. Trading conditions in the UK look challenging due to a weak high end housing market caused by high rates of stamp duty and continuing uncertainty over Brexit. However, our exposure to the UK is limited by the fact that over 82% of Fabric Division sales are made overseas. There is also increased optimism in Europe but this follows two years of sales decline and it is too early to assess the extent of any recovery.Our Decorating Division delivered an encouraging first half contribution and we expect it to exceed our original expectations for the full year.The Group has a strong balance sheet with net cash of £9.5 million and we will continue to invest with confidence in our portfolio of brands and worldwide distribution network."The B
The buzz
15 Sep 2016
AGM Report Well excellent biscuits and coffee served at AGM - to the THREE shareholders present.After the formal AGM there was quite a bit of discussion on various issues. The key topic was why was CFX so pessimistic about the future? The answer was that there is much uncertainty in the USA about the outcome of the election and a similar position in the UK with BREXIT. In other words they are treading very carefully at the moment so they do not get caught out if their markets catch a cold. So whilst they are servicing their brands with new ranges and sales support to keep the brands current, they are not striving in a potentially futile attempt to have a huge leap in sales as they want to conserve the cash.So it boils down to more of the same in the future - yet more share purchases from their huge cash pile from an ever diminishing pool of available shares.The B
The buzz
04 Jul 2016
Re: RNS - Share Purchase Got quote of 455p to buy (I thought that 455p was the 'sell' price) - so could not help myself from buying 1k shares.Agreed that the housing market in London might be adversely affected by BrExit, but as I recollect that the US profit goes up by £50k for each 1c fall in the value of the £, I think that is the dominant factor.The Buzzps Did you buy any DVO - they went whizzing up today! (and HUM also went up with the increase in the price of gold),
The buzz
03 Jul 2016
Re: RNS - Share Purchase Hi,I had reduced my holding at higher prices for capital gains tax purposes, but am now thinking about topping up again.The likes of my AZN holdings have benefited from BrExit because the £'s value has radically fallen against the US$. CFX should also benefit as 59% of the fabric division's turnover (88% of CFX's turnover) is in the USA.I am wary of entering the market at the moment as the FTSE could fall heavily and drag everything else down with it. In terms of my portfolio post BeExit, my portfolio has noticeably increased as I have avoided banks and have defensive shares in UK listed companies that have a large exposure to overseas markets. eg Recent significant additional purchases in DVO (I have held shares in this company for many years). Also a speculative holding in a gold miner (HUM) that has just finalised funding for a gold mine that will pay for itself in just over a year (I am hoping to triple my money in a year if the gold price holds up).Coming back to CFX - its fits one of my my investment objectives by being a low risk investment as it is a cash rich company, has an established market position, will benefit by the lower £/$ exchange rate and pays a dividend higher than my cash savings account does. What shares are you chasing now?The B
valuemanbuyer
03 Jul 2016
Re: RNS - Share Purchase The BuzzI'm looking to buy a few if you're interested in selling any ? You once mentioned on here you had too many .
The buzz
19 May 2016
Re: RNS - Share Purchase Yes it is a bit surprising that so many shares could have been bought in one go - with no subsequent RNS saying that a major shareholder has sold shares. I bet that CFX has an account with its house share broker to gather lots of shares for them and sell in one big dollop? In previous years there has been usually more than one purchase at roughly the same time - so will there be another one?I forgot to ring CFX. However the RNS prompted me to check on share holdings. They have corrected their web site to show the correct total for the number of shares held by directors to 3,730,233 (36.4%) (it originally stated 4,261,233).With this correction I now make the total held by directors and large shareholders as 84.3%.The strong £ v US$ must be making a useful contribution to profits, so I suspect that might be part of the reason for the large share buy-back. Buried on an old computer of mine is a plot of the number of shares v time. Agreed that I have been a long term holder of CFX, and a few years back CFX shares were relatively cheap compared to now, but I am sure that it was of the order of 15m shares a few years back, so down to 10m shares and still going down!The B
Gus1065
13 May 2016
Re: RNS - Share Purchase Agree with your last comment. Not sure if you've tried to buy any recently, but they are like hens teeth to find. Surprised a 5% buy didn't have more of an impact on the share price unless they were picked up in a placement by an institution looking to exit.
