Member Info for jange

GB Chief Executive Officer Richard Law said: "The CRB checking sector is currently going through the same transformation that we saw in the ID Verification sector, with online processes replacing out-dated and paper-based systems. TMG CRB has built a strong foothold in this area and we consider that it will be an excellent fit with our other group offerings. "We will combine TMG CRB's capability to check criminal records with our existing ID Verification service which will help organisations make safer recruitment decisions more quickly and more efficiently. Although currently small, the TMG CRB business adds a strategic capability to our overall Identity Management portfolio and the prospect for very positive growth."

Identity management specialist GB Group has acquired tmg.tv, the UK's second largest Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) umbrella organisation. GB purchased the group for a total of £3.0m, including an initial payment of £2.25m, with the remaining £0.75m in June 2014, although this is dependent upon TMG achieving stretching growth targets. The acquisition is excected to be earnings-enhancing in its first year as part of the group. In TMG CRB's unaudited accounts for the year to June 2012, the company had net revenue of £1.8m and profit before interest and tax of £0.5m. TMG's CRB checking system currently processes over 170,000 checks a year and is used predominantly by organisations who recruit individuals working with children and vulnerable adults. The firm has made the purchase to access the growing market for online CRB disclosure checks and broaden the service offering that it is able to offer its growing CRB client base. It will also enable the company to package together an integrated online employment screening solution from across the group's data sets to provide ID Verification, criminal record disclosures and entitlement to drive checks.

Densitron Technologies has been hit by a profit warning coupled with concerns over its exposure to a lease liability that is going to mediation. House broker Westhouse Securities had pencilled in full-year pre-tax profits of £1.62m on revenues of £26.16m. However, the company revealed that although profits will be above last year's figure of £1.06m, they will not meet Westinghouse's estimates. The company commented: "The primary cause of this is certain orders being received later than anticipated as a result of which the Directors now expect the deliveries associated with these orders, and therefore resultant sales, to be delayed into 2013." Nevertheless, the company emphasises that orders booked in the first 9 months of the year remain strong and are in excess of 10% higher than those booked in the same period in 2011. As regards the leasehold liability, estimated to be around £370,000, this relates to a lease signed 25 years ago for a property that was used by a subsidiary of Densitron that has since been sold. Densitron will now undertake mediation with the fund manager (Ashtenne), that owns the property and its former subsidiary that rented it, Fenograph, in the interests of progressing the matter in an expedient manner. It is hoped that this will enable the property to be re-marketed, after which the historic liability can be settled.

@UK, a cloud ecommerce marketplace, has been awarded a framework agreement for cloud services via the G-cloud framework. @UK is the the only provider of ecommerce on the framework, and its Care Marketplace is the only one currently available on any framework. In what is its first year providing a Social Care marketplace, the board expects that the company's revenues from the first two pilot customers will be approximately £0.5m in the current year, with £0.31m paid and £0.19m remaining to be delivered and billed this year. In a statement the firm said: "The board believes this augurs well for the company's prospects in the following year, ending 31 December 2013, and future years, from this strand of business alone. "The board believes that there are 160 Local Authorities that need to implement a care marketplace as part of the move to individual budgets by April 2013. The potential earnings range from a care directory at £20k to a fully integrated marketplace at £500k,giving a potential market size of approximately £80m."

Antenna maker Sarantel said that it is progressing on its path to reach break-even after an impressive rise in revenue in the second half. Revenue in the six months to September 30th was 160% higher than the first half, helped by a 62% increase in unit sales. As a result, full-year revenues are expected to be up 35% year-on-year at £3.0m. The company, which make miniature filtering antennas for mobile and wireless devices, said this growth is mainly due to a number of military programmes now moving in production. Chief Executive David Wither said: "Sales growth in the second half has been encouraging and we continue to focus on the progress required to reach break-even. We remain confident about the longer term prospects for Sarantel's technology as our GeoHelix antennas deliver a level of positional accuracy and reliability essential for a rapidly growing number of location-sensitive applications. "Our growth potential is currently restrained by our limited sales and engineering resource. However, our leading-edge technology positions us well to benefit from increasing military demand for safety critical applications, along with growth in mobile social networking and location-based advertising in the consumer market." Sarantel had cash balances of £0.1m by the end of the fiscal year.

