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ACM Accumuli

31.25
0.00 (0.00%)
24 Apr 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Stock Type
Accumuli ACM London Ordinary Share
  Price Change Price Change % Share Price Last Trade
0.00 0.00% 31.25 01:00:00
Open Price Low Price High Price Close Price Previous Close
31.25 31.25
more quote information »

Accumuli ACM Dividends History

No dividends issued between 25 Apr 2014 and 25 Apr 2024

Top Dividend Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 25/4/2015 12:44 by mazarin
To mark the end of ACM I have just created a new NCC thread that hopefully is more regularly attended than the last one and invite former ACM holders to join me. For information I have also included a brief resume of the Company in the header and provide links to NCC Investor Info and Half Yearly Annual report.
To see NCC new thread
Posted at 24/4/2015 22:11 by mazarin
I see that my ACM holding completely disappeared from my ISA Portfolio today and as a result I was momentarily alarmed by seeing an 'overall loss'. I'm hoping soon to see this 'spring back' into positive territory when and as my NCC share allocation and cash is distributed. I therefore don't know why ACM was still being quoted on AIM, post scheme of arrangement. Apparently 3,435,235 were reported as traded up to 1700hrs closing up 3.18% (+1.125p) at 30.63p. Seemingly, there were some 'Happy Bunnies' at NCC as it also closed up, gaining +5.5p (2.75%) on the day to finish at 205.5p.
Posted at 22/4/2015 08:23 by mazarin
Deadline set by iii for proposed Corporate Action for them to be notified by ACM holders is 1500hrs today, otherwise the Default option of part cash (5.97p) per ACM share and a 0.1218 part of each new NCC share will be applied.
Posted at 10/4/2015 21:32 by mazarin
My broker iii has, this evening sent notice of ACM Corporate Action asking for response by 1500hrs 22/04/15. As I understand it's essentially the default option, as set out in the RNS proposal, i.e. offering part cash of 5.97p per ACM share and a 0.1218 part of each new NCC share. I see that NCC closed up at 208.25p today. However, it seems that ACM holders can opt to vary the distribution. It'll be interesting to hear comment on what other ACM holder's intend to do and also to see how the respective Co's share price moves until then. To date they appear to have followed each other closely since March's announcement.
Posted at 03/4/2015 00:05 by boadicea
WJCCGHCC - That sounds a reasonable deal. But then, if you had sold NCC at around 220p before the offer, you could now buy back about 11% more than you sold without any recourse to ACM and about 14% more via the ACM route after offsetting the cash back effect of the offer.

For every NCC share you need to buy 8.21 (approx) ACM shares @ 29p costing 238p and would get 47.5p cash back to offset the cost giving a net cost per NCC share of 190.5p. At today's share price of ~196p to sell, this only produces a saving of ~3% and barely seems worth the trouble given the risk of the offer turning sour.
However, it is worth noting for a cheaper first entry into NCC.
Posted at 25/3/2015 16:27 by gargleblaster
IC's take on it!

NCC snaps up Accumuli

Aim-traded Accumuli (ACM:30.5p), a leading independent specialist in IT security and risk management, has received a recommended cash and shares bid from cyber security rival NCC (NCC:205p). Shareholders are being offered 5.97p a share in cash and 0.1218 new NCC shares for each Accumuli share held, valuing the equity at 31p a share using NCC’s latest market price. That’s in the middle of my target price range 30p to 33p and around the level when I last updated the investment case (‘Small cap tech wonders’, 19 January 2015). It also represents a solid increase on the 23p recommended buy in price when I initiated coverage ('Profit from cyber warfare', 23 April 2014).

Moreover, the bid is likely to succeed because shareholders accounting for 57.7 per cent of Accumuli’s issued share capital have already indicated that they will vote in favour of the scheme of arrangement. The acquisition certainly makes commercial sense for NCC as it will help the group to expand its development teams, bid for projects where it needs to partner with an organisation such as Accumuli in a sole capacity, provides an opportunity to develop its core consulting business across a wider customer base, and engage with this enlarged client base on a regular rather than project by project basis.

There is commercial logic for Accumuli to be part of a much larger enterprise too given that the cyber security market is becoming increasingly competitive as it develops. As a consequence, customers are now looking for the type of round the clock operational security support and incident management offered by Accumuli in addition to NCC’s consulting capabilities. Consequently, Accumuli’s client base should reap the benefits from the extra services and broader geographic coverage that it will be able to offer as part of larger enterprise, giving it greater ability to grow its business than would otherwise be possible if it were to remain an independent company.

Importantly, the exit price seems fair at around 19 times Accumuli’s likely earnings for the fiscal year to end March 2015 based on NCC’s share price of 205p post the announcement. True, NCC shares are higher rated at 22 times earnings for the fiscal year to end May 2015, falling to around 17 times consensus for the following fiscal year, a valuation that is hardly cheap, but neither is the rating of Accumuli. The prospective dividend yields of 2 per cent on both shares are similar.

The bottom line is that with shares in Accumuli being priced on a bid-offer spread of 29p to 30.5p, it makes sense to take-up the NCC offer worth 31p a share given the unlikely possibility of a higher counter bid emerging.
Posted at 24/3/2015 23:05 by boadicea
Market reaction tends to indicate the view, correctly or otherwise, that the whole (NCC + ACM) will be worth less than the sum of the separate parts.

The market cap of NCC fell by £35.5m while that of ACM rose by only £3.4m, a net reduction in combined value of £32.1m.

The share price of ACM remains below its recent peak, likewise the value of the offer, given the fall in value of the NCC paper.

Clearly there should be a rethink and there is no way I will be voting in favour on the current terms, either as a shareholder of ACM or of NCC.

My guess is that a suitably arranged collaborative agreement, whereby both parties retained their independence but coordinated their marketing approach (cross-selling, designing products to work optimally together etc.) could have been 'sold' to the market in such a way as to increase the valuation of both companies. In some ways that may seem counter-intuitive as failing to provide the advantage of supposed administrative/overhead savings. However, I suspect that much of that saving is illusory and that the combination could lead to loss of focus of the constituent parts.

Paul Scott's comment that the deal looks 'wobbly' is eminently correct, imv.
Posted at 24/3/2015 09:21 by vasilis
I can see the business logic - especially as ACM and NCC have already been co-bidding for certain contracts. Therefore putting the two companies together creates greater synergies and more openness between them as they will both be 'under the same roof' sharing information they might not share as separate companies. Potential customers may also be more confident in signing up to an 'NCC + ACM' organisation with clearly more in-house resources.

Nevertheless, as Buffetteer and others point out, the price does look somewhat light taking into account ACM's success to date in a growing market - but this does have to be balanced against the BOD's view of where they see the best potential for shareholders in the future. Of course, we also need to see 'what's in it for the BOD' - but I have to say that as a business proposition it makes sense - both parties gain from this deal. We just need a little more detail as to why the ACM BOD concluded that this offer by NCC was a 'fair and reasonable' price - and for whom.
Posted at 24/12/2014 12:23 by rivaldo
Useful article from t1ps.com which I'll copy as it's a few days old now - implies 2.1p EPS now the year starting 1st April:



"Accumuli - Acquisition
5 Days ago (2014-12-19 13:45:29)
Print this Article by James Faulkner

Cyber security specialist Accumuli (ACM) has announced the acquisition of of RandomStorm Limited for net cash consideration of £8.9 million, to be funded from Accumuli's own cash resources and through securing a £10 million debt facility with the group's bank (50% on a 5 year term loan and 50% on a revolving credit facility). RandomStorm is a UK based integrated information security specialist. It uses its own intellectual property and services to turn security data into security intelligence in addition to helping to simplify and automate regulatory compliance processes in order to provide peace of mind for network managers that their IT environment is fully protected. Notably, the vendors - who will stay on for one year in a consultancy capacity - founded previous Accumuli acquisitions Boxing Orange and Webscreen, which would indicate that management presumably has a good working relationship with them.

RandomStorm's unaudited results for the year ended 30th April 2014 showed revenues of £3.5 million, EBITDA of £1 million, gross assets of £2 million and net assets of £7 million. In the five months to 30th September 2014 (unaudited) RandomStorm generated revenues of £1.8 million and EBITDA of £0.4 million, which was after continued investment in sales and technical resources. Approximately 65% of revenues originate from consulting activities and the remainder relate to managed services linked to RandomStorm's own proprietary products. The nature of the services that RandomStorm sells means that gross profit margin exceeds 95% (as own consultant costs are treated as overheads) and historically there has been a substantial element (70%) of repeat purchases.

