2014 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part IX)

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Conroy Gold & Natural Resources, Dragon Oil, FBD Holdings, First Derivatives, Greencore Group, Hibernia REIT, Independent News & Media, Irish shares, Irish Stock Exchange, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Norish, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project

Continued from here:

[NB: Worth revisiting Part I if you’re a new reader, or you’d like a refresher on TGISVP & my approach to the whole project.]

Company:   First Derivatives

Prior Post(s):   2012 & 2013

Ticker:  FDP:LN

Price:   GBP 1,070p

It’s been a wild ride for investors in the past year:  A year ago, FDP looked fairly valued to me – and for much of 2013, I wasn’t far wrong, with the shares clocking modest gains. But FDP took off abruptly in November…by January, the shares had almost doubled within 2 months & tripled within 6 months. With profits down in the interim results, I suspect this rally was more of a delayed response to FDP’s Aug-Nov news flow (with new contracts reported with Republic Wireless, the NYSE & ASIC). These all highlighted the capability & flexibility of the company’s Delta products/platform to deal with Big Data, both financial and non-financial. That’s a sexy pitch right now for investors & they responded accordingly… As usual, the mugs were the last to be sucked in – it’s no great surprise to see they’ve lost a third of their investment since January, with no particular reprieve in sight.

Even at these less elevated levels, I suspect the shares remain over-valued. While FDP continues to rack up attractive revenue growth, the rest of its accounts don’t paint such a pretty picture. Operating margins continue to compress (now between 11-12%), earnings growth is non-existent & the outstanding share count is mounting steadily. More troubling is the lack of operating free cash flow (cash generated from operations, less PPE & intangibles). However, this has been offset by residential property sales in the past couple of years – unfortunately, this source of cash should dry up fairly soon. Perhaps more troubling is the continued reliance on consulting (almost 75% of revenue), rather than software sales. This is in response to the industry’s need for further cost-cutting, consolidation & compliance, rather than renewed secular growth. But it’s 5 years now since the end of the financial crisis. Perhaps there’s more of the same work to come, but I worry it’ll dry up & the company will suddenly have a death valley to cross…before we see a genuine return to growth in the finance industry.

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2013 – The Great Irish Share Valuation Project (Part XI)

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Barryroe, CRH, DGO, Dragon Oil, Fiordland, IFG Group, IFP, Irish shares, Irish value investing, Melrose Resources, PCI, Petroceltic International, Providence Resources, PVR, TGISVP, The Great Irish Share Valuation Project

Continued from here.

Company:   Petroceltic International

Prior Post:   Here

Ticker:   PCI:LN

Price:   GBP 6.3p

Last year, I correctly tagged Petroceltic as slightly over-valued. Despite that, I’ve been surprised to see the share price continue its decline in the past few months…because 2012 was a game-changing year! There were two key events:

First, Petroceltic closed on a GBP 170 mio merger with Melrose Resources in October. This was essentially a merger of equals (with PCI shareholders getting 54% of the enlarged company), and both companies possessed nicely overlapping portfolios in the MENA, Mediterranean & Black Sea regions. The key attraction of the deal, however, was the fact it was the merger of a producer & an explorer. This is an incredibly powerful combination in the hands of the right management team: Production can actually fund a company’s exploration plans on a self-sustaining basis. In this instance, pre-merger cashflows suggest operating cash generation (after interest & taxes) is now running around $155 mio pa post-merger, which nicely funds Petroceltic’s forecasted 2013 exploration & development programme.

The Great Irish Share Valuation Project IX

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2P Reserves, Alkermes, Amarin, Anadarko, Andor Technology, Botswana Diamonds, Circle Oil, Clontarf Energy, Connemara Mining, Cooley Distillery, Cove Energy, Dragon Oil, Escher Group, Galantas Gold, Interior Services Group, iShares MSCI Ireland ETF, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Jim Beam, John Teeling, Kentz, Minco, Ovoca Gold, Petrel Resources, PTT, Royal Dutch Shell, Siteserv, TGISVP, Tullow Oil, USPS, Worldspreads, Xstrata, Xtierra

Continued from here.

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve another 20 odd non-ISEQ listed Irish stocks to work through still. I should first note I’ve eliminated Alkermes (ALKS:US) and Amarin (AMRN:US) (and Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ:US) never even made the cut*). Clearly, an Ireland HQ is particularly attractive for pharma companies! Any reader care to enlighten us further..? I wasn’t fooled by this shell game, but they had some Irish directors/management/locations, so I planned to include them in TGISVP. Now I look again, their Irish ‘representation‘ is pretty small, and sure to get even smaller… So they’re out – unless someone wants to email and persuade me otherwise!?

I’ve also revised valuations for Worldspreads (WSPR:LN) and Siteserv (SSV:LN) – in fact, they kind of swap places in the rankings! I was briefly commenting here on both companies, and their respective scandals, and it got a little out of control..! I had to upgrade to a separate article. Note I’m keeping a file of all original share prices and valuations, which I’ll use for any performance/evaluation exercises at a later date. Right, let’s see if we find anything interesting in this batch: