Manolete Partn. Share Price (MANO)

StreetsJ - its a bit hard on the co to not credit them for expanding and that requires new trained staff and the overheads that come with that. I just hope that work continues to pour in. Otherwise they may have to contract rather than expand further. At present though, there would seem to be more and more defaults and that is good business for this co.

I guess there's some relief in this statement. But if you ignore everything down to what revenue and profit will be for FY24, it's not quite so pretty. The previous Peel Hunt forecast (supposedly reviewed in December but actually unchanged since July) was for a EBIT of £8m. I wrote on here in November that I could just about tweak it up to £5m. Today they say it will be £2.5m. That's after £1.6m in 1H - so just £0.9m in 2H. If you double the first half interest charge (£0.6m) that takes PBT to £1.2m for the FY24 and just £0.3m in 2H. Net debt has risen slightly from £12m in 1H to £12.25m.

So I would say the numbers are pretty poor. Maybe 1.8p EPS for FY24.

However, notwithstanding Cooklin's natural overoptimism, the trends do seem to be in the right direction: case size is growing again, market is growing, house market is reasonably stable (necessary for recoveries) . Profits are squeezed because they've added cost ahead of this growth. I'd be interested to see what forecast Canaccord comes out with for FY25. Perhaps they won't, because it's too difficult to forecast. But that itself is a big problem.

Share price is only back to where it was in February so it's not as if this move means there isn't more upside, but I can't help remain cautious. Fundamentally I find it difficult to trust companies which put 23 paragraphs of good news before telling us - and not even explicitly - that profits will be down in H2 on H1.

....there are other quoted shares in this sector who might be thinking what a perfect time to stick in a cheeky bid!

I am losing big time here but do not propose to cut losses. I might even buy more (again!) depending upon how they are perceived in coming weeks.

I personally think to say “relatively poor” you must have ann underlying agenda

Does it? apart from sp I wouldn't ignore trade volume, number of trades and spread..