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Nice steady progress ahead of next interim announcement

Wrapping up events on Thursday (10/02/2011) will be Shire Pharmaceuticals (SHP) and following on from a couple of years of growth, 2010 is unlikely to prove any different. Charles Stanley analyst Jeremy Batstone-Carr explained: "The principle supporting factor driving Shire's robust share price performance over the latter part of 2010 is the high degree of earnings visibility going forward. Critically we believe that Shire offers one of the most attractive compound earnings growth profiles over the next three years. We do note, however, that the shares are highly rated." On this basis, he adopts an 'accumulate' recommendation on the stock but believes the going is about to get slightly tougher over the next 12 months.

Helesi (HLS), the Greece, Italy and Cyprus based waste management products manufacturer, revealed operating and financial performance for the second half of 2010 was in-line with previous guidance. Despite this, the group said revenue for 2010 is expected to fall from 73.9 million Euros (62.5 million pounds) a year prior to 50.5 million Euros (42.7 million pounds), due to "reduced activity in the market place and the implementation of fundamental reforms to local municipalities and communities". EBITDA is also expected to fall to 4 million Euros (3.4 million pounds), down from 12.7 million Euros (10.7 million pounds) in 2009. Helesi shares jumped 2p to 17p.

Improved trading and cost control at Supercart (SC.) have prompted the shopping trolley manufacturer to announce a "significant reduction in losses before taxation" for the year ended 31st December 2010. The company said it benefitted from improved revenue and margin retention - driven by increased unit sales and an improvement in gross margins - as well as the cost reduction measures announced at the time of the fund raising. It added that it has made further progress in its North American and European markets. Supercart shares remained unchanged at 2.75p.

InterQuest* (ITQ) traded in line with market expectations for the year ended 31st December 2010, the IT staffing group announced in a trading update, with strong growth in financial services offsetting the anticipated decrease in public sector business. "Our strategy of maintaining individually branded divisions focused on specific niches within the IT sector has given us an encouraging level of resilience", commented executive chairman Gary Ashworth. "InterQuest has remained profitable through the down-turn and we have entered 2011 with an expanded business." The shares gained 1p to 62.5p.

Shares in Powerflute Oyj (POWR) lost 1p to 16.75p on news the packaging and paper group expects trading performance for the year ended 31st December 2010 will be comparable with that achieved a year earlier. The group said, while its packaging papers business performed strongly during the final quarter, operating margins in its graphic papers subsidiary were impacted by "deteriorating market conditions". The business has made a "positive" start to the new financial year, it added.

Jan Newsletter Fully quoted on the London market, PRW is a world leader in the rapidly growing global market for interactive learning technology. Its 'ActiveClassroom' product is an industry-leading comprehensive classroom solution. The company was floated on the London Market on 17/3/2010 at around 200p. At the end of April it published an Interim Management Statement which revealed first quarter revenues up 49% to £53.9m and reported that the positive trend was continuing. Shareholders were assured that 2010's earnings were set to emerge at the higher end of expectations. The bad news which emerged mid 2010 was that US customers were savagely cutting back on orders. This ultimately pushed the share price to below 50p, some 70% below the issue price. The fall in the share price made it the worst performing new issue of the year. There are signs that the company is recovering and the share price has moved off the bottom to the current level. The Chairman remains optimistic that the figures for the year to 31/3/10 will not disappoint. Three research houses have recently published research on the PRW. The consensus is that pre-tax profits could emerge at around £23m. This implies that the shares could be trading on a prospective PER of 8.6 and a yield of 3.6%. Consider as a speculative buy..

