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Shore Capital note the H1 results show "good strategic progress".

They've retained their forecast of 1.3p EPS and a 0.3p dividend.

It's also worth noting that the supplier risk from the Gazprom-related entity has largely disappeared now that it's been taken into public ownership by the German government.

A couple of worthwhile extracts:

"Outlook.

Management is retaining its current guidance, noting that the energy Assurance services are set to see challenging markets continuing with energy prices. In the Assurance business, we note that the Group is seeing a mix of churn and new opportunities (Corporates still require energy procurement strategies); we are encouraged to see the order book being maintained at the end of H1 at £67.5m in-line with the FY21 Year-end figure. Optimisation services strong growth continued through H1, over and above pandemic recovery, and we see this continuing into FY23F. ESG services are seeing similarly strong growth, albeit from a smaller base. Encouraging then."

"Valuation thoughts.

Inspired continues to evolve and offers investors solid ESG credentials and regulatory tailwinds in addition to long-term economic growth drivers. The Group is trading based on our current estimates on a FY22F PER of 8.7x (EV/EBITDA 7.0x), offering a progressive dividend yield of 2.4% - funded by a free cash flow yield of 9.4%."

Good to see RNWH described as "exciting" by Chris McVey of the FP Octopus UK Multi Cap Income Fund :o))

Https://moneyweek.com/investments/stockmarkets/uk-stockmarkets/605291/the-best-uk-shares-to-buy-now

"The FP Octopus UK Multi Cap Income Fund blends UK shares from across the entire British equity market to construct a portfolio capable of above-market earnings and dividend growth throughout the economic cycle.

The fund seeks to generate an attractive and growing dividend yield. It benefits from being able to pick stocks where we see the most attractive opportunities at the most exciting valuations, regardless of a company’s size.

Following the recent market turbulence, many companies have seen their share prices disconnect from the underlying business performance, particularly within the small and midcap sectors.

We are therefore fortunate to have a large number of exciting opportunities on very attractive ratings."

"Engineering long-term growth

Renew Holdings (Aim: RNWH) is a UK-focused engineering-support services provider. It operates on some of the country’s most challenging infrastructure networks, including rail, water and energy.

The business operates with strong market positions underpinned by long-term, non-discretionary spending cycles. The company’s commercial agreements are also partly pegged to inflation, which allows it to better manage the challenge of increasing prices that are inflicting pain on many other UK shares.

The group has seen revenues rise by over 13% in the latest half-year report. Given the ongoing need for infrastructure spending in the UK, partly driven by the levelling-up agenda and the “greening” of the economy, we think Renew will continue to make significant progress."

Hardman now forecast 3.62p EPS for 2024 and 4.8p EPS for 2025, the latter on £40m of sales.

Zeus Capital also forecast £39.7m sales for 2025, based only on current contracted orders, with 4.44p EPS.

It seems to me given the contracted order book and pipeline that the £50m production capacity will be achieved by then, leading to further upgrades.

£50m of sales would imply say 7p-7.5p EPS? At such growth rates, a multiple of anywhere from 20-30 would be appropriate, resulting in a share price of say 175p-200p.

Additionally of course, as Zeus say, there's the likelihood of further expansion - perhaps a second factory - in 2023. And the £400m pipeline doesn't include - yet - a bean from OEMs 2,3 and 4.

Much might happen between now and then of course. But assuming production is scaled up efficiently, one can argue all sorts of upside from the current share price.

Here's a link to obtain Hardman's new note:

Https://hardmanandco.com/research/corporate-research/further-new-order-upgrades-production-ramp-up/

Tamesis Partners have updated their research. They retain their 160p target price, and summarise succinctly as follows - the EV/EBITDA and P/E ratios are now ridiculously good value:

Https://www.tamesispartners.com/research-portal#/portal/tamesis-partners

Extracts:

• An expanded drilling services contract with B2Gold Corp. at the Fekola Gold Mine, Mali, out to the end of 2024. Services on site now include development (diamond & reverse circulation) and grade control drilling. This follows the initial drilling contract announced at the end of June 2022. Fekola is a huge mine – the third biggest in Africa – with guided production of 570,000 to 600,000oz in 2022 and the contract award highlights the strategic intent of Capital to increase exposure to tier-1 operating mines. Clearly getting an extension/expansion suggests satisfaction with the job being done and bodes well for Capital’s relationship with the $3.3bn B2Gold."

