Inspired Share Discussion Threads

[1gw] 05/10/2018 14:28

I've sold some there to release funds for something else.

[fizzypop] 04/10/2018 16:31

The share price certainly lacks inspiration.

[rivaldo] 21/9/2018 10:11

Good news:



"INSPIRED ENERGY PLC ANNOUNCED AS THE UTILITIES PARTNER FOR CUMBRIA TOURISM

20th September 2018

Cumbria Tourism members can now access a range of services to help them lower their utilities bills and reduce energy usage.

Inspired Energy plc is one of the UK’s leading energy consultancies, working with corporate and SME businesses to optimise the value of every pound spent on utilities. This is achieved through a range of specialist solutions aimed at lowering bills and protecting businesses against rising energy costs and changes in legislation.

Ben Beetham, Head of Partnerships at Inspired Energy plc, said: “We are delighted to be a strategic partner with Cumbria Tourism, giving us an increased foothold within the businesses and organisations who share Cumbria Tourism’s goals. “Our offering will further enhance the services and benefits that Cumbria Tourism provide to their members. As a market leader in the energy industry, our priority is to help businesses operating in Cumbria solve a range of utility, cost and carbon challenges. By working with us, you gain access to our specialist teams that are highly experienced in dealing with the energy spend demands of your business.”

Regardless of how much energy you use, our team of energy experts can provide a bespoke energy service which meets your specific needs. Working across all utilities, including electricity, gas, water and renewables, we will relieve you of the burden of managing the many utility cost pressures confronting your business. This will leave you free to focus on running your organisation as profitably and effectively as possible.

Cumbria Tourism is the official Tourist Board for the Lake District, Cumbria – membership represents 2,500 tourism dependent businesses."

[rivaldo] 11/9/2018 12:18

Peel Hunt reiterate their Buy and 25p price target after today's small acquisition:



Given their size it's pretty impressive that PCMG have saved their clients £100m over the last 18 months.

[fizzypop] 11/9/2018 09:17

Acquisition of Professional Cost Management Group Limited

Inspired Energy (AIM: INSE), a leading energy procurement consultant to UK and Irish corporates, is delighted to announce that it has today completed the acquisition of Professional Cost Management Group Limited ("PCMG"), a national cost recovery specialist, for an aggregate consideration of up to GBP700,000, payable in cash (the "Acquisition").

HIGHLIGHTS

-- PCMG provides a forensic auditing service to identify and recover overpayments of utilities and telecoms bills on behalf of its clients and provides optimisation analysis to enable customers to improve their tariff and billing structure;

-- The Company has recovered in excess of GBP100m for clients in the last 18 months;
-- PCMG has market expertise in the energy, water, telecoms and accounts payable sectors;

-- Whilst Inspired provides cost recovery services to its clients, the integration of PCMG to the Group creates a market leading capability, allowing the Group's existing customer base to further benefit from PCMG's specialisms, and conversely, providing PCMG customers with the opportunity to benefit from the broad service offering of the enlarged Group.

-- The Acquisition is expected to be earnings enhancing in FY2020.

etc.

[rivaldo] 07/9/2018 08:59

Newly tipped here:



"An energy firm minus the hassle of owning energy assets

Rather than betting on SSE and having your capital tied to the nuts and bolts of producing energy we can instead invest in a firm that skims a profit from energy use without risking capital on producing the stuff. I reckon energy procurement consultant Inspired Energy (LSE: INSE) fits the bill nicely because it acts like an agent connecting suppliers with customers. Well-known fund manager Mark Slater has a chunk of his fund’s capital in the stock, which is encouraging because he has a decent track record in investing.

Today’s half-year results are good. Revenue came in 33% higher than the equivalent period last year, cash from operations shot up 43% and adjusted diluted earnings per share moved 13% higher. The directors pushed up the interim dividend 19%, which I take as a message that they are confident in the outlook. Reading through today’s report, I get the strong impression that the management team is going for growth in a determined way. So far, financial progress has been achieved both organically and via an acquisition strategy and both methods look set to continue.

The current share price around 20.65p leads to a forward price-to-earnings rating for 2019 of just over 12 and the forward dividend yield runs around 3.5%. I think the valuation is undemanding and the stock looks attractive given the firm’s growth potential."

[rivaldo] 06/9/2018 22:39

Nice tick up at the close, and looking healthy chart-wise overtaking the March highs. Hopefully back to the all-time 24p highs soon.

[rivaldo] 06/9/2018 11:39

Encouraging to see a 100,000 buy (and a 37k buy) at the full 21.5p offer for the first time post-results, and a subsequent tick up.

[rivaldo] 05/9/2018 08:43

Good to see the price consolidating here - there was decent buying yesterday post-results, so hopefully any seller will soon be out if not already.

New article here about increasing regulation which should bring in extra business for INSE:



"The impact of widening the Energy Intensive Industry Exemption…
Tuesday 4 September 2018

To ensure the UK meets its low carbon targets, the government has introduced several policies that are driving renewable growth. The cost of electricity has also increased which has made UK prices higher than in other countries.

Certain Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs), including plastics, steel and mining, are exempt from a significant proportion of environmental subsidies to help them compete with EU counterparts.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is consulting on widening the eligibility of charging relief for EIIs.

The aim is to discover whether lowering the electricity intensity test, a calculation to determine the percentage of electricity cost against Gross Value Added, would remove competitive distortions in the market.

Changes to qualification are not expected to come into force until 1st April 2020 at the earliest but could add another 1% onto electricity costs for non-exempt users.

Inspired Energy manages a range of clients in energy intensive sectors, including initial applications and compliance with the scheme’s reporting requirements.