Arden Partners (ARDN) Director name: Mr Jonathan B Keeling Amount sold: 25,000 @ 50.00p Value: £12,500

M. P. Evans Group (MPE) Director name: Mr James Derek Shaw Amount sold: 3,793 @ 495.00p Value: £18,775

Top Director Sells M. P. Evans Group (MPE) Director name: Mr James Derek Shaw Amount sold: 5,000 @ 498.00p Value: £24,900

Telecity Group (TCY) Director name: Mr Michael Tobin Amount purchased: 2,000 @ 843.60p Value: £16,872

Whitbread (WTB) Director name: Ms Susan Mary Hooper Amount purchased: 800 @ 2,412.90p Value: £19,303

Top Director Buys Whitbread (WTB) Director name: Mr Richard Baker Amount purchased: 4,094 @ 2,357.00p Value: £96,496

The announcement came as the firm reported a period of "robust" trading and confirmed that earnings for the full year will be in line with market estimates. Consensus estimates for the full year ending December 31st are for pre-tax profits of £81.66m on revenues of £284.35m. With estimated earnings per share of 30.76p, it is on a forward price earnings ratio of 29.7 for 2012, dropping to 23.6 in 2013.

Telecity's Chief Executive Officer has bought shares in the company in a bid to show his confidence in the company's new Finnish acquisition, which on Monday proved decidedly unpopular, with shares dropping almost nine per cent. Michael Tobin made the modest purchase of 2,000 at 843.60p. The £16,872 purchase takes his stake in the company to 616,000 shares, equal to around 0.31% of the issued share capital. The company announced that it has acquired Finnish company Academica for €28m in cash. Academica operates data centres in Helsinki, and has 1MW of operational capacity and a secured capacity pipeline of 3MW. The purchase is a strategic move to establish a leading position in this growing market, the firm said. However, analyst James Goodman at Investec has commented that the acquisition was "very expensive". That said, he did add that, "the business has an expansion plan to quadruple the capacity to 4MW which would clearly lessen the price, but would depend on the incremental capital expenditure required". In a statement released on Monday, Tobin, said: "I am pleased with Telecity Group's progress to date in 2012. Notwithstanding the continuing barriers to entry in all major locations, we have delivered major capacity expansion projects across Europe to underpin future growth."

The group's XpressLink service continues to gain traction in the market and is leading the company to feel increasingly confident about the launch of Global Xpress, the superfast Ka band broadband network, next year. As a result, Inmarsat has decided for 2013 to increase its level of investment in certain L-band opportunities and bring forward some costs for Global Xpress that will provide for a more advanced state of readiness for service launch. At the end of September, the Inmarsat group had net borrowings of $1,423.0m, made up of cash and cash equivalents of $446.8m and total borrowings of $1,869.8m. Including cash and available but undrawn borrowing facilities, the group had total available liquidity of $1,527.5m.

Satellite operator Inmarsat saw improved and more stable revenues from its core wholesale operations in the third revenue, leaving it well placed to hit this year's and next year's revenue targets. Mobile satellite services (MSS) revenue at Inmarsat Global rose 3.3% in the three months ended September 30th to $186.7m from $180.7m the year before. However, the Other Income figure at Inmarsat Global, which includes the co-operation agreement with cash-strapped US telecoms network firm LightSquared, crashed to £11.7m from £64.5m the year before. Inmarsat Solutions' revenue moved up 4.3% to £205.9m from £197.4m the previous year. In total, group revenue in the third quarter was down 10.5% year-on-year to £325.9m from £364.1m. "The third quarter saw continued customer take-up of new services across our business sectors," revealed Rupert Peace, Chief Executive Officer of Inmarsat. "In maritime, another very positive quarter was driven by the benefit of pricing initiatives earlier in the year and by the continuing strong take-up of FleetBroadband. Despite the headwinds we face from the on-going withdrawal from Afghanistan, results for our land mobile business improved with growth from IsatPhone Pro and positive underlying data growth due mainly to new BGAN subscribers," he added.

