Gamesinvestor1
29 Mar 2019
EBT - share purchase [link] “â€""Finsbury Food Group Plc (AIM: FIF), a leading UK speciality bakery manufacturer of cake, bread and morning goods for both the retail and foodservice channels, has been notified that, on 18 March 2019, the Finsbury Food Group plc Employee Benefit Trust (the “EBTâ€) purchased 700,717 ordinary shares of 1p each in the capital of the Company (“Ordinary Sharesâ€) at a price of £0.71213 per Ordinary Share. The Ordinary Shares, which will be held in the EBT, are intended to be used to satisfy awards made under the Finsbury Food Group Plc Long Term Incentive Plan and to satisfy future annual bonus payments. The EBT is a discretionary trust for the benefit of employees of Finsbury and its subsidiaries, including the Executive Directors of Finsbury.""" Perhaps they might be better spending the money growing the business. Games – Well out opf this it seems
Gamesinvestor1
29 Mar 2019
Not oversold enough Well at least last time I looked - it’s sank even from there. There’s something wrong here, as this is seemingly very cheap now, maybe for a reason that’s not fully public yet. Games - still watching
Gamesinvestor1
16 Jan 2019
Trading Statement Sell off here has been pretty vicious. Sold this at 125.26 back in Sept18 and wondering if this is now oversold? “â€""announces an update on trading for the six months ended 31 December 2018 (“H1â€). Total Group sales revenue, on a like for like* basis, were £145.5m during H1, representing a 0.5% increase in comparison to the equivalent prior year period. Due to the prior year benefitting from the trading of the bakeries closed in the first half of the year, total Group revenue, including the closed businesses, declined 3.5% to £152.3m. Growth in like for like sales was attributed to the Group’s core division, UK Bakery, which grew by 1.7%, achieved despite a difficult macro environment with sustained inflationary pressure and which illustrates the importance of the Group’s strategic diversification and ongoing investment programme. The Group’s Overseas division declined by 8%. The integration of the Group’s recent acquisition, Ultrapharm, is continuing to progress and additional capacity will be delivered by the end of the existing fiscal year, as previously announced. The Group is now a diverse multi-channel speciality bakery group and despite the market conditions, is well placed to continue to drive efficiency, deliver innovation and maintain its leading position in the market. *like for like revenue is the revenue from operations excluding the revenue from the closed bakeries and acquired businesses. I suppose if you keep stripping stuff out that makes a loss and or is closed down, you can keep massaging the figures so that it always looks like you have something growing on a like for like basis. They keep producing this creativity with their messaging so I’m not sure this is worth the risk even at such low levels given the feeling of lack of trust in the reporting. The 7+% profit on the last sale would have been a 50% drop to here or a swing loss of 57% from the peak. Considering the relatively volatile nature of the share price and the surprises in the reported numbers it’s one for the history books methinks!! It’s in Richard Beddard’s Sleuth portfolio but even there it has has a low score rating. Games
Gamesinvestor1
03 Sep 2018
Ultrapharm On further consideration this looks a tad expensive, given they are paying £25M for a company that generates £0.8M in pre-tax profits. That’s 31.25 or against EBITDA (pretty meaningless measure perhaps) it’s nearly 16X. So out of Finsbury’s market cap of £164M it represents almost 15% of the value of the business for a profit of £0.8M which is just 4.5% of the last pre-tax profit at Finsbury. They must be anticipating a massive growth in Gluten Free because it’s going to take years to recover this value. I’m thinking of exiting this , anyone any comments on what they have just done here? Games
Gamesinvestor1
03 Sep 2018
Ultrapharm Acquisition of Welsh baker Ultrapharm for gluten free market. Seems sensible, I suppose they need to move more into this market now it’s a growing part of the national diet. Not sure about the valuation of Finsbury though against it’s relatively slow growth. [link]
gamesinvestor
19 Mar 2018
Interim Results [link] up 10%In the 26 weeks to 30 December 2017, pre-tax profit rose to £8.4m from £7.9m in the same period a year ago, as revenue increased 0.7% to £157.8m, or 2.5% to £144.8m on a like-for-like basis.Games
KEEPING CALM MIKE
01 Mar 2018
freehold purchase Bought Hamilton facility for £2.6m for 130,000sqft, that's a capital cost of only £20 a sqfoot. !!! That's got to be a great Freehold asset to sit in the companys coffers , wonder how much rent they were paying ?? This has got to save them some Big Bucks on Rent !! K.C.
gamesinvestor
14 Nov 2017
Re: at 108p - what they didnt say "Anyway no point going on - I;ve made my decision. it doesn't meet my criteria so onto the next one!"Thrifty -- so far it was a good one as the stock is now down at 104Games -- Might wander over to the AGM next Wednesday
thirty fifty twenty
07 Nov 2017
Re: at 108p - what they didnt say Hi Game - accept that I might be overly biased though when I did put my thoughts on paper it didn't convince me there was enough probability of upside to be interested.you quote debt as 5m at end of July. It was 18m per the finals RNS in September.yes they have CASH flow but they spent it all the time and of course now there is a further up to 8 m CASH costs from the D'or - albeit over several years.I really didn't like their disguised profit warning.if you remove a 3m loss making business - profits should be increasing by 3m!!also D'or lost 3m last year but since then they lost 2 major contracts so I think the pro-rata losses will be larger - albeit not for the full year.I think EPS will struggle to get > 10p and that I think is a psychological barrier which might prevent much share price > 100p.Anyway no point going on - I;ve made my decision. it doesn't meet my criteria so onto the next one!All IMHO, DYOR + BoL
RapidlyRunningOutOfNicknames
07 Nov 2017
Re: at 108p - what they didnt say I've held these since 2009 - through some really rough times about 7 yrs ago, when they cut the dividend in order (if I remember correctly) to pay down some debt. I'm pretty happy with the cautious management style and they do seem to have an ability to remodel the company as necessary...As I bought at 25p, this has been a good 'un for me. Should I rebalance? Probably... but I can't see anything I'd particularly want to buy instead at the moment. Any suggestions welcome!ATB, DYOR & all that.