• Financial impact in 2023 and beyond. Our forecasts for 2023 do change clearly. If we add the 10 rigs to the 120 rig count and blend into our forecast of 76% fleet utilisation and $175,000 ARPOR then we see a 5.8%, 8% and 6.4% increase to revenue to $317.9m (from $300.4m), EBITDA to $93.1m (from $86.2)m and free cashflow to $40.1m (from $37.7m). These percentage increases extend into 2024 and probably beyond the current life of contract as the company will no doubt seek to renegotiate. That’s a FCF return of 24%, for instance, on invested capital reflecting the strong fundamentals of the business."

"At the current price the shares are trading on EV/EBITDA multiples of 2.0x and 1.8x 2022 and 2023, PE ratios of 6.8x and 4.1x and a dividend yield of 4%. This implies next to no growth in the business yet these sort of contract wins plus the phenomenal trajectory in the laboratory business with Chrysos (c$80m+ of revenue by 2025 vs just $3m in 2019) show that the reality of the investment case is completely the opposite. We maintain our price target of 160p."

Good results today in the current climate, with trading reiterated to be in line with expectations of 1.3p EPS this year (after 0.55p EPS in H1).

The dividend is increased to 0.13p and so should also be in line with the 0.3p forecast.

Revenues are up 24% and EBITDA is up 10%. ESG Services is booming, with revenues up 215% at £1.2m, and Software Solutions continues to be nicely profitable. Debt is up due to payments of deferred consideration.

Hopefully the new PM's measures to protect business from energy price rises will be strong enough to further strengthen INSE's prospects and customer base.

Excellent news this morning - a big expansion of the contract with B2Gold Corp through to 2024 at Fekola, "amongst the largest gold mines in Africa".

No revenue upgrade for this year, but 2023 and 2024 will presumably be upgraded reasonably materially.

This once again demonstrates that CAPD have transitioned to long-term, blue chip, gold-production contracts and away from the more cyclical exploration drilling:

Https://uk.advfn.com/stock-market/london/capital-CAPD/share-news/Capital-Limited-New-Contract-Award/88989299

And this sounds very promising too.....

“The Company continues to expect to be able to announce at least one significant new contract in the remainder of 2022.“

Great to see certainty here now going forward. The ongoing pension contributions are a necessary pain, but the business is now secure and can plan for the "significant long-term opportunities available to the Group" noted today and which could be transformational given the amount of investment already and being made.

As noted elsewhere, the incremental payments kick in above an £18m adjusted EBITDA target in 2024 and 2025. 2022 adjusted EBITDA was £13.1m (£10.8m 2021) and that resulted in an underlying eps of 3.1p - putting the stock on around 6.3x PE - if they can get to anything like £18m EBITDA then the EPS will be significantly higher......

Https://uk.advfn.com/stock-market/london/carclo-CAR/share-news/Carclo-plc-Tripartite-Financing-Agreement-Secured/88982541

A great vote of confidence today from the mighty Croda - particularly in that the agreement has been expanded to include a newly formulated product:

Https://www.investegate.co.uk/itaconix-plc--itx-/rns/itaconix-and-croda-renew-supply-agreement/202209050700111867Y/

"Itaconix and Croda Renew Supply Agreement for Sustainable Odour Control

Itaconix (AIM: ITX) (OTCQB: ITXXF), a leading innovator in plant-based specialty polymers used as essential ingredients in everyday consumer products, is pleased to announce a new global agreement with Croda Inc. ("Croda") in odour control, which serves to extend a supply collaboration that began in 2017.

Under the terms of the new supply agreement, Itaconix will continue to produce and supply the proprietary ZINADOR® odor neutralizing ingredients for Croda to market and sell globally in home care applications. The new agreement adds a newly formulated product to the collaboration and updates the terms and arrangements for ongoing market developments.

etc"

Great to see the two broker upgrades today, cheers - even the new 140p target from Zeus will look cheap if SCE convert a material percentage of their pipeline in addition to the existing £190m contracted order book.

Exciting news today:
- profit upgrades for 2023 through to 2025
- "Prospective contract pipeline ("PCP") now approximately £400m (lifetime value) in addition to £190m contracted sales order book"

And this is a pipeline of specific, discussed models:

“In this category, the Company only includes active development programmes, where there is a known model, with realistic expected volumes, a customer SOP date, engineering activity and meaningful commercial discussions. On these criteria, the PCP contains programmes with OEM 1, OEM 5, OEM 6, OEM 7, OEM 8, OEM 9, and OEM 10.

