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Benchmark - Down but certainly not out

March 2016

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.

When I spoke to Benchmark’s chief executive Malcolm Pye a couple of years ago, he said he wanted to under promise and over deliver. Looking at 2015 results, I can’t agree that market expectations were well managed but whilst the trading might look very fuzzy, the company has completed seven acquisitions and, as I describe below, the nature and scale of future profits has been transformed with sales of £122m forecast this year rising to £160m next year.This is from a base of £44m sales in 2015, upon which Benchmark reported a pretax profit excluding R&D/investment of £1.5m down from £5.8m although there was a trading loss including R&D of £11.6m. There h ...

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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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