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Absolutely right burnie38. They've all been very clever restructuring and driving efficiency, but lets see some growth - otherwise its ever decreasing circles. They've had some acquisitions in the year (albeit not that significant), and Carillion will hit them the other way, so time to dig deep and make the business bigger. I'm not sure management know how to do this, or what this looks like. Shame because the competition certainly do.

yes, a bit of a victory, if you just ignore the two year diversion they got themselves tied up in. Should never have got in that position in the first place. think of all that management time wasted. crack on with the acquisitions, and lets see some growth.

you have to go a long way back to get the Power division numbers split out from the wider Tools business. 2009 was the last year reported with Power as separate companies. �32m revenue in Speedy Power and a further �49m in LCH generators. That was off hire fleet NBVs of �25m and �27m respectively, and it was back in the heady days before the results were affected by construction down-turn. Of course, we never see the break-out of how these divisions perform, so it's all speculation I get the feeling it's a shadow of its former glory days however. I take exception to Exhireman's view about Tools being the profitable core. I've seen loads of smaller independent niche plant operators making great, consistent, returns in the plant market. It's specialist though, and if you try and run it like a tools outfit, you'll stuff it up. Examples? Fork Rent (became part of Ardent), A Plant, and Vp all have 'heavier' offerings than speedy, and all seem to have been able to make decent profits. I really don't understand the logic though. They're reducing the number of divisions, and then encouraging specialisms having centralised it... Does that mean they get on a run their own business, or keep referring back for permission to do things...? The declaration of focusing on secondary revenues feels a bit limp too. Why wouldn't you go after the core revenue when peers (lets forget HSS) are reporting +5-10% organic. Margins are far better, and you'd drive secondary revenues off the back of the bigger core. I congratulate the current management on making the existing business more efficient, but it has all the hallmarks of being pleased at saving �5, and completely missing the �50 sales opportunity at the same time. The next year will be the proof. It's one thing restoring a business to the level of profit it used to have (2015 = �22m PBT), it's another thing completely using the debt facility to invest in new business. Will they find the right deal? Do they have the courage? They year after, assuming they make the investment, will be the decider. Can they realise the synergies, profit improvements the invement promised, and not make a total hash of integrating it into the Group. Speedy doesn't have a good track record on doing this. Then, and only then, will I think they've delivered. And if they don't invest, and sit on an ever-decreasing net debt position, can somebody get the cheque book out, get the business back to a sensible level of gearing, and buy some of my shares back at a decent price? As for HSS, who knows. I really liked one of the comments below about penny shares and only being worth 10-15p. Anyone remember that company called Ashtead when they were on their uppers years ago, and the share price fell to 2p...? But it was a different world then...

I’m still looking for the core Hire like-for-like percentage. Every other metric studiously declared, but all we know is that it “increased” - I assume if it was a decent increase, they would have been shouting about it. Also, “like-for-like” is a bit of a way of muddying the water. I assume absolute core revenue isn’t up in the UK business. Again, they would be shouting about it if it was. I’m not negative on this, but there doesn’t seem to be a desire to grow the core business, which would make a lot of their restructuring problems go away. I know the market is difficult, but it is for competition too, and aside from HSS, everyone else seems to be doing a decent job of finding growth. Good news is they have a great opportunity to return funds to shareholders when they realise their gearing is substantially lower than peers. Shareholders are being patient for now, but how much longer do they have to wait for the group to use Other Peoples Money to find some growth, and return some expensive equity - the dividend doesn’t really touch the sides. I don’t believe they can claim to be the ‘leading’ UK Hire business with A Plant and Vp both as large, if not larger.

I think they’re becalmed because the underlying rental revenue isn’t growing. Let’s see tomorrow, but I expect a lot of the growth will come from secondary revenue streams - consumables, fuel etc. Compared to AHT and Vp., it doesn’t look like they’re growing the core. Efficiency will get you so far, but you can’t keep growing profit by earning the same amount from an increasingly tight overhead. They don’t really talk to a ‘rental’ number (or at least haven’t to date) so let’s see.