Broker comment James Goodman, Analyst at Investec, has a 'hold' rating on Telecity Group with a price target of 750p. In his opinion: "At around 18 times estimated EV/EBITA [enterprise value/earnings before interest, tax and amortisation] for the full year 2013 we continue to see the shares as fully-valued, given the requirement to reinvest ongoing profits to maintain growth. Maintain Hold." .........but always dyor and good luck

In addition, it recently strengthened its position in Finland with the acquisition of Academica for €28m in cash. Academica operates data centres in Helsinki, anad has 1MW of operational capacity and a secured capacity pipeline of 3MW. The purchase is a strategic move to establish a leading position in this growing market, the firm said. Michael Tobin, Chief Executive Officer of Telecity Group, commented: "I am pleased with Telecity Group's progress to date in 2012. Notwithstanding the continuing barriers to entry in all major locations, we have delivered major capacity expansion projects across Europe to underpin future growth. "I am also particularly pleased with the acquisition of Academica, which together with the previous acquisition of Tenue, has established our leadership position in the exciting Helsinki market place and will allow us to focus on developing core colocation revenues." Net debt remains at approximately two times expected full year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. The group recently extended its senior debt financing facility to £350m and refreshed the terms of the whole facility for five years.

Telecity Group, a data centre operator, has reported a period of 'robust' trading and has confirmed that earnings for the full year will be in line with market estimates. Consensus estimates for the full year ending December 31st are for pre-tax profits of £81.66m on revenues of £284.35m. With estimated earnings per share of 30.76p, it is on a forward price earnings ratio of 29.7 for 2012, dropping to 23.6 in 2013. Growth in the digital economy is driving demand for data centre capacity in Europe and Telecity's total announced capacity across Europe is now 135MW. This expansion will come on-line progressively over the next five years in response to customer demand, and, according to the company, it should provide "significant" medium-term revenue growth potential. Telecity recently completed a number of key expansion projects, which are now on-line allowing for phased growth in 2013 in each location. New capacity has been brought on-line in the key London Docklands market and the group has secured additional capacity in Milan.

Specialist insurance group Hiscox said it is too early to produce any meaningful estimate of claims from Sandy as it posted 6.4 per cent increase in gross written premiums for the nine months to September 30th. "New York City and surrounding states are not yet fully functioning as people are struggling to get back to their homes and businesses. We have not received any material notifications of claims from our insurers at this stage," the group said in a company update. The Bermuda-based firm said gross written premiums increased year on year to £1.24bn from £1.17bn before. Chief Executive Bronek Masojada commented: "Until Superstorm Sandy hit last week it had been a relatively quiet year for Hiscox which puts us in a good position to absorb any losses. The devastation wreaked by Sandy reminds us all of the critical role insurers play in people's lives." Its primary US property business experienced rate increases of up to 10% year on year. Reinsurance rates for US and international property catastrophe business rose by 5-10% during the year, it added. Hiscox said the reinsurance teams in Bermuda and London have a very manageable exposure to crop losses caused by drought conditions in the US. Its reserves for the Costa Concordia remain unchanged at net US$20m. Investment return for the period increased by 2.7% year to date while invested assets at the end of September totaled £3.03bn and asset allocation remains largely unchanged from the end of June.

This is how analysts at Panmure Gordon see things: This is what analysts at Panmure Gordon see things: "The acquisition is important to Pru given that it doubles its business in Thailand where insurance penetration at 2.7% is still very low. South East Asia is Pru's Asian growth engine and we view the acquisition as strategically significant in that it fills an important gap. "(...) It is not clear how the £358m will be funded but we assume that it will be from a mixture of internal resources and possible hybrid debt given how relatively inexpensive such an option would be. We do not anticipate any meaningful contribution to IFRS earnings in 2013 given that there will be a period of training to be undertaken, especially with the ex-Siam City Bank branches."