JAN NEWSLETTER Eckoh is an interesting smaller company. It is the UK's leading developer of speech recognition solutions for customer contact centres and describes itself as "the specialist of choice for organisations looking to maximise the efficiency of their contact centre operations." The technology enables routine enquiries, transactions or payments to be processed without the need for the consumer to talk to an agent. For many companies this reduces operational costs, while freeing up agents to deal with more complex enquiries. The success of the technology has made Eckoh the largest developer of such hosted services in the UK. Its secure and robust infrastructure has the scalability to handle over 650,000 calls an hour and up to 8,000 calls simultaneously. Typical applications include: Intelligent call routing, Bill and Account payment, Product purchase, Subscription and Membership services as well as Ticket booking and Service outage notifications. In the six months to 30/9/10 pre-tax profits rose from £125,000 to £374,000. At the end of the period cash balances amounted to £5.0m compared with £3.3m at the beginning of the year. During the period there were two new contracts and existing contracts with Ideal Shopping Direct and Enterprise Rent-a-Car were renewed. Elsewhere, Interactive Voice Response, an Eckoh subsidiary, was sold to Telecom Express. It is also worth mentioning that Eckoh received the highest level accreditation for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. It is likely that this accolade resulted, towards the end of December 2010, in the award of a three-year contract from Whitbread to provide speech recognition services to Premier Inns. Whitbread is so far Eckoh's largest customer. Eckoh is busy and well financed and continues to enhance its reputation with an excellent service product. The outlook for the full year ending 31/3/11 is for pre-tax profits of around £1m and we anticipate the payment of a first dividend. Further growth is expected in the year ending 31/3/12. If, say, pre-tax profits of £1.5m are achieved, the shares could be trading currently on a forward PER of 10, which is undemanding. Consider as a buy. Price 7p Bid 6.75p Offer 7.25p; Sector: Support Services; Market Cap: £14.0m; EPIC ECK. (Echoh is quoted on the higher risk Alternative Investment Market. See Important Notes on last page.)

Adding to its product offering, engineering group Chamberlin (CMH) has acquired certain assets and the intellectual property of Jebron, the UK engineering business that designs and supplies high performance door closers, for 162,000 pounds in cash. Commenting on this, chief executive Tim Hair said: "They [the acquisitions] will enhance our engineering subsidiary, Exidor's product offering and, most importantly, they should add over 1 million pounds of profitable revenues to the subsidiary after integration is completed." Additional costs of up to 100,000 pounds are expected to be incurred in the current year as integration begins, it added.. Chamberlin shares were unchanged at 114.5p.

Electrocomponents (ECM), the electronics parts supplier, revealed pre-tax profits for the year ended 31st January 2011 remained in line with its expectations as strong sales growth continued in the UK and abroad. The group, which sells products ranging from batteries and cables to IT books and safety equipment, reported sales growth of 19% during the four months to 31st January 2011 with the international business growing at 23% and the UK by around 11%. Shares in Electrocomponents fell back 6.5p to 260.7p.

Full year underlying pre-tax profits at Shanks Group (SKS) are expected to be around market consensus, the waste management company announced, with strong underlying performance offsetting the expected one off decline in the Belgian landfill operations and adverse currency movements. In a trading update to 31st January 2011, the company said that while the December weather affected all of its European businesses, the impact on trading profit was expected to be offset by lower financing costs. Shanks shares inched down 1.5p to 115.5p.

Despite a difficult economic environment, food manufacturer Dairy Crest (DCG) reported "strong" trading for the third quarter ended 31st December 2010, and expects pre-tax profits for the year ended 31st March 2011 will be in line with its expectations. The chilled dairy foods company said third-quarter sales of its five key brands - Cathedral City cheese, Country Life butter, St Hubert Omega 3 spreads, Clover spreads and Frijj milk shakes - were up 11% compared to last year. It added that operational cost savings of over 20 million pounds is anticipated by the full year. Shares in Dairy Crest edged back 3.8p to 376.8p.

Following its reply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Brilinta, the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca (AZN) announced that a decision on whether to approve its acute coronary syndromes (ACS) treatment drug will be made by 20th July 2011. This comes after the Anglo-Swedish drug maker suffered a blow in December when Brilinta - designed to rival Plavix, the world's second-biggest selling drug - failed to win an immediate green light from the FDA. AstraZeneca shares inched down 26.5p to 2,936.5p.