The buzz
13 May 2016
RNS - Share Purchase Wow that was a huge purchase of shares announced today! I am surprised that they could find 5% of the shares available to buy. Perhaps they got wind of the shares being available and took the opportunity to use up some of the spare cash that always seems to be sloshing around at CFX?This share purchase follows the theme for CFX over many years. As I keep droning on about it I the past I am really repeating myself in saying that there is an ever dwindling number of shares left in circulation. Groan - I have just looked at the web site and the number of shares held by the directors does not add up to the total shown - I will have to give them a ring on Monday! In theory D Green now holds more than 30% of the company now and no doubt will have to declare that. If I take the total number of directors' shares as the quoted 4,261,233 then with the declared institution shares gives an overall total of 9,16,946 or 89.4% of the shares - leaving very few left now on the open market.The B
mcescher
28 Mar 2016
Analysis visual report on Colefax Group I have been using this website for their discounted cash flow. They value CFX at $5 - [link]
The buzz
17 Sep 2015
AGM Report This was the usual cosy meeting with lots of banter and informal discussion as well. However, the biscuits were not as good as last year though!Basically steady as she goes. I saw the AGM statement and initially thought that it was nothing special, but then thought about it: and decided that it was not really important since it only deals with the start of the year, whereas the second part of the year is the important part. So I was not surprised that the share price fell, but it has not fallen enough (yet) to entice me to top up.CFX an upmarket fabric and wallpaper company and they have decided that adding too many brands would be like trying to juggle with too many balls. The decorating division sometimes has large jobs that can last 3 years - and completion depends on when the builders hand over the premises - so they have difficulty in giving a smoothed profit as a job is not finished until it meets the customer's satisfaction. This 'lumpiness' in accruing profits can be mis-interpreted by the press as giving good/ bad years, whereas one needs to average out the profits over many years.There was a debate about higher rate tax on dividends and consequently for larger shareholders they prefer share buy backs. A problem is that as CFX has been mopping up shares for a long time now, they no longer have access to many shares on the open market, plus there was a reluctance last time from major share holders to sell any of their shares. This again underscores the share price - if lots of shares get put on the market then CFX will be keen to mop them up as they are highly cash generative. Although the dividend might look low, the overall equation needs to include the share price and in turn this is affected by share buy-backs.The exchange rate of $ to £ is always a concern - but they do use some hedging to protect themselves. I think that WGB are really keen to buy CFX, but suspect that the current share price makes CFX a bit pricey to deliver a knock out blow that would entice existing share holders to sell out.The B
II Editor
12 Aug 2015
NEW ARTICLE: Colefax: Waiting on Europe "High end wallpaper and fabric designer Colefax continues to recover along with two of its three main geographical markets.Colefax’s stable performance belies a good year for its main business, the fabric division, and losses at its ..."[link]
The buzz
28 Jul 2015
Final Results Yes the results are quite good, but what really stands out this time is the Chairman's optimism - normally his statements are very cautious.The USA is doing well, with the new Washington showroom starting up partly through the year. A new showroom for Boston - that makes sense as the current showroom is quite a way from the centre of Boston. I was quite surprised at the optimistic tone for Europe as that has been struggling with weak economies - so that sounds promising.The share price jumped 32.5p today - hardly surprising - on top of what has been a good run to date. There is an awful lot of cash (£6.86m) with very strong cash flow. It must be noticeably higher as 3 months have elapsed from the year end. In the past the company has used excess cash to buy back shares - and it has always surprised me as to where they find these shares as there is a diminishing pool of shares not held by large stakeholders. On that basis I suspect that there will be some further share purchases that will support the share price. Quite a few shares were bought after the interim results were released, so I am wondering if some shares were bought today?? Plus I think that it is only a matter of time before WGB bids for CFX, so if there were to be any share weakness, it would increase the likelihood of a bid.The B
The buzz
29 Jan 2015
Re: Spread 356p to sell 1k and 370p to buy 1k. Earlier trades suggested 355p to buy and either 355p or 359p to sell. It would help trades if the spread was a bit tighter.The B
