The Character Share Discussion Threads

[mister md] 05/1/2025 18:50

Looking at their consumer website they seem to have quite a limited range of toys listed for each age group. Is this all they are selling (in high volumes) or is there a more comprehensive product catalogue ?

[mister md] 05/1/2025 17:00

Looks cheap. Plus a nice dividend yield while investors await a share price recovery ?

[spob] 02/1/2025 17:27

.
Why hold so many shares in Treasury ? Very suspicious

JUST CANCEL THEM !

[brianblu] 02/1/2025 16:08

From October 29th2024 to end of may 2025 the company hope to buy 5 million shares back that’s some target especially with only over 18million shares on the share register.they can hardly get any stock at this price 274 and Henry Spain nibbling away (interesting to say the least and the company is well undervalued by the numbers and analysts stating £5 anyway mmmm watch this space

[spob] 02/1/2025 16:01

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Henry Spain loving this stock

Now 24% (worth £12.1m)

Mcap at 270p = 50.46m

[deanowls] 19/12/2024 05:00

Maybe I had one more beer than I thought last night when typing that! 😂

Ultimately I believe undervalued but what will out that value?

[jezza123] 18/12/2024 19:43

Its a fair point retirement beckons for key board members - any sense they may just cashout?

[deanowls] 18/12/2024 18:40

I really think that the management here are happy to play it down. At some point there has to be an exit, share buy backs at a low price, again very little info in the release, no investor presentation, no real highlights, discussion on shipping costs, doesn’t even mention the warehouse being put up for sale? Circa 15% cost value of current company vale so materia. As much as an overflow warehouse, to sell after three years after extensive renovations doesn’t mean Napier confidence.

That said, I dont know as they are not telling us.

At some point they will wish to sell, maybe the. They will realize they need to focus e some positive news being as they are approaching retirement age and beyond.

[brucie5] 18/12/2024 17:37

Overlooked share which I'm happy to hold.
6.9% dividend and six screens on Stocko.

[jezza123] 18/12/2024 10:22

Another quiet year - pocket the 19p dividend watch the share buybacks and go back to bed.

[deanowls] 17/12/2024 17:58

Just reading on the warehouse. Any inclination why they are selling after holding for only 3 years?

hxxps://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/commercial/details/68437452/

[deanowls] 17/12/2024 17:49

They need to start doing investor meet or something similar. Level of engagement or visibility is very low.

[deanowls] 17/12/2024 08:51

Thanks h,

Really don’t think the exec team at CCT do enough with investor relations. No roadshows little to no information. Releasing results into essentially a very quiet period.

Continues to disappoint.

[h1a3] 12/12/2024 14:51

From CCT.
We expect to announce our 2024 financial year results and to publish the Group’s full Report and Audited Consolidated Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2024 next week and that it is proposed that the 2025 AGM will be held on 17 January 2025.

Hope this helps.

[jezza123] 09/11/2024 14:10

We are Millwall.

[spob] 29/10/2024 09:34

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Website -



Full News -

Spread 256-270
Mcap 47.45m










1 Year





5 Year







Significant Shareholders and notified major holdings (as of 26th July 2024)


The figure of 18,665,298 (being the issued share capital excluding shares held in treasury) has been used to calculate the percentage shareholding below.


Shareholder Name, Amount, % Holding


Henry Spain Investment Services 4,206,960 22.54%

K P Shah (Director) 1,928,766 10.33%

J J Diver (Director) 1,284,089 6.88%

Close Brothers Asset Management 1,068,840 5.73%

Rowan Dartington & Co Ltd 956,029 5.12%

Sweet Briar Investment Ltd 913,948 4.90%

Ruffer LLP 868,769 4.65%



Other Significant Shareholdings - Directors:


J J P Kissane 463,519 2.48%

M S Hyde 236,528 1.27%

J Healy 64,817 0.35%

C Crouch 14,378 0.08%

C Warren 5,784 0.03%





18 December 2024

SHARE BUYBACK PROGRAMME

During the 2024 financial year, the Company acquired a total of 708,472 ordinary shares in the Company at an aggregate cost of c.£2.0m (including associated dealing costs), with the average cost being approximately £2.81 per ordinary share (FY 2023: nil). On 29 October 2024, the Company commenced a further buyback programme to purchase ordinary shares with a maximum aggregate consideration (including associated dealing costs) of c.£2.0m. At the date of this report, the Company has, under this new programme, acquired for cancellation a further 66,757 ordinary shares in the Company at an aggregate cost of approximately £182,156 (excluding associated costs), with the average cost being approximately £2.73 per ordinary share.



The Company currently has an unutilised authority to buyback up to a further 2,114,771 ordinary shares. It remains part of our overall strategy to continue to repurchase the Company's own shares when appropriate. The Board believes that it is in the Company's and shareholders' interests to provide an opportunity to access liquidity that is not otherwise available in the market and enable shareholders to realise part or all their investment in the Company and subsequently to return excess capital to members.



It is the Board's intention at the 2025 AGM (17 January), to seek a new authority to buyback up to 2,815,000 ordinary shares (representing approximately 15% of the total voting rights in the Company). If granted, this authority will enable the current buyback programme to continue until 30 May 2025 or such earlier date as the maximum aggregate gross purchases effected under the programme reach the limit of £2.0 million. It will also allow the Company to implement further buybacks until the AGM in 2026 either by way of an announced buyback programme or by way of tenders for its issued ordinary shares.



