Edison Investment Research

Palace Capital (PCA); reported interim results for the six months that ended 30 September

Palace Capital has reported interim results for the six months that ended 30 September (H120). Supported by the company’s focus on regional office and industrial property and low retail exposure, total property level return was a positive 1.5% and ahead of the MSCI Quarterly Benchmark return of 0.8%, marking three successive years of outperformance. Good progress is reported on the flagship Hudson Quarter development in York which management says is well ahead of the business plan. Of the 127 apartments within the residential portion of the scheme, more than 20% are already pre-sold or under offer and construction is on track for completion in January 2021.

Brady (BRY); announces recommended final cash offer of 18p per share by Hanover Acquisition

Hanover Bidco declared a recommended revised final cash offer of 18 pence in cash for each brady share. Hanover Bidco had received valid acceptances of the offer in respect of 1,140,344 brady shares. Hanover Bidco has contracted to acquire 46,865,018 brady shares, in addition, via the share purchases.

IQE (IQE); trading update: lowers revenue guidance for FY 2019

Capex will be towards the bottom end of the previous guidance of £30-40m

IQE announced that it expects revenue of between £136m and £142m, compared to the previous guidance range of £140m to £160m, including a forex tailwind of circa £3m. The board expects a mid-single digit adjusted operating loss resulting from revenues being slightly below the previous guidance range.

Brady (BRY); announces first closing date and extension to final cash offer

Hanover Acquisition (Hanover Bidco) has received valid acceptances of the offer regarding 1,140,344 Brady shares as of 3.00pm (London time) on 15 November 2019, being the first closing date of the offer. Hanover Bidco has extended the offer until 3.00pm on 29 November 2019 as it did not receive valid acceptances in respect of more than 50% of the voting rights attaching to the Brady shares.

Sumo Group (SUMO); announces have agreed acquisition

Sumo announced that Tencent Holdings have agreed on the acquisition of 15m shares in the group, equating to a 10% interest. Shares are being acquired from Perwyn, a private equity business, who first invested in Sumo when it was private in September 2016. Perwyn will retain a 17% interest.

Metals Exploration (MTL); posts quarterly update to 30 September 2019

18,848 ounces of gold poured during Q3 2019; Throughput for Q3 2019 exceeded budget by 74kt.

Metals Exploration issued a quarterly update on the operations of its Runruno gold project in the Philippines. Overall gold recovery for the quarter was 77.6%, up from 66.1% for the six months ended 30 June 2019. 18,239 ounces of gold were sold during Q3 2019 at an average realised gold price of $1,479 per ounce. This resulted in gold sales of $27.0m, bringing total gold sales for the year to $67.3m.

Carclo (CAR); announces restoration of share listing and trading

Further to the publication of the group’s audited results for the year ending 31 March 2019, on 1 November 2019, the group announced that the listing and trading of its ordinary shares will be restored with effect from 08:00 today.

Non-Standard Finance (NSF); overall trading for the period softer than expected

Non-Standard Finance announced its trading update for the quarter to 30 September 2019.

Non-Standard Finance’s trading has been softer than expected for the review period with solid performances by both branch-based lending and home credit, offset by lower volumes in guarantor loans. The group expects normalised full year operating profit in 2019 to be lower than expected but well ahead of 2018.

Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM); gold division outperforms.

WPM results out after the bell in Toronto on Thursday night. Underlying earnings for Q3 were within US$2.0m, or 2.7%, of our prior forecasts. While the gold division outperformed our expectations in terms of production, in particular, there was a 1.6Moz under-sale of silver relative to production, which resulted in an increase in ‘inventory’ and meant that underlying EPS came in at 16c (in line with consensus) compared with our prior forecast of 17c (which assumed no inventory effect).

QinetiQ Group (QQ); released H120 interim results

QinetiQ issued its H120 results this morning, demonstrating that revenue increased from £420.2m to £486.5m (+16% y-o-y) and underlying net income rose from £46m to £52m (+14% y-o-y).