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Hercules - Swift recovery on the insurance side

March 2004

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

  • Epic Code:
  • HPS
  • Price:
  • 285p
Hercules moved up sharply following interim results for the six months ended 31 December.  Given that two of Hercules' divisions,  Deacon and Farr are both seasonal, earning a disproportionate amount of their profit in the second half, the results were not too important although they did demonstrate an improving trend across all Hercules' property related businesses, especially on the insurance side which is 75% of sales. Overall pretax profit was £3.34m. Adjusted earnings were 12.9p. As expected, net debt also reduced by £1.8m to £33.9m, helped by no new acquisitions in the period. Since the results, Hercules has taken advantage of its soaring share price to place 0.9m new shares and raise £2.5m. ...

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With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

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