Croma Security Solutions Share Discussion Threads

[bookbroker] 11/11/2022 08:42

Definitely, a small company with very low margins, and weak business model. I thought prior to pandemic, during and with all the grants they received they would emerge stronger. But they are in fact weaker, security sounds a sound business, but in reality labour intensive at its core. Can see a banana skin here, consolidation will not help this company, will actually increase the risk big time. It’s no wonder there are so many small entities in the game. But the list of reasons not to invest are limitless!

[eezymunny] 11/11/2022 08:35

Numbers look weird again to me.

"Purchase of property, plant and equipment £1.2m". What's included in that, it's a big number for a tiny company? Seems unexplained? Wild swings in cash balances.

Bargepole for me.

[bookbroker] 11/11/2022 07:35

Morley lives near Dumfries, and Vigilant based there, but I’m surprised that they continue to increase the size of space required there, total backwater, so not surprised increased travel costs. Must be material to mention it, maybe they should think about means to reduce this cost!!!

[rivaldo] 11/11/2022 07:30

Today's prelims show £1.59m EBITDA, well ahead of the "at least" £1.5m EBITDA previously flagged.

The core business delivered £1.5m EBITDA, well ahead of last year's £1.2m (before government pandemic support).

CSSG still have a £2.6m cash pile despite the various expansion costs this year, and have raised the dividend 5% to 2.1p.

The headline numbers are pretty misleading due to (1) prior year govt support and (2) this year's goodwill write-off. So in this case EBITDA is the most relevant measure.

Including the new £5m per annum contract win, the outlook is nicely confident:

"We are now seeing the benefit of that investment, in the current financial year with significant new contract wins that will boost our future financial performance."

[bookbroker] 10/11/2022 07:15

One more day for Morley to get these results to the market. Needs to get his act together with this company, very poor performance, imagine they’ll be another goodwill writedown!

[effortless cool] 03/10/2022 21:15

We are delighted to announce that Croma Vigilant and Croma PROception have been selected as finalists in six categories at the Security and Fire Excellence Awards 2022 in London!

These include:
- “Customer Service Initiative of the year – Croma PROtouch”
- “Security Product of the year – Safe Haven”
- "Outsourced Security Individual or Team of the Year – St James Quarter”
- “Security Manager of the Year – Graham Roach”
- “Security Software Product or Software as a Service of the Year – PROmail”
- “Security Training Initiative of the Year – Steps2Success”

[blackhorse23] 16/9/2022 08:19

https://www.google.com/amp/s/capital.com/amp/cury-currys-share-price-double

[rivaldo] 15/9/2022 14:23

Agreed, certainly a canny move to announce the contract wins along with the update!

The useless brokers WH Ireland never had any forecasts out in the market AFAICS, so not really a "warning" per se. Nevertheless, CSSG made £0.87m EBITDA in H1, so H2 is likely to bring a drop to around £0.7m since the £1.5m EBITDA is a minimum.

The £6.1m per annum of new contract wins should have a lovely effect for the current year. It would also be nice to have an idea of what the cash pile is forecast to be - but unfortunately WH Ireland STILL haven't issued an update note even after today's news.

CSSG remains very good value imo also - let's see if this results in some broker forecasts at long last.

As an aside, given the mammoth requirement for security for the queue at the Queen's resting place - and at the various buildings commemorating her passing - I wonder whether CSSG have picked up any business? Perhaps this is not really the kind of work they go for.

[shandypants2] 15/9/2022 11:17

SP not AP!!

[shandypants2] 15/9/2022 11:13

EBITDA was c£2m last year so essentially today's announcement is a profit warning!! The new contracts are definitely a positive but it is clear the company held back the EBITDA figure until they had some good news to disguise it. AP is still very cheap though IMHO

[rivaldo] 15/9/2022 07:43

Wow!

Decent numbers, with a minimum £1.5m EBITDA against the £10m m/ cap - plus the substantial cash pile.

