Member Info for Investinvalue

Progress

· Continued expansion of the Group's fund range with the launch of the LF Miton Balanced Multi Asset Fund on 29 January 2018 and the LF Miton US Smaller Companies Fund on 14 March 2018

· 13 out of 16 funds are first or second quartile performers since manager tenure to 30 June 2018^

· Seven consecutive quarters of positive net flows





David Barron, Chief Executive Officer of Miton Group plc, commented:

"The first half of the year saw continued strong organic growth and momentum within the business. We have seen positive net inflows across a wide range of strategies and good long-term performance. As noted in the Pridham Report, the Group achieved the 7th highest net retail sales in the UK in the first quarter of 2018. Our genuinely active strategies have increasing relevance, we were delighted to be nominated for the Investment Week 2018 Specialist Fund Management Group of the year and to also have two of our funds shortlisted for being best in their sectors with the LF Miton US Opportunities Fund winning. The outlook for the financial year as a whole is encouraging."

The Group will announce its results for the half year to 30 June 2018 on 24 September 2018. With effect from 30 September 2018 the Group will report its unaudited statement of AuM on a quarterly basis.

Good Morning John,

I hope you are well.

MGR is currently steady but believe its about to rise at the same pace as IPX. I have bought into MGR and have an interest here. Like both and believe they are both cracking investments. The current SP at MGR IMHO is massively undervalued and believe will treble by this time next year. I've looked at previous AUMs for both and the charts and can see a similar pattern.

STRONG BUY

10th January 2017
IPX share price was 64.50p with an AUM of £5 Billion

10th January 2018
IPX share price was £ 1.93 with an AUM of £8.2 Billion

27th July 2018
MGR current share price 66.60p with an AUM of just shy of £5 Billion

27th July 2018
MGR with a share price of £1.98 and an AUM of £ 8.6 Billion circa.

Watch this space. This is purely my prediction but looking at AUMs the active management I would say this is a SOLID INVESTMENT.

STRONG BUY

Q3 Production commencement will be interesting.

Cheers Jim.

Another question. Are there any similar companies to SXX within the UK or is there a comparison I can make to another company worldwide.

I'm a holder here and adding when I can. But does anyone think the current amount of shares in issue is particularly high and hence the reason the SP is not higher and moves north slowly?

Good Afternoon all,

Hope everyone is well here.

Can anyone share their ideas on why the SP of IPX is currently flying while MGR has yet to take off?

I know that the current AUM of IPX is circa £12 Billion and MGR is Circa £5 Billion. But surely only a matter of time before MGR starts moving north at the rate that IPX did?

Thoughts?

Should read MGR SP at 66p. Even better!!

Look at similar companies and the MGR SP in comparison with AUMs.

MGR: SP currently at 68p with AUMs at £4.5 billion

IPX: SP currently at £2.47p with AUMs at £11.7 billion

PAM: SP currently at £2.90p with AUMs at £7 billion

MGR undervalued and with AUMs increasing 35% last year I know where I am investing. MGR is by far the best value for money and this opportunity to buy at this price will not last long IMHO. DYOR ALWAYS..... AND GOOD LUCK.

Hi there Cheque,

Yes I was referring to the LSE site or share chat sites in general.

This company has huge upside. And if AUM increase to £7 Billion I see at least an SP of £1.50p and AUMs reach £11 Billion then I see no reason why SP will not be in excess of £2.20p+

I have just placed another huge Buy at 68p. Hoping to get it filled. I have researched this company and very happy with future outlook. P

Some rampers come on this site saying multibagger, you will get returns 10 times what you invest etc. etc. Not me.

Invest here and you could turn £10g into £40g maximum.

Or if you are a big investor £100,000k into £400,000k

I see this as a real investment and a real gain. Not speculative but a real opportunity to make money.

Since I started buying shares in companies I have seen the good the bad and the ugly.

Not in that order: Those looking for quick trading gains and ramping a share, those who have no shares but want the SP to drop further buy in price, losing money on shares because I have spoken with the Chairman personally who has given false promises and lost a lot. Never again. Value investing is the way forward.

This however is a company with fundamentals and huge upside which investors will make money on and I hope that all who invest will gain. The SP is undervalued. I look at undervalued stocks and shares and this is one of the best.

Always DYOR and Good Luck.

Summary

•Apple 2018 new product ramp for IQE could multiply their sales by a factor of three to Apple compared to 2017 within the camera module unit.

•Analyst consensus sales for 2018 of £178.2m look too low and our analysis comes out closer to £200m so we expect estimate upgrades to come.

•The share price has been on the back foot so far in 2018 but we expect this to change during the second half and into 2019.

I have written twice (here and here) on IQE previously for seeking alpha and would refer readers to these two reports to provide very valuable background on the business. This is a deliberately narrow report just focusing on a few key issues.

The continuing Apple opportunity for IQE within photonics

Roughly speaking Apple (AAPL) iPhoneX was 33m units out of 130m units produced in second half 2017. Assuming that the rumours are correct and the main camera module will now be available in all 3 models second half 2018 that should increase IQE’s (IQEPF) exposure to something like 95m units in second half 2018. They also had no unit sales first half 2017 as the iPhoneX wasn’t launched then where as 1H 2018 adds maybe 20m units to total 115m for all of 2018. That’s a factor of 3.5 times their 2017 addressable market within Apple for 2018 vs 2017. If we assume some pricing pressure per unit as volumes ramp and the same overall market share as a supplier to Apple then a factor of 3* seems possible to us in 2018 Apple sales for IQE compared to 2017.

In 2017 Total photonics revenue 1H was £15.9m and 2H £31.7m (full year £47.6m up 109%), if we assume all the 2H expansion was from Apple iPhoneX demand vs 1H then we have a guesstimate sales of £15.8m to Apple for iPhoneX in 2017. Following our volume numbers above of a 3 fold uplift for 2018 then 3* £15.8m=£47.4m of sales in 2018 to Apple with extra sales added of £31.6m vs 2017 numbers.

2017 total group sales were £154.5m and Bloomberg analyst consensus has £178.2m for 2018 up £23.7m in total (up 15% year on year), that’s well short of our guesstimate Apple only increase of £31.6m. That’s before any growth in the rest of the business or new products and customers etc. of which we believe there is plenty. Putting through an 8% growth rate for the business plus my Apple sales estimate gives a figure of circa £199m or a consensus sales upgrade of 12% . It’s also worth bearing in mind that photonics carry’s a higher margin than group averages as it’s a very complex high end product so all things being equal any upgrades should feed through more strongly at the profits level, hence 1 15-20% profits upgrade might be possible for 2018 current consensus estimates.

Now where is the next? MGR is increasing AUM incredibly fast and IMHO the next PAM.

Strong Buy IMHO

Good positive post! Agreed with all of it.

Elsewhere on London's junior market, investment manager Miton Group shot up 12.4 per cent, or 7p, to 63.5p after announcing that investors had piled £616million more into its funds in the first half of the year.

Momentum building at Miton

Aim-traded asset manager Miton Group (MGR:40p) has not only posted a major earnings beat for 2016, but the company has also announced that assets under management (AUM) have increased by £192m to almost £3.1bn in the 10 weeks since the financial year-end, supporting expectations of another robust year of earnings growth.

In the 12 months to end-December 2016, pre-tax profits rose by 70 per cent to £5.1m to produce a doubling of diluted adjusted EPS to 2.4p, significantly higher than the 2.1p anticipated by analyst Stuart Duncan at house broker Peel Hunt. Moreover, with net funds increasing by more than half to £21.3m, a sum worth 14p a share, the board has rewarded shareholders with a near 50 per cent hike in the dividend to 1p per share, or 25 per cent higher than forecast, in addition to spending £2.5m purchasing 6.6m shares for cancellation in an earnings accretive buyback in the first two months of this year.

