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CCT The Character Group Plc

278.00
0.00 (0.00%)
Last Updated: 08:00:28
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Type Share ISIN Share Description
The Character Group Plc LSE:CCT London Ordinary Share GB0008976119 ORD 5P
  Price Change % Change Share Price Shares Traded Last Trade
  0.00 0.00% 278.00 5,419 08:00:28
Bid Price Offer Price High Price Low Price Open Price
270.00 286.00 278.00 270.00 278.00
Industry Sector Turnover Profit EPS - Basic PE Ratio Market Cap
Toys,hobby Gds & Supply-whsl 122.59M 3.5M 0.1873 14.84 51.93M
Last Trade Time Trade Type Trade Size Trade Price Currency
11:35:59 O 179 277.80 GBX

The Character (CCT) Latest News

The Character (CCT) Discussions and Chat

The Character Forums and Chat

Date Time Title Posts
09/11/202414:10A stock on a eps of one?13,461
29/10/202409:34** Character Group **-
15/9/201709:55CHARACTER GROUP CHARTS ONLY44
09/6/201616:10character group2
05/11/201014:42Character-Robosapien a Big Seller ?1,549

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The Character (CCT) Most Recent Trades

Trade Time Trade Price Trade Size Trade Value Trade Type
11:35:59277.80179497.26O
10:03:03274.101,3973,829.18O
09:20:27278.003,78510,522.30O
08:12:45270.0058156.60O
2024-11-20 14:00:18278.001,2013,338.78UT

The Character (CCT) Top Chat Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 21/11/2024 08:20 by The Character Daily Update
The Character Group Plc is listed in the Toys,hobby Gds & Supply-whsl sector of the London Stock Exchange with ticker CCT. The last closing price for The Character was 278p.
The Character currently has 18,681,023 shares in issue. The market capitalisation of The Character is £51,933,244.
The Character has a price to earnings ratio (PE ratio) of 14.84.
This morning CCT shares opened at 278p
Posted at 19/7/2024 14:21 by brucie5
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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Posted at 04/6/2024 18:13 by dan_the_epic
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
Posted at 13/5/2024 12:29 by pireric
There is still somewhat of an overhang to clear as you can buy for example 20k at 292p at present. The share buybacks will help with clearing that over time as they still have £600k in the current programme, and significant potential additional buyback power under authority from the AGM. The finals suggested they are pleased to buy back when there is stock available. Feels a little similar to the overhang recently at ANP, which then cleared and allowed the fundamentals to shine through to the share price

Eric
Posted at 13/5/2024 10:28 by dan_the_epic
Paul Scott positive on CCT on hid latest podcast
Posted at 10/5/2024 08:28 by pireric
Last one for now, but if you run some maths:

- I have GMs for the full year at 26.9%, compared to Allenby at 26.2%. First half GMs were up 30bps, so down 50bps for the full year looks very conservative, although FOB is lower margin

-Selling and distribution GMs have historically been ~2/3rds to 3/4s incurred in 1H. I'm assuming conservatively it's a bit closer to 50/50 seasonality this year

- On these numbers, I'm getting £8.3m of EBIT for FY24, compared to Allenby at £6.7m

- And I'm getting EPS of 32.5p compared to Allenby at 26.1p

Which If I'm right would spell 25% of EPS upgrades over the course of the next few months and would support a materially higher share price than here for sure. The stock is still broadly bumping along its low end of recent history. I think it's interesting management were happy to guide up expectations at the half year stage and were happy to run buybacks.

Well off the radar of most small cap investors and sentiment on the company would still be negative. This makes it a nice contrarian setup.

360 to 380p by year end is my estimate, which with an 8p dividend, would be a 76 to 96p return or 26 to 33% return.

Eric
Posted at 09/5/2024 21:23 by pireric
Some of my initial thoughts for CCT
- Market cap £55.2m
- Latest reported net cash £12.9m -> EV of £42.3m. Also £3m of investment property on the books, and freeholds (in use)

I've long viewed CCT as more of a trading share than one to own long-term, despite the attractive dividend yield at these levels. And that is very evidence in the share price chart - lots of deep troughs and peaks periodically.

Pretty obvious why; there are fluctuations around the toy industry in terms of what is in or out of fashion. But this has long been a great share to own when you're just coming of the bottom of one of those down years. I think that is where we currently are

I think it's worth looking back at the last 8 years to get a better feel for what you get for the ~£42m EV:

2014: £98m revenue, 27p EPS
2015: £99m revenue, 37p EPS
2016: £121m revenue, 48p EPS
2017: £115m revenue, 50p EPS
2018: £106m revenue, 44p EPS
2019: £120m revenue, 43p EPS
2020: £109m revenue, 18p EPS - COVID
2021: £140m revenue, 40p EPS
2022: £176m revenue, 45p EPS
2023: £123m revenue, 20p EPS - Weak demand / COL squeeze

The 2024 estimates from Allenby which are visible here

are for 2024: £130m revenue, 26p EPS

Ultimately either a revenue recovery here is key towards re-entering the 40p range or a cost slim-down. The cost slim-down one is easier to deliver I suspect with more certainty, as they have been very good at managing smaller revenue swings in the past and minimising the EPS impact. That is why the first half results this year are so meaningful; they are showing really good steps around cost management. Looking at the first half cost base and thinking about the second half, it looks very possible to me that you come out closer to 30-32p of EPS for 2024, particularly with the buybacks which are being conducted, which would be nice upside from current estimates.

I would be surprised if when 2025 estimates are launched by the brokers, they aren't pointing to 35-37p+ of EPS for that year on the assumption that industry-level demand headwinds move back towards normality. Bear in mind we have a materially lower share count post the buybacks vs. prior years so like for like EPS versus many of the years in the time series is actually >5% higher.

In any case, the earnings power of CCT seems to be closer to 40p than 26p currently forecast for this year, and that's even when higher management remuneration have been baked into those prior years.

The EBITDA forecast on the 26p forecasts I estimate for 2024 minus ROU depreciation is £9.6m so this is trading on about 4.4x EV/EBITDA, which seems very undemanding as this is entering back into an earnings upcycle, hopefully. Hasbro and Mattel are on 9-12x. Proxy should also benefit from Euro 2024/Topps cards.

On the core business, we'll see if the efforts to focus more on international markets pays off: "Whilst the UK and Irish domestic markets will always remain critical to Character, the Board recognises that opportunities for significant sales and profit growth lie in further developing the Group's international markets. We are focussing on this area of our business and we are pleased to report at this early stage that, following the recent previews and presentations of our 2024 ranges and new additions at the Global Toy Fair in Los Angeles to our retail and international distribution customers, our 2024 product offering has been very well received. Therefore, with International sales forecast to grow in the second half of the current financial year, this bodes well for the Group's strategic focus in this area."

My inclination is to see fair value here is closer to 400p than 293p, which with a 6%+ dividend yield would be a very good return off these levels. When the MDs want to hang up their boots, I can see this being snapped up by a player in the industry, at a materially higher multiple, with the benefit that the directors from a shareholding perspective are well aligned.

Eric
Posted at 09/5/2024 09:14 by dan_the_epic
Allenby forecasts are still too low

CCT 8.7p EPS in first half vs 0.5p last year

Full year estimate is 26.1p vs 20p last year

So they expect less EPS in the second half despite LOWER costs, and MORE revenue than last year.

This will do 30p+ of EPS this year

Buy.
Posted at 09/5/2024 07:39 by dan_the_epic
Allenby Research up their forecast to 26.1p for EPS this year still a long way up to the 40p and over days of recent years and if that happens then this will be a 500p stock again

CCT should keep doing buybacks at these levels
Posted at 01/5/2024 10:27 by linton5
Very static share price not many shares available,results next week regarding last update I’m expecting cct to read we’ll share buybacks going on but can’t get stock
Posted at 06/3/2024 04:16 by h1a3
Hi All,
Very quiet board.
I am hoping that CCT will provide a positive update in the near future.
Does any one have any views of where CCT will go.
The Character share price data is direct from the London Stock Exchange