You cant keep a good business down
Elecosoft reported that, although H1’20 turnover dipped slightly to £12.2m (-4% vs £12.7m LY, -3% constant currency) due largely to COVID-19, adjusted PBT climbed 14% to £2.23m (£1.96m LY, or +23% reported £1.93m vs £1.57m LY). Boosted by favourable operating leverage, lower costs and higher EBIT margins - as tradeshows were postponed and less money was spent on travel & other discretionary items.Encouragingly, net funds closed June at a robust £4.4m (worth 5.3p/share) vs £1.1m Dec’19 – up £3.3m in just 6 months (est. 139% cash conversion) - thanks to tight working capital management (re debtor days at pre COVID-19 levels) augmented by deferred tax payments. Providing plenty of liquidity to weather even the most extreme of possible 2nd infection waves, and optionality (re M&A) if potential acquisitions ever become available at attractive prices.
Furthermore, the outlook is improving with our stab-in-the-dark ‘guesstimate’ being that June saw positive LFL sales, assisted by the ongoing digitisation of the construction industry, launch of the new AI visualisation tool (eg Karndean) and North American expansion (eg US paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore).
In terms of valuation, the stock at 78p is attractively priced: trading on 2.4x 2019 EV/sales compared to typical industry multiples (pre COVID-19) of 4.0x – 7.0x. With the two closest rivals, Nemetschek & Autodesk, presently priced at >10x EV/turnover.
Autodesk is a design software and services company. The company is engaged in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software and services. The company's product offerings include: AutoCAD, which is a customizable and extensible CAD application for design, drafting, detailing, and visualization; AutoCAD Civil 3D, which provides surveying, design, analysis, and documentation solution for civil engineering; CAM Solutions, which is a computer-aided manufacturing software that provides solutions for computer numeric control machining, inspection, and modeling for manufacturing; and Inventor, which provides tools for 3D mechanical design, simulation, analysis, tooling, visualization, and documentation.
Elecosoft is a provider of integrated software applications and related services to international architectural, engineering and construction marketplaces and property management industries. Co. develops its specialist software through its own development teams in Sweden, Germany and the UK. Co. services its customers directly in its primary markets of Sweden, Germany, Benelux, the U.S and the U.K and indirectly to its non-core markets through a network of channel partners.
Oracle provides products and services that address enterprise information technology (IT) environments. The company's products and services include applications and infrastructure offerings. The company's cloud and license business engages in the sale, marketing and delivery of its applications and infrastructure technologies through cloud and on-premise deployment models including its cloud services and license support offerings; and its cloud license and on-premise license offerings. The company's hardware business provides Oracle Engineered Systems, servers, storage, industry-specific hardware, operating systems, virtualization, management and other hardware-related software to support diverse IT environments.
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