TOTAL VOTING RIGHTS

As at today's date, the Company has 18,707,641 ordinary shares in issue, excluding shares held in treasury. The Company holds 1,983,059 ordinary shares in treasury, representing approximately 9.58 per cent. of the issued share capital. These treasury shares do not carry voting or dividend rights. Therefore, the total number of voting rights in the Company is 18,707,641. This figure of 18,707,641 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they may determine if they are required to notify their interest, or change to their notified interest, in the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.




DIVIDEND

The Directors will be recommending a maintained final dividend of 11.0p per share (H2 2023: 11.0p per share). This, together with the interim dividend of 8.0p per share paid in July 2024, will bring the total dividend for the year to 19.0p per share (FY 2023: 19.0p). The total dividend is covered approximately 1.56 times by underlying annual earnings (2023: 1.1 times).

Ex-dividend date 16 January 2025
Record date 17 January 2025
Payment date 31 January 2025



Annual Report (18 Dec 2024) -

[brucie5] 29/10/2024 08:27

Friendless?

[brucie5] 01/10/2024 07:11

Nice little update this morning. Has this been unfairly sold off of late? I believe it might have.

[florence141414] 23/9/2024 13:00

anyone see the tandem results? i cant work out if its good read across for character as their toy division did well, or bad because they mentioned it was against an overall market that declined 13%!

[workshoppete] 20/9/2024 16:27

What cause the spread to be so wide?

[spob] 20/9/2024 12:01

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Silly spread here

272-290 = 6.2% plus dealing costs


There goes your dividend, straight down the toilet.

No wonder this thread is dead quiet.

[brucie5] 19/7/2024 14:21

A bit of a sleepy board. Just picked this up for an income folio. If you're happy with the 6% + dividend the metrics on Stocko look good: over 97 with three positive value screens including two Dremans (low p/cf & PE.

PE Ratio (ttm)
10.8
PEG Ratio (ttm)
0.24
EPS Growth (ttm)
42.1%
Dividend Yield (ttm)
6.27%

This was Paul Scott's last write up in May: He notes generous divis and strong balance sheet, which I like. But I also like the chart, which looks primed for recovery. Surprised there isn't more interest?
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Character (LON:CCT)
276p (pre-market) £52m - H1 Results - Paul - GREEN

Designers, developers and international distributor of toys, games and giftware
I’ve followed this toys company for many years, and my preconception is that shares usually look cheap or very cheap, but it has a rather erratic track record, and disappoints with profit warnings every now and then. It’s been a generous dividend payer in the past, and is doing buybacks too. There might have been question marks over management remuneration too, I vaguely recall.

H1 results are much improved on last year -

Revenue flat at £57.6m

Adj PBT (profit before tax) up 320% to £2.1m (from a low base last year)

Adjs are only small, and actually reduce profit this H1 by £154k.

Adj diluted EPS up huge % from almost nothing last year, to 8.7p this H1.

H1 dividend held at 8.0p, almost all of earnings, and uncovered by earnings LY.

Outlook - positive news here -

"The Group has a strong portfolio of products, underpinned by a strong balance sheet, and has a net cash position with substantial unutilised working capital facilities in place. On the back of our first half-year's performance and these signs of the Group's robust health, we anticipate profit before tax and highlighted items in respect of the full year to 31 August 2024 will exceed current market expectations. The Board is comfortable that the Group is on course to meet its targets."
Balance sheet - looks healthy to me. Inventories have reduced by £6m to £11.7m, with the benefit flowing half through to increased cash of £13.4m, and reduced trade creditors. Working capital looks very comfortable, with £25m net current assets. Put another way, the cash pile of £13.4m almost completely covers what they owe suppliers (£13.8m). There are no significant longer-term liabilities. So my verdict is that CCT is in rude financial health, meaning that there’s no solvency or dilution risk, and it has ample dividend-paying capacity, as it demonstrated last year with divis still paid despite not being covered by earnings. It’s not fashionable at the moment (where everyone seems to chase high ROCE), but I like the safety that a strong balance sheet provides investors with.

Cashflow statement - all looks fine to me, no issues. Note that share options charge is very low at £55k in H1, and £204k in FY 8/2023, certainly not excessive.

Broker update - thanks to Allenby for crunching the numbers this morning. It increases FY 8/2024 PBT by 10% to £6.6m. In EPS terms that is: OLD: 23.3p, NEW: 26.1p.

CCH shares historically have tended to only attract a high single digit PER. Is that fair though? I think a PER of about 12x seems fair here, so that gives me a share price target of 313p. That’s a bit above the current price, so there’s likely to be some upside here. A 10% rise in forecast earnings usually flows straight through to a 10% rise in share price on the day, so I imagine (I haven’t looked yet, as it’s funt o guess!!) we might end today c.300p, which would certainly not be a stretched valuation, especially when you take into account the very strong balance sheet, and generous divis, plus it has authority to do substantial buybacks - which I approve of where a share is cheap on fundamentals, and is not a diversion to cover up excessive management share options (as we saw recently at Trainline for example).
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[h1a3] 17/6/2024 16:45

Buy backs continue albeit there was a big drop today.
Reason???

[dan_the_epic] 04/6/2024 18:13

If EPS gets back to 40p next year then this can be £5 to £5.50 a share

share count reduced down to 18,713,523

I think they will upgrade big time again on this years 26.1p sooner or later