In addition to the £190m contracted order book noted above the Company has a PCP of £400m lifetime value sales; on average the contracts are now normally 5 years and typically enter production 2 years after contract win.“

Https://www.investegate.co.uk/surface-transforms--sce-/rns/interim-results/202209050700061872Y/

Perhaps indicative of CNIC's value is the new table published yesterday by analysts at Quest, the cashflow analysis division of Canaccord Genuity, of "who could be the next takeover target for a foreign corporate in the "technology" space".

CNIC are at the number two spot (KAPE are at number one, along with ACSO at number five out of ten):

Https://www.betaville.co.uk/news/forget-about-p2p-uk-dealmaking-is-now-all-about-c2/

Mark Simpson has just posted his weekly small caps update, including this on CAPD, primarily about the new CEO appointment.

Interesting to note that since the share buybacks in early 2022 the EPS forecast in dollars has risen by 17% and the pound has depreciated against the dollar by a further 11%, i.e almost 30% in total better off in sterling terms....

Https://smallcapslife.substack.com/p/small-caps-live-weekly-summary-eac

"Capital Limited (CAPD.L) - CEO Appointment

Capital has been running with founder Jamie Boyton as Executive Chairman and no CEO, since the previous one retired in 2017. This week they have decided to appoint a new one. The reasons given are:

These changes represent further steps in reshaping and strengthening the Company's leadership team while also adhering to the Company's commitment to the highest levels of corporate governance. Jamie Boyton, currently Executive Chairman, will oversee a handover period with Mr Stokes over the ensuing six month period.

Having a combined Chairman & CEO role is frowned upon in some corporate governance circles, although we have never doubted the company’s commitment to doing the right thing. So it may be that larger shareholders have demanded this appointment.

Expanding a management team comes with increased overhead costs, but perhaps also frees Boyton to focus on what he does best: capital allocation. We think there is a strong argument for capital to be directed to share buybacks at this time. The share price is below where a buyback was conducted earlier in the year, but since then, the 2023 EPS forecast in dollars has risen 17%, and Sterling has depreciated by 11% against the dollar. This makes any buybacks about 30% better value than they were earlier in the year.

In terms of the candidate, Peter Stokes, he appears to have had a strong career across mining & logistics. We can see him managing the operations well and leaving the investment & business development side to Boyton. Probably a win-win for both of them."

Https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2022/08/30/centralnic-seemingly-immune-to-advertising-recession/

"CentralNic seemingly 'immune' to advertising recession
The company has continued to grow at pace despite issues in the wider market
August 30, 2022

Revenue almost doubled since last year
Cash conversion remains above 100 per cent

CentralNic’s (CNIC) business model has so far shown no vulnerabilities to the wider downturn in the online advertising market. The company generates three-quarters of its revenue from online marketing but said the segment “proved entirely immune to any adverse signals from the market”. Clearly this was true in the reported period given organic revenue increased by 98 per cent.

This rate of growth is surprising given the weaker numbers coming out of the larger players in the sector such as Facebook and Google. Management reminded us that CentralNic isn’t impacted by the changes in third-party privacy rules – which is good for their business model and may channel more advertising budgets towards them. On top of that, the relatively small size of CentralNic means it can keep growing in a shrinking market as long as it takes more of the market share.

As it is a platform business, increased scale will lead to improved margins. The number of visitor sessions increased by 82 per cent to 2bn compared with the prior half year. Revenue per visitor session also jumped 87 per cent, implying it is getting more advertising click-throughs from each of them. This contributed to the cash profit (Ebitda) margin expanding from 36 per cent to 47 per cent.

Broker Zeus thinks the growth prospects are undervalued. Zeus has it trading on a 2023 PE forecast of eight and a free cash flow yield of 12.4 per cent. Given the organic growth of over 60 per cent this looks like a bargain.

The question is whether CentralNic will remain “entirely immune” as the recession bites. However, even if growth slows, with its current free cash flow yield it will remain good value. Buy."

Mark Watson-Williams has updated on Master Investor:

"A ‘transformational increase in revenues and EBITDA’ is how CentralNic Group (LON:CNIC) described their first half results to end June.

The global internet platform reported revenues up 93% to $334.6m ($173.8m) and a 97% uplift in its adjusted EBITDA at $38.6m ($19.6m).

Group CEO Ben Crawford stated that:

“CentralNic has enjoyed a strong first half of the year with year-on-year organic growth now reaching a record 62%, with our high cash conversion driving our net debt down to below our consensus EBITDA for 2022.

CentralNic continues to deliver sustainable growth thanks to our hugely scalable and privacy safe proprietary solutions and the enormous size of the market opportunities we are addressing”.