But these are large and significant contract wins, particularly the £5m per annum property contract. The total £6.1m per annum of new contracts should help bump up this year’s numbers nicely.

[daisymax1] 08/8/2022 17:02

Still no movement or even buying. Quiet here.

[rivaldo] 06/7/2022 07:21

Another locksmiths acquisition today from CSSG's £3.5m cash pile - £840,000 consideration is buying £108,000 of PBT plus almost £1m of assets.

Presumably that historic PBT will rise nicely given it was achieved during the pandemic to March'22:

[bookbroker] 25/6/2022 13:13

Likely one of the worst run companies on AIM., Morley is a useless CEO, a good talker typical of ex-Army, but failing to deliver any real value for investors. Just put the company up for sale, and do the rest of us a favour.

[bookbroker] 23/5/2022 16:10

I’d like to see where this company is spending its cash balance, likely on higher staffing costs, but Morley always seems so optimistic that I have to doubt him. Otherwise why no dividend at the half year!

[rivaldo] 04/4/2022 08:46

Ah, if only everything could be extrapolated so simply!

The year end trading update is in June, so probably all quiet until then. Given the H1 outlook we will hopefully have good news:

"Second half trading has started well and therefore the Board believes the business is well placed to deliver a good a trading performance for the year.

Sebastian Morley, Chairman of CSSG, said: "We are pleased to have delivered a good performance amidst a challenging market. Demand from our client base was steady which given the disruption caused by the pandemic was a solid performance. We completed the acquisition of a new security store in Manchester, and we believe we have a good pipeline of further opportunities. Similarly, we see opportunity in technology led areas such as the tie up with Biometric expert Fingo and iLOQ the specialist locks business.

Overall, the business is well placed, our balance sheet is strong, our core businesses are profitable and cash generative and we are adding to them with bolt on acquisitions and through partnerships with technology leaders"

[bookbroker] 01/4/2022 14:16

Mkt Cap £11.5m,directors salaries £748k, they are excessive for the size of the company. Be like suggesting a £3bln. company, directors salaries £200mln.

[rivaldo] 01/4/2022 13:58

I suspect CSSG can go a long way themselves by consolidating a highly fragmented industry. I've seen it happen so many other times over the years. CSSG simply need to prove that they can do it effectively.

With a projected £4m-£5m cash pile at this year end (against an £11.7m m/cap) they certainly have the resources to do so.

Once CSSG have bulked up, then will be the time for predators to get interested.

The directors own over 30% of the shares, so their interests are aligned with the rest of us in wanting the share price to increase.

The top paid director recived £245k last year out of total directros' emols of £748k, which for six directors isn't an unreasonable total imo for a quoted stock of CSSG's size.

[bookbroker] 01/4/2022 09:57

Just called housekeeping, personally I’d rather see this company get sold, they are too small to keep talking about buying competitors, the security industry is full of fly-by-nights, better off being part of a larger services company. Directors like to pay themselves big salaries here at the expense of shareholders, and costs likely going up big time.

[rivaldo] 01/4/2022 09:37

A second director has transferred his shares from his personal holding into his SIPP:



One such occurrence is interesting. Two is likely more than a coincidence :o))

[rivaldo] 29/3/2022 15:19

A small surge of excitement today with an RNS - quite encouraging that an non-exec has transferred 28,000 shares from his personal holding into his SIPP.

This would indicate that he's fairly confident that the share price will be going up, otherwise why bother trying to protect from tax and now being unable to utilise losses for CGT purposes....

[bookbroker] 13/3/2022 13:39

It would be nice if the company could elaborate as to why cash balances are significantly diminished. Maybe they are improving salaries, wages, etc, investing in the security centres, new contracts requiring higher initial capital outlay. Can imagine they may have repaid some of the Govt. money received, but no mention so in the dark there. Be interested to know precisely how they spend their capital, prefer to see some used in buybacks. They talk about acquiring other assets, but little news to suggest that is the case.

[effortless cool] 13/3/2022 11:22

EM - Not yet.

bb - That was only 350k of it.