Arbuthnot reiterated its "strong buy" rating for Vitec Group (VTC), the broadcasting equipment supplier, with a 715p target price. The broker notes the group's "strong" trading update in which Vitec reported that pre-tax profits for 2010 will be ahead of consensus. Arbuthnot also notes the immediate resignation of Richard Cotton as finance director. Vitec shares lost 8.5p to 591.5p.

Seymour Pierce moved its recommendation for fashion retailer French Connection Group (FCCN) from "hold" to "buy". The broker notes the group's trading statement in which pre-tax profits are expected to come in well above its forecast of 4.5 million pounds, and is thereby raising its forecast to 7 million pounds. That said, the reasons Seymour gave for upgrading the stock include: its low valuation; the strength of the company's balance sheet; and the potential for overseas developments. French Connection shares jumped 14.25p to 83.25p.

Coolabi (COO) [6p/£3.33 million] We write on this AIM-listed company, focused on the ownership and creative management of intellectual property assets, for the first time on news that they have signed four new licensing deals for its Poppy Cat TV series, which is to debut on Nick Jr in Spring 2011. Poppy Cat is a 52 episode series and the result of a co-production with King Rollo films, which animates the Macmillan book series that has sold over two million copies worldwide. The licensing deals include book publishing for a new series of books by Macmillan, a magazine publishing deal with Redan Publishing to feature the stories in their magazines, a deal with Aykroyd and TDP Licensing to create nightwear merchandise and a contract with Jumbo Games to produce Jigsaws. Coolabi has a number of other brands under its umbrella that include Scarlett and Crimson, Purple Ronnie, Bagpuss, the Clangers and Ivor the Engine, and whilst the last set of interim results (six months to 30 June 2010) were a little disappointing, we appreciate the efforts being made to drive this company forwards. We appreciate the proactive approach to building the Poppy Cat brand, and look forward to observing the response once the series goes live.

Interesting Company with some big name clients - appears to have lots of potential

Next Fifteen (NFC) [82.5p/£45.78 million] We last wrote on this AIM-listed public relations consultancy towards the end of October 2010 and this share has added over £4 million to its market cap since then. At the AGM held last week, Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, gave a reading update and said: "I am pleased to report that, with almost six months of trading under its belt, the group has made a good start to the current financial year. "We expect the interim results for the six months to 31 January 2011 to show good organic growth and improved profitability, boosted by a strong performance from our US technology and consumer PR businesses....The financial year 2011 is poised to be a significant year of growth for our group with market expectations of double digit profit and revenue growth. "The good start to the year and the positive momentum we are experiencing leaves the group well placed to meet these expectations." Next Fifteen talks about digital and consultancy and believes that in its space there will be winners and losers depending on how one reacts to the digital marketplace. With clients like Google (GOOG), YouTube, Visa (V), PayPal (PAPXX), and with a focus on the technology sector and on the US and Asian market place, as well as forays into new large markets such as India, we firmly believe Next Fifteen will be one of the winners. The CEO talked about growing the spend of his current clients as well as winning new business by pitching a high level of digital content. We said it before and we say it again, that strong financials and the company's desire to ensure that its business is both operationally and geographically diversified represents a good strategy for Next Fifteen in this dynamic industry. Next Fifteen is well managed, with solid organic growth ahead, and has proven itself in the business of acquiring and integrating good businesses. We look forward to the company's interim results on 5 April 2011.

AIM-quoted Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping continues to lose money but it is focusing on its core data processing and interpretation operations. Stripping out impairment provisions and other one-off, non-cash charges, the underlying loss fell from £8.71m to £8.37m in the year to August 2010.

Looks like you had a hard day on Friday but there is scope for a share price recovery here - but the directors seem to need to take a good long hard look at themselves