The company has saved more than £400,000 per annum for clients in both the automotive and semiconductor sectors. Does your business use more than 1.5GWh per annum?

etc"

[yump] 04/9/2018 10:28

If anyone is into charts, INSE also broke a bottom trendline at 20p in April ish. for no obvious reason, when I was expecting it to continue in an uptrend.

Given the various sets of apparently positive results, why hasn't it gone up ? I'm leaving half in, but I guessing it will a bit of a wait to get any decent gains from here.

Hoping for say a year from now with reduced exceptionals (of various types), for a big clean profit jump to appear. There seem to be two ways of working out a rating here: use the statutory results and there's a reduction in profits, so a p/e max of 10, or use the adjusted ones (without removing amortisation as its repetitive) which justify a higher rating of say 15.

Bit bothered about the order book as well - utimately that will drive increases in revenue and I can't reconcile the optimistic statement with the relatively uninspiring order book growth.

[rivaldo] 04/9/2018 09:52

I note that UTW lurches from disaster to disaster after today's news. It now has a m/cap of just £20m.

At some point there may be an argument for INSE acquiring it, though I have no idea how much overlap there is. There must be considerable room for synergies, though I suppose the management charged with turning around UTW would probably not be best pleased with a knockdown offer.

In the meantime INSE should make hay with UTW's client base and in competition for new contracts given the latter's troubles.

[yump] 04/9/2018 09:41

Actually fwiw I've decided to take some profits if the share price doesn't shift up much. Basically got a little tired of wading through the financials when there's a constant stream of amortised stuff and exceptionals to figure out. Other clearer opportunities for some of the money I think.

Direct comparison with IDEA is interesting, as that has a much 'cleaner' set of accounts, despite its acquisitions. (Bit pricey though imo).

[melody9999] 04/9/2018 09:27

Could be they have got more efficient at processing orders? But isn't the order book only a snapshot at a particular time in any case?

Assuming existing customer retention is high, seems to me that even an order book unchanged in size will ensure future growth continues.

[yump] 04/9/2018 09:24

1gw

That's a good point as the drop in profit is only 4%, but the drop in diluted eps is 25%.

So even if restructuring and acquisition costs are halved or removed, it doesn't read that well, once you use diluted eps.

I would have expected an increased order book higher that this, given the acquisitions.

[mfhmfh] 04/9/2018 09:19

Peel Hunt today reiterates buy rating and 25p target price.

[rivaldo] 04/9/2018 08:48

Since the order book actually reduced from the interim stage last year to that at the year end, without any impact at all on actual results for that year or on this H1, it would seem that, as with most PLC order books, a steady number which increases over time is probably the way to measure it. Especially following a 60% increase which has subsequently been maintained.

[m1das_touch] 04/9/2018 08:35

My main concern here is this statement:

"The Procurement Corporate Order Book, which provides strong visibility of revenues and is a consistent guide to the future performance of the Corporate Division, has increased by 3% to GBP40.1m as at 31 August 2018 (FY 2017: GBP39.0m)."

Compare that to the statement at the interim stage last year:

"The Procurement Corporate Order Book, which provides strong visibility of revenues and is a consistent guide to the future performance of the Corporate Division, has increased by 60% to GBP41.2m (H1 2016: GBP25.7m)"

If the order book provides strong visibility of earnings and growth has slowed dramatically from 60% to 3%, isn't this a worry?

Any thoughts?

[1gw] 04/9/2018 08:30

Agree to some extent but a 25% drop in diluted eps seems a lot. Dilutive impact of share issue for acquisitions I suppose.

[cheshire man] 04/9/2018 08:30

Pleased with results this morning, good summary of thought yump :-)

[yump] 04/9/2018 08:09

Adjusted profits vs. statutory is an ongoing debate.

Amortisation of intangibles will continue to appear and I don't think those hide true performance, as like depreciation, they represent a real cost to the business. However, acquisition costs and restructuring costs actually are potential one-offs, or at least peak in years with significant acquisitions.

ie. if you had a year with no acquisitions, they could be zero and there is almost £1mln of those.

So if you take off those two, which I don't think is unreasonable to get an idea of actual business performance, there's a very healthy increase in profits. Then there's the large increase in cash generation.

I think the statutory figures in this case actually hide the progress.

[rivaldo] 04/9/2018 07:26

Good H1 results today, with a very confident outlook statement.

Revenues up 33%, EBITDA up 39%, dividend up 19% and adjusted EPS up 13%. With the various acquisitions kicking in fully in H2 INSE should achieve a minimum 1.7p-1.8p EPS this year, making it pretty cheap at these levels.

There are confident noises about more acquisitions too, which should help things along nicely.

And the outlook is strong, with the order book continuing to rise and the narrative impressive:

"Our excellent performance in the first half of 2018, underpinned by strong organic growth, provides a strong operational and financial platform for the full year. The Group is well placed to deliver another set of record results, as we continue to benefit from further organic growth and the net contribution from the three recent acquisitions."

[1gw] 04/9/2018 07:26

Shame about the dip in statutory earnings, but still a reasonable set of results I think with the adjusted numbers moving ahead nicely.

Once again, comparison with utilitywise's results ( or TU), also out today, makes inse look brilliant!

[wanttowin] 22/8/2018 19:03

They spiked to near 25p this time last year riv. Thank you for your excellent posts, I am obviously regretting selling half my holding last month. I was hoping for a dip to buy them back, but the future is looking really strong here.

[rivaldo] 22/8/2018 12:26

Good to see INSE continuing to rise steadily into the results on 4th September. On low volumes too, hopefully suggesting a lack of available stock (though this might just be a function of quiet August trading!).

[rivaldo] 09/8/2018 12:45

Peel Hunt reiterate their Buy and 25p target after today's acquisition: