Updates

Highbury House

May 2005

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.

Future appears to have used the Competition Commission investigation into the proposed offer for Highbury, which raised concerns that it would dominate the games industry, to allow its takeover offer to lapse. With its exclusivity agreement in place and banks piling the pressure on Highbury, Future has been able to go back and cherry pick 38 titles (Fast Car, Fast Bikes, DJ, DVD Review, the What Video titles) from Highbury for £30.5m. These titles had sales of £34m and an operating profit of £5.3m last year, an exit multiple of 5.8x which looks ridiculously low. Highbury's operations now include Paragon, acquired in 2003 for £32m from 3i. It includes various computing, photography and video games titles. Highbury ...

To access our archive of articles and to receive current issues you need to subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber? Login

Kleeneze - Acquires second e-retailer

Microgen - Trading ahead of expectations

Highbury House - Some consumer sectors are weaker (August 2004)

Highbury House - Entertainment titles exceed expectations (June 2004)

Highbury House - Four of its top ten consumer titles were acquired last year (May 2004)

Highbury House (February 2004)

Highbury House (January 2004)

Highbury House - Prospective PE of just 5.7 (April 2003)

Highbury House (January 2003)

Highbury House - Prospective PE is 6.2 for next year (September 2002)

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.

All material on this website is protected by copyright. You may use Information retrieved from the www.scsw.co.uk website for your own personal non-commercial use which means that you may not sell or copy this information to any third party without prior written consent. ISSN 1358-183X