Interestingly, Mr Duncan is conservatively factoring in year-end AUM of £3.3bn, only 5 per cent higher than current levels, in his 2017 pre-tax profit estimate of £5.4m. In view of the supportive equity market backdrop, the fact that the performance of eight of Miton's 14 funds are in the first quartile for their sectors, and that the asset manager will be launching a new global infrastructure fund this week, I feel the investment risk is skewed to the upside here. Indeed, I feel there is potential for a number of funds, including both the US Opportunities funds (AUM of £238m) and the 15-month old European Opportunities Fund (AUM of £82m), to build on strong fund inflows and their impressive investment performance.

In the circumstances, it's hardly surprising Miton's shares have rallied since I rated them a buy at 31.5p in the autumn ('On the financial beat', 25 October 2016), and subsequently reiterated that advice at 36p post the pre-close trading update ('In the ascent', 23 January 2017). In fact, the share price is now 73 per cent ahead of the entry point when I first spotted the earnings recovery potential a couple of years ago ('Poised for a profitable recovery', 4 April 2015). There is potential for more gains to come too and not just on valuation grounds as from a technical perspective there is no overhead resistance until the December 2013 high of 50p.

Offering 25 per cent upside to my new target price of 50p, valuing the equity on a reasonable 12 times conservative net profit estimates after adjusting for cash, I rate Miton's shares a strong buy.

Thanks for the welcome Ragnar,

Have invested with comfortable diversity in CPI but also MGR which is off the radar but to fellow investors is very very interesting. Take a look.

SHOULD READ:

Question: Where do you think MGR will be in 12 months with their AUM? I predict at least ££2.20 per share.

apologies for the typo.

SPs:

PAM: £2.85

IPX: £2.30

MGR: 0.68p

AUM:

PAM: £7 BILLION

IPX: 11.7 BILLION

MGR: 4.5 BILLION

Question: Where do you think MGR will be in 12 months with their AUM? I predict at least 7 million and a share price of at least £7 million.

Share Price will be at least £2.20 per share.

Huge upside. Buy at 68p per share.

IMO GLA!!

Miton Group

Miton is another asset manager with a streamline range of funds and investment trusts. It runs a suite of multi-asset offerings, in addition to its US, UK and Europe-focused equity vehicles. They are all currently performing well, which Henderson says is helping them grow assets under management. Assets grew by almost a third in the year to 31 December 2017.

But that hasn’t always been the case. In 2015, its multi-asset funds went through a period of outflows which was remedied by the acquisition of Darwin. That purchase brought fund managers David Jane, Anthony Rayner and Henna Hemnani in to run the mandates.

Further outflows followed in its UK Value Opportunities fund when George Godber and Georgina Hamilton left, but new manager Andrew Jackson has reversed that. Now, it seems to have stabilised its team of money managers.

The firm has also slimmed down the board, promoting David Barron to chief executive and appointing former CMC Markets boss Jim Pettigrew as chairman last year.

In that time, margins have shot up from 6% to 25% with final results in May finally lifted the share price back to 50p, a near-five-year high.

It has around £20 million of cash on its balance sheet and last year paid a dividend of 1.4p, up 40% on the previous year and converting to a yield of 2.7%. “That should grow quite well,” adds Henderson, who owns the firm in his Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT).

At 14 times last year’s earnings, Miton is more attractively valued than Impax. In fact, while the stock has doubled since Graham Bird, manager of Gresham House Strategic (GHS), bought it, he still thinks it’s undervalued.

“It’s still only valued at less than 2% of assets under management compared to other businesses which are on 3.5%,” he explains.

Miton is another where, according to Bird, “there’s a reasonable chance it will be consolidated at some point”. “I’d be surprised if they haven’t had at least one approach, the question is whether Gervais wants to work with someone else.”