Member Info for adamsmithfreethi

Thanks for the response. Nobody has a monopoly of answers (not even my database!) and it is good to exchange views. I agree about companies being too eager to do deals and not spending enough time actually making the existing business work and I note that the only correlation between executive performance and pay that has been found are inverse ones! I am not friend of highly paid management. Still I think Creston is attractive compared with other stocks in favour such as RNO and WIN. It has a much better balance sheet and overall financial performance going back over 10 years. The difference is that the latter two having had near death experiences and have got new management (or apparently reformed management) have the advantage of showing some improvement so on the strength of this the price doubles/triples. Given the sp is the discounted value of all future earnings I'd rather bet on an average of 5-10 years of data even if the latest news is not good (but not fatal in my opinion) rather than the opposite. Also continually going in and out of stocks trying to finesse the timing merely racks up costs via the bid-sell spread

I've built a pretty comprehensive database/analytical tool I used to evaluate shares based on the Walker method. Creston has always come up as one of the admittedly value biased cohort of other shares I compare it against. The almost universally negative comment about Creston here and at iii made me think. I've just looked back at the diluted eps figures for creston when it was riding high in 2005/2006. They are respectively 6.9 and 7.7. At a share price of 200p this implies a PE of 25/28. The last full year eps was 14.7 but the share price never got above 110 which is a PE of 7.5! The fact is that this stock has been de-rated and yes the recent interim results aren't brilliant but if you strip out one off costs they don't look as bad. Add in a strong balance sheet, a reasonably bullish forecast and in my opinion reasonable management (it's not the absolute level at which the board pays itself but the relative amount compared to its staff that I pay attention to) and I think this is reasonable bet. I've just taken advantage of a sudden price fall and topped up at 83p. Only time will tell if that was the capitulation moment....

I would have thought you list your company on AIM and then sell your shares after a short period. Ploughing back 30m into China doesn't strike me as suspicious in itself. If Naibu want to get to the 3rd and 4th category cities before anybody else then I would have thought they would need to rely on their own logistics since my definition we're talking about undeveloped markets Still it's an interesting point about the logistics centre. How did you find out about it and do you know where it is going to be located? Thanks KWB1 for the info anyway.

Only time will tell. If the company performs at least moderately well, keeps its nose clean and pays a divi (in cash) then confidence will build. I've bought on the dips but am holding, hoping and watching (like a hawk!)