Account gamble
Ladies Pride again
John Bull
One particularly successful piece of advice that I gave last January was the recommendation to buy Ladies Pride Outerwear. The shares moved up sharply after the full year profits had showed a sharp improvement, advancing from £389,000 to 028,000. It might appear that I am chancing my luck but again I advise a punt in the shares, on the prospect of further appreciation following the interim results due on July 26. Let me just recapitulate a little about Ladies Pride. This Leicester-based company's business is in knitted jersey and dressmaking. Its profit record has shown good growth with the group making £264,000 three years ago. A good export business has also helped.
In the current year prospects are enhanced by the benefits of a new factory being fully on stream and adding 15 per cent more capacity. And certainly in January the directors said that the current year (ending November 30) was proceeding "extremely well " with increased sales and production to date.
Last time I made an estimate of profits I erred on the side of caution. This time I would not be surprised to see profits at around £650,000 pre-tax. The interim statement will go a long way to confirm this target, I hope, and such a figure makes the share look very good value. As it is they are selling at only 9.7 times last earnings at 74p and yield 4.4 per.
cent. So there is still a lot to go cent. There is still a lot to go for.
In conclusion I was pleased to see that Montague Meyer produced an excellent set of figures this week. On turnover up from £88 million to £91 million, pre-tax profits worked out at £10.1 million. There is also encouragement for the future with the growing feeling that timber companies, such as Montague Meyer Will not be so violently susceptible to profit fluctuations. For the Short term at least the outlook for the group is good with a rise in sales of a third for the first quarter of the year, 1973-74. Even after the appreciation in the share price from 114-p, at which level I recommended them, to 121p currently, there is further scope..
First Last Account dealings dealings day July 2 July 13 July 24 July 16 July 27 Aug 7 July 30 Aug 10 Aug 21
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