Sage Share Discussion Threads

[maddox] 28/11/2007 21:04

rmillarie, Lyntwyn,

Well it looks like a very good set of results to me - difficult to see what the fuss was about now and I very much like the big dividend increase - just the sort of income that those CDO-hit institutions might appreciate.

rmillarie, your comments regarding the performance are well made, however I would note that the profit that they have bought was bought with cash not equity so not diluting current holders.

Botwoman,

Have you actually bought shares? If you have I take my hat off to your patience.

Regards, Maddox

[botwoman] 28/11/2007 12:59

still going up end day at 230?

[lyntwyn] 28/11/2007 11:54

Panmure Gordon reiterates 'buy' after FY results; Merrill/Landsbanki 'buy'

[rmillaree] 28/11/2007 11:37

The 154.1 million is post tax profit not pre-tax.

Pre tax 223.2 (Last year 221.2)

However the actual performance as far as i am concerned is a little better than this.

There is a £15 million increase in Amortisation and last year their was a £10 million credit on foreign currency exchanges (Not sure how there is a nil figure this year on the profit reconciliation figure)

So pre adjustments (and pre tax) the comparison is 251.2 against 221.3 (although some of this extra profit has been bought !!)

I am pretty relaxed with sage buying companies as they normally pay a reasonable price and always seem to get added value out of acquisitions.

Operating cahflow is good too £317 million against £267.1 million last year(This should however be expected as they have to pay for their recent acquisitions)

Debt at £600 million is well within control and could be reduced considerably if they have no major acquisitions in the next 12 months (Unlikely?)

[john hampton] 28/11/2007 11:33

Results look v good and bounced nicely off the long term support levels. I'll be a buyer here when the dust settles.

Good luck those already in.

[botwoman] 28/11/2007 11:28

If SAP had any brains they would SNAP this up while it is still down

[lyntwyn] 28/11/2007 10:25

Needs a tailwind (few +ve broker comments) behind it for it to fly to 250+

LONDON (ShareCast) - Business software solutions provider Sage surpassed the billion pound revenue mark for the year but profits were held back by increased admin and selling costs.

Revenues for the 12 months increased to £1.15bn from £935m before but pre-tax profit only increased to £154.1m from £152.m previously. Selling and admin expenses rose to £798m from £619m before.

The group said as it steps up investment in its North American business it expects margins will be impacted in 2008 but in this financial year, it expects to see early benefits of the actions taken within the region with a modest improvement in organic growth.

"The new year has started well, with all regions performing in line with our expectations," said the group

"Whilst we recognise the current uncertainties in the macro-economic situation, the defensive characteristics of our business model lead us to view 2008 with confidence," it added.

Dividend rebasing resulted in a 95% increase in the proposed total dividend to 7.00p per share.

[trader11] 28/11/2007 08:39

the bounce from oversold is on

[trader11] 28/11/2007 08:16

mmmmmmmmmmm

[rmillaree] 27/11/2007 19:34

I don't think there will be an major shocks tomorrow in relation to the year end figures as they have already confirmed the figures are in line with market expectations (Announcement 11th October)

As regard to the future the recent management changes are probably not a plus as the old management have always done a decent job, although the American bit has tended to underperform.

I would like to see some good news about the cross-selling of their products bringing in added business particularly the US.

Their US Healthcare purchase last year was expensive at £300 million and it may take a while to increase margins to anything like the rest of the sage group.I would like to think this software which is used by 20,000 customer can be linked into their payment processor - Verus. If can convince a decent chunk to start using Verus then revenues should increase nicely here.(Don't know how likely this is in reality, i am just presuming that they wouldn't bother with payment processors unless they thought they could link this to their accountancy packages)

I do however think the American trading will still be week in comparison with the rest of the world which i would expect to see decent growth in most markets.

Onwards and upwards 225p here we come yet again. (This will be the 12th time 225 p has been passed since the start of 1996 - Quite an apt header for this stock)

[mikejay] 27/11/2007 15:46

CAN SAGE make it to 225p - a superb stock

[trader11] 26/11/2007 17:38

what do we expect on weds folks?

[ciderosie] 25/11/2007 20:24

Trader it's on ceefax BBC 2 page 205 pages 2 & 3 of 8 will be on there to midnight & of course Lyn it says the results are on Wed 28th!

[lyntwyn] 25/11/2007 16:25

probably says results due wednesday 28th !! good luck to all us holders

[trader11] 25/11/2007 13:47

whats expected ciderole?


what does ceefax say?

[ciderosie] 25/11/2007 13:07

Daily Mail Sat.
Broker Buys. Miraabaud Securities says buy at £2.05 (now £2.08).Unloved & oversold. The risk/reward balance reward looks good.

Small piece on ceefax BBC2 whats in store for the week ahead whats expected etc.

[trader11] 25/11/2007 10:03

any sunday presss on Sage folks?

[lyntwyn] 23/11/2007 09:56

The Guardian reports: Sage rose 4.70p to 206.70p after Mirabaud Securities started coverage with a buy note and 250p target. Analyst Steve Clayton said: 'The market is worried that Sage is about to drop a clanger in the States. Sage's US management have been removed and the group chief executive is running the show until a new team is hired. Growth in the US has been weak, though some of this looks to be a function of a backlog of installations in the healthcare business that should ease. We think the shares have now come back enough to justify the risk of buying ahead of results on November 28. If they don't hit their numbers then their franchise on both sides of the Atlantic will look attractive to players such as Microsoft or SAP.'

[rmillaree] 22/11/2007 18:00

Hi Botwoman

I work in a small accountancy firm and i do not think the microsoft competition thing is much of an issue. Sage really do have a dominant position in the accountancy package market.
It would be pretty hard for me to do my job nowadays without a having a decent understanding of sage as so many of our clients use sage packages.
Due to this reason most trainess accountants learn sage first.
The last think i (or any other accountant probably) wants to do is go to the trouble of learning a new package inside out just for the benefit of being able to help one or 2 people who may use it.
This is quite a hard cycle to break - the only way i can see a competitor eating into sage's market share would be for them to make their software an almost identical format to sage and this would probably? be illegal.

[botwoman] 22/11/2007 10:38

what are you expecting next wednesday?

[maddox] 21/11/2007 15:43

Botwoman,

Buying market share is MSFT's only option but the cost of the software is still a very very marginal factor when you are talking £100 difference per copy.

When making the decision you are going to be concerned about the salary cost and availability of a book-keeper with the readily required skills. Lets say all you need is a part-time book-keeper - say £8k per annum the one-off licence cost is under 5% of that.

I also think the give away price strategy is counter-productive. Basically, the perception is that a MSFT product is poor-quality, poorly supported and now priced to match....you know you'll pay in the end but will you feel its been good value?

Incidently, my desktop PC running XP has just had some Up-dates forced on it and now the USB devices, that have worked fine for 18 months, are 'unknown' and un-usable. After many hours trying to fix this myself I'm going to have to pay £60 an hour to some chap to try an fix it?

Regards, Maddox

[botwoman] 21/11/2007 09:30

can it hold 200?