Clipper Ventures Share Discussion Threads

[8trader] 13/9/2008 10:45

A David Newton holds 1.5 mil or 4% of the company so he could well
be the current favourite who has sold their stake for quite a premium
to the current price, the big question is who has bought it ?

[8trader] 12/9/2008 23:20

Not sure why the previous thread charts would not work.

Yet another bargain stock, 3 mil market cap, profits of over 1 mil and
today a 4% buyer paying a substantial premium to the current offer price
of 8p, they paid 9.25p.

Get the 8p while it lasts !

[tyranosaurus] 12/9/2008 16:17

They will not do a buyback. They are saving their cash.
That`s why they never paid a dividend.

[deswalker] 12/9/2008 15:43

AGM date announced as 31 Oct. Anyone planning on going ? Not me unfortunately.

Fingers crossed it's a buyback.

[tyranosaurus] 12/9/2008 15:11

1.5 million shares bought.

That`s more than 3% of the issues share capital

Should produce an RNS soon.

[tyranosaurus] 09/9/2008 12:54

The share price reflects the passed dividend.

This stock will probably not see a double digit share price until results this time next year. Have to question whether it worth holding till then ?

[pat dunk] 08/9/2008 13:27

Thanks Des & scburbs for your veiws, it would be great to see these values again! I do agree with Joan of Arc. The only reason I was continuing to hold this stock was for the dividend, for them to have removed it inspite of good results, makes me question whether we can believe their comment that they are well placed to ride this downturn - if they had firmly believed this they should have had no trouble paying the dividend in my opinion.

[scburbs] 07/9/2008 18:26

Thanks Des, Interesting analysis. A good point that we are operating over a four year cycle.

I tend to look at CLV as a sum of the parts calculation.

Velux 2006 - £1074k operating profit
Clipper 2007 - £10m estimated minimum turnover

I would value Velux at say £3m (the low multiple reflects that it only occurs once every 4 years) and Clipper at £8-10m (on the basis that operating margins are around 15%, 1-2 times turnover would seem reasonable, but this is discounted for its biannual nature).

This gives a value of £11-13m or 28-33p. A relatively similar result to the lower end of your estimate.

There is also a few things like Zapcat and Corporate Hospitality not included in the above and it also excludes existing surplus NAV.

[dibbs] 06/9/2008 13:42

Mesquida -

I would agree, the penalty the market applies for holding onto cash is certainly far smaller than having to go to the market in the current climate for more!

For me a divi from these kind of AIM shares is a bonus, not much of a motivating factor for investing as the possible capital gain or loss on these kind of shares is normally a massive multiple of any divi payment.

Others obviously view this differently. Maybe institutions who are of course more important than most private investors to a share price direction view it differently? All depends on everyones own investing criteria of course imo.

Dibbs

[bisiboy] 06/9/2008 13:36

dividend should have been slightly increased not passed this is very disappointing. it sends a bad message and the shares will now take longer to recover

[mesquida] 06/9/2008 10:46

Think that you will see many other small caps adopting a similarly cautious attitude to dividends over the coming months. After all, the banks have virtually made borrowing an unviable alternative for most small caps, so you cannot blame them for hoarding cash.

[tyranosaurus] 06/9/2008 08:26

I think the passed dividend contradicted the rest of the results.
The dividend would not have cost much - say 40m shares at 0.3p = £120k.

If they won`t pay a dividend now then I wouldn`t expect one in 6 months time as they expect the cash position to weaken in that time, and the economy downturn will still be with us.

[argy2] 05/9/2008 22:23

I think the current market will applaud their conservative attitude to the dividend and if cash continues to grow I suspect they will buy back more shares and build nav and confidence that way.

[joan of arc] 05/9/2008 20:11

Maintaining the dividend would hardly have done much harm to their balance sheet or cashflow. So much for their bragging of a 'progressive dividend policy' in the last interim report. Frankly, I call it disappointing and I don't see this share offering much interest to new PIs if after all this time they can't start to drip feed cash back to their owners. They are unlikely to grow revenues much in this somewhat niche market so if they can't stick to a dividend policy now when will they be able to in the future.

[deswalker] 05/9/2008 20:03

My analysis is as follows ...

There's a two year "Clipper & Velux" cycle followed by a two year "Clipper Only" cycle then we're back to the "Clipper & Velux" cycle again, so the total cycle is four years. Revenue and earnings for all these years occur at various times in the cycle so it's very difficult to value on a PE basis.

The "Clipper & Velux" cycle started in April 2005 and ended in April 2007. The "Clipper Only" cycle started in April 2007 and will finish in April 2009 when things start again with another "Clipper & Velux" cycle. The results announced today (to April 2008) take us half way through this "Clipper Only" cycle.

Next year's results to (April 2009) will complete the big full four year cycle started in April 2005 and so these two Balance Sheets (April 2005 and April 2009) will be the ones to compare to get a full picture right across the full cycle. Hope that's clear so far :-)

Right, the NTAV numbers so far (in thousands) for the cycle started in April 2005. These are not the NTAV per share numbers because there was a placing of 7 mill shares at 15p in Jan 2007 which complicates things a bit. However for NTAV we have ...

Apr 05 = -609
Oct 05 = -48
Apr 06 = 1207
Oct 06 = 1753
Apr 07 = 3349
Oct 07 = 3872
Apr 08 = 4414
Oct 08 = ?
Apr 09 = ?

Now excluding the placing I would suggest this is a pretty impressive result across the full four year cycle so far. Once we have next year's numbers around this time next year we will have completed one full cycle and will be better able to predict the growth for the next four year cycle from April 2009 to April 2013.

A similar analysis can be done for the Net-Cash number.

Now, assuming the NTAV at April 2009 is 5500 say, what value would you ascribe to a company with NTAV of 5500 with about 120% expected growth over its next four year cycle (30% per year) ? At least two times NTAV I'd say which equates to 28p per share. Maybe three times which equates to 42p per share ?

Anyway this is the way I'm thinking about this company. I can't get any handle on the lumpiness of earnings across the complicated two race cycle so PE is not very meaningful for me but I do understand my method.

I'm hoping that value realisation comes about in two ways. Firstly, very healthy dividends whilst I wait and then a buyout when a Private Equity company or wealthy individual starts to think along similar lines to me. I'm not expecting the market to value this very highly until that date because it will always be unsure about how the accounts work and also sceptical about the substainability of earnings. But at some point I'm expecting this to be taken out at a multiple of the current price. It's an ideal "trophy" type of asset for a wealthy individual or a Private Equity fund IMO.

I agree that the lack of dividend is disappointing but it won't be if they start buying back shares at these levels. Better to use the cash that way IMO. Also, they need to be prudent in the current environment.

Comments gratefully received.

Des

[scburbs] 05/9/2008 18:01

Thanks Des, Please can you post the breakdowns in your analysis?

[deswalker] 05/9/2008 17:54

I maintain that the way to value is this based on Net Cash per Share and NTAV per Share and the rate of growth of these two numbers at each six-monthly reporting date. Earnings in a certain period are relatively meaningless due to the complex cycle of events (Clipper and Velux Races) and the timing of revenues from these. But if one looks at the series of semi-annual NTAV and Net-Cash numbers across a full cycle (since October 2005 say), then one really sees the steady growth and the cashflow potential here IMO.

[argy2] 05/9/2008 17:35

tyran

It was a buy as there was 50k on offer at that price just after the figs.Suspect the MM saw the passed divi and jumped the wrong way. Ge was only offering in 5k after the buy.

[dibbs] 05/9/2008 15:46

Fair results, maybe not set for a mega high PE, especially in current markets. Too cheap at these levels I would suggest.

Dibbs

[tyranosaurus] 05/9/2008 15:05

Surprised at passing dividend.
Otherwise results are OK.

50k looks like a sell as someone paid 8.19p to buy 10k.