Acquisition rationale...

The increasing compliance requirements for companies, particularly around areas such as PCI DSS, continue to provide strong external growth factors and RandomStorm looks well placed to benefit from this expansion in the market. Additionally, Accumuli has been looking to acquire a business with an established presence in what can best be described as the "Prepare" phase of IT Security 'Readiness'. There are a number of recognised governmental frameworks in the US and UK which seek to establish a formal, staged approach to IT Security Readiness and these broadly break down into four areas: Prepare, Protect , Monitor and Respond. Accumuli's business to date has been strong on Protect and Monitor but less well developed in the Prepare area, and the Acquisition provides a strong entry point into this important area.

ASSESSMENT

RandomStorm appears to be a good fit with the existing Accumuli business in our view, bringing high-margin proprietary technology and beefing up the firm's capabilities in risk identification. The investment case continues to be driven by the growing market for cyber crime defence, with researchers at Gartner reporting that the worldwide IT security market is worth over $62 billion per year, with the UK valued at $3.6 billion. Within this market particular growth areas include managed & hosted IT security services, big data platform & performance analytics and core network services & network control, all of which Accumuli is well placed to take advantage of in our view.

Valuation...

House broker finnCap has increased its FY16 pre-tax profit forecast by 14% to £4.3 million on the back of this acquisition, bringing its EPS estimate to 2.1p. It has also introduced a new 36p price target (up from 33p) based on 10x FY16 EV/Trading EBITDA. At the current 25.25p Accumuli is now capitalised at £38.6 million. The house broker's current forecasts imply a current P/E multiple of c.14.9x falling to 12x for FY16, which looks reasonable value in light of the strong growth outlook. There is also the attraction of a 2.8% prospective dividend yield, delivered despite the company being in growth mode. We also note that Accumuli is one of the few companies on AIM to state an explicit dividend payout ratio, which is aimed at distributing up to 30% of pre-tax group EBITDA via a dividend.

We see key risks as being those associated with the firm's acquisitive strategy, competition for acquisitions bidding up prices and the firm's ability to meet market forecasts. "Strong hold". "
Posted at 26/11/2014 12:41 by gargleblaster
IC write up - hopefully support the share price

Accumulate Accumuli

Aim-traded Accumuli (ACM:24p), a leading independent specialist in IT security and risk management, has reported an upbeat trading outlook alongside half-year results to end September 2014 which revealed a 40 per cent increase in underlying operating profit on revenues up a third.

With trading in the latter months of the period “particularly buoyant”, and given the second half traditionally outperforms the first half, then guidance is for pre-tax profits and EPS to rise by over a third to £3.4m and 1.7p in the 12 months to end March 2014. In fact, Accumuli has recently won a number of financial services sector contracts which are worth £900,000 in gross profit, the vast majority of which will be earned in the current financial year which underpins those forecasts.

Having recommended buying the shares around the current level in the spring ('Profit from cyber warfare', 23 April 2014), if anything the investment case is stronger now than it was then. That’s because the company's area of expertise is becoming increasingly critical for businesses combating the threat of cyber attacks compromising the confidentiality of information they hold and process. It’s worth flagging up that Accumuli’s Customer Intimacy programme is clearly working. The main focus here is on driving recurring revenues and increasing the amount of cross-selling of the company’s products. In the past year, recurring revenue have risen by 10 per cent and over a fifth of all customers now take more than one product from the company, up from 15 per cent a year ago.

Importantly, the valuation is attractive too: after stripping out 2.2p a share of net cash on the balance sheet, the prospective PE ratio is 13. That’s hardly punchy for a company generating double-digit earnings growth and whose shares are priced on a PEG ratio below 0.5. The dividend yield is not bad either for a software company: analyst Andrew Darley at brokerage finnCap predicts Accumuli will raise its payout by a third to 0.68p a share in the current fiscal year, implying a prospective dividend yield of 2.8 per cent.

So although the shares are marginally up on my last buy recommendation (‘Time to accumulate Accumuli’, 15 October 2014), I do feel that my 30p to 33p target price is not out of place. Trading on a bid-offer spread of 23p to 24p, I continue to rate Accumuli shares a buy.

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