Analyst Bob Liao at Zeus Capital viewed these results as demonstrating the company’s resilient growth, margin potential and steady deleveraging.

Ahead of a Q3 Update on 17 October his estimates remain unchanged at $617.1m ($410.5m) revenues for the year to end December 2022, with EBITDA of $70.0m ($46.3m) and earnings of 17.4c (11.3c) per share.

He sees upside to his forecasts, which no doubt will change in seven weeks.

After hitting 129.80p in response to the results, the shares closed up just 3.3% on the day at 123p, and that was after a massive 1.86m shares were traded.

These shares, which are currently valued well below others in its sector, still have a lot of upside potential."

"? We see upside to our forecasts. Doubling H1 figures leads to $77.2m of EBITDA, which is more than 10% above our $70.0m forecast for 2022. Furthermore, simply doubling EBITDA may be conservative since H1 EBITDA includes only about four months of VGL and Q4 is seasonally the company’s strongest quarter. While we see upside to our forecasts, we conservatively leave our forecasts unchanged ahead of the company’s Q3 trading update on 17 October and the refinancing of its debt expected ahead of then.

? Value for growth: Despite strong growth, margin potential and earnings outperformance, shares trade at only 6x 2022 EBITDA and 8x PE, at the bottom of its peer group range. See KPI charts, summary investment case and forecasts overleaf."

Here's Zeus's full summary of the H1 results - note the uplift in expectations yet again even since the H1 trading update:

"Full steam ahead

CentralNic delivered results at least in line with its July trading update and yet again modestly raised 2022 expectations. The results demonstrate the company’s resilient growth, margin potential and steady deleveraging. CentralNic expects to “succeed even in a challenging global environment” and is “comfortably trading towards the high end of the recently upgraded forecasts”. Our EBITDA forecast is only at the midpoint of consensus, but we leave estimates unchanged ahead of Q3 results and debt refinancing expected over the next six weeks.

? Results at least in line: Revenue, EBITDA, operating cash conversion and net debt were at least in line with the company’s July trading update. Revenue and Adjusted EBITDA were $334.6m and $38.6m, respectively, compared to $335m and $38m indicated by the July trading update. Adjusted operating cash conversion was 110% and net debt was $63.6m compared to “over 100%” and $65m, respectively indicated in the July trading update.

? No signs of weakness in Online Marketing: CentralNic stated that the segment “proved entirely immune to any adverse signals from the market”. The Online Marketing segment grew 98% organically, continuing to be driven by the TONIC media buying business.

? Online Presence achieved solid organic growth despite focus on revenue quality: Division revenue grew 5% organically while turning away from discounted bulk sales. As a result, average revenue per domain year increased by 8% from USD 8.90 to USD 9.60, while the number of processed domain registrations decreased from 6.5 million in H1 2021 to 6.0 million in H1 2022.

? High margins and operating leverage: EBITDA as a percentage of Net Revenue increased from 36% in H1 2021 to 47% in H2 2022 as the company gains scale. Over the period, CentralNic’s revenues have more than doubled from $84.4m to $178.0m, respectively. In H1 2022, Adjusted EBITDA grew almost twice as fast (+97% yoy) as net revenue/gross profit (+51%). CentralNic expects margins to rise further as current investment plateaus.

? Declining net debt and leverage: CentralNic plans to refinance its debt and lower interest costs over the coming weeks. CentralNic should lower debt service costs due to its significantly improved financial profile since its last debt refinancing. Leverage including hedging liabilities, lease liabilities, guarantee obligations and Deferred Consideration payable has fallen from 2.2x EBITDA as at the end of 2021 to 1.3x at the end of H2 2022."

WH Ireland are organising an Investor Roadshow for TST with a series of presentations for investors following the interims, which are apprently being issued on Wednesday September 14th.

Berenberg retain their Buy and 250p target today:

Https://investing.thisismoney.co.uk/broker-views/CNIC

Finncap aren't changing their forecasts "at this stage" with interims due 5th September, and conclude:

"Valuation remains 80p/share but there is still significant further upside: We continue to value the business using a DCF on the assumption of the factory filling to capacity over time (£50m revenue on the current footprint). As SCE demonstrates its ability to scale volumes during FY2022, we believe we can justify a valuation of 100p/share. We calculate that adding (and filling) capacity to £75m revenue would drive the valuation to 150p/share, with plenty of scope to grow well beyond this level."

The weekly rig count rose by 3 last week to 765, and is essentially stable at the moment and some 257 rigs higher than the rig count this time in 2021:

Https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Rig-Count-Climbs-As-Permian-Drilling-Picks-Up.html