gamesinvestor
07 Nov 2017
Re: at 108p - what they didnt say Thrifty -- are your comments overly biased toward not wanting to invest in the company?Looking at the track record of Finsbury it's pretty decent over the last 5 years.The one area I'd have concern with is the CEO pay which is far too high for the size of the company, but the rest of the figures look respectable enough :-If you go straight to your cash concerns, the Net Cash from Operations has grown consistently from £10.2M in 2013 to £18.93M in July 2017 -- that's an 85.6% growth or approx 17% a year.The bulk of the cash in the last three years has been on investing in new activities, as you noted.Should this slow down, which is what you might expect, the cash will fall heavily positive to the bottom line.But despite this heavy investment, the cash flow has either been slightly +ve or slightly -ve in the last years - so no major cash loss demonstrated so far.In terms of the companies borrowings, they seem quite modest at £5.8M at the end of July -- compared to a an after tax profit of over £10M. Most companies have borrowings well above two to three or even higher ratio of borrowings to after tax profits. So no major concerns here.The earnings per share over the last 5 years has been pretty patchy I agree and is currently at the higher end at 7.1p a share but granted on a much higher revenue, so yes it's getting harder to maintain margins in such a competitive industry.It's certainly not a stock to bet your shirt on, but a modest investment shouldn't be too concerning, particularly as the EPS is forecasting a jump to over 10p in June next year.Turning to the dividend, this has grown well above inflation over the last 5 years.It grew 33% between 2013 and 2014150% to 201512% to 2016and another 7% to 2017It's forecast to rise another 10% into 2018.These are inflation busting (no destroying) numbers and had you held the stock through that period you would have done quite well compared to most FTSE companies.Looking forward it's all down to Mary Berry isn't it thrifty?Games -- small investment here -- considering an increase and it would be my only low margin investment.
thirty fifty twenty
06 Nov 2017
at 108p - what they didnt say so FIF close a business losing 3m a year and yet 'adjusted' profit expectation for the year is unchanged???surely this is a profit warning?one would expect ongojng profits to be 3m p.a. higherwith one off exceptional costs in the current year.....FIF have decent EPS forecasts but...- these forecasts have been in steady decline over the last 12 months- there is a 10% Minority Interest in the more profitable business- CASH flow needs to cover debt and pension deficit payments- Capital Expenditure has been huge in recent years and yet margins have only just being maintained. it is all well and good making profits - but it is CASH flow that counts and there is no record here of CASH flow. The recent closure of D'or is also going to require more CASH outflow in the short term.- the retail environment is very competitive and that doesn't look like to change anytime soon.the average free CASH flow over the last 6 years is c.6p a sharegiven the competitive nature of the market I think a 10% CASH yield could be argued but more likely an 8% CASH yield is reasonable giving a value calculation of c.72p - maybe 80pgiven the spread on the shares and the limited downside (20% to 25%) I don't think this is a good shorting opportunity but IMHO it is certainly not the attractive business that historic 10p eps initially indicates.All IMHO, DYOR + BoLFIF is not in my portfolio
II Editor
15 Sep 2017
NEW ARTICLE: The week ahead: Babcock, Finsbury Food "Baker Finsbury Food kicks the week off, while Babcock and small-cap winners Keyword Studios, MaxCyte and Attraqt also report.Monday 18 SeptemberThe week kicks off with full-year results from baker LSE:FIF:Finsbury Food. It's already said it ..."[link]
Disorder
15 Sep 2017
Results Monday A small addition of 24,000 to hopefully take advantage of any upturn.Latest trading update was very positive.Recent Director purchases were very encouraging.Closure of Grain D'Or will be sad for job losses, but closing a loss making plant is the only common sense move.The sp in my opinion should not be this low, and I can only attribute it to lack of PI interest.
gamesinvestor
11 Sep 2017
Let them eat cake.... Let them eat cakeThe wildly popular cookery show Great British Bake Off returned to UK television screens this week to great fanfare.Despite some concern over the move away from the BBC this season, the charm of the iconic big white tent (where the baking contest takes place) appears to remain unscathed.But the positive influence of quintessentially British shows like Downton Abbey and “Bake Off” could be about more than just food for the soul. They may have also contributed to a sharp acceleration in the UK’s food and drink exports to China in the past two years.There has been a particularly steep climb in goods relating to “afternoon tea”.In 2016, tea exports from the UK to China rose by 63%, and milk powder exports increased by 134%. Cake exports climbed 26% and spring water leapt by 139%, according to the Food and Drink Federation.Games
