Thursday February 14th 2019

Thursday February 14th 2019

News about 5 UK growth companies and/or accelerators + turnover in the GRID marketplace, 11th – 17th September 2016:

Hand Picked Hotels £62m | Paperchase £102m | TTC £26.4m | Epos Now | Numis £98m

HAND PICKED HOTELS: Hands out of pocket | Daniel Dunkley, The Sunday Times. September 11.

DZ profile: Hand Picked Hotels
Business: country hotel operator, which owns 20 hotels and spas such as Crathorne Hall in north Yorkshire and Buxted Park in East Sussex
Financials: lost £3.5m last year after paying more than £7.1m to creditors including Hands. The losses narrowed from £3.9m the year before. Turnover rose to £62m last year, up from £60m the year before. Underlying earnings rose slightly from £9.5m to £9.6m. Guy Hands is best known in the City for engineering debt-fuelled buyouts, most notably an ill-fated takeover of the record label EMI in 2007, which lost investors £1.75bn.
Investment: backed by Terra Firma buyout boss Guy Hands, 57, and his wife Julia
News: Last year Hand Picked was linked with a series of potential acquisitions, including a 15-strong hotel portfolio from the American giant Starwood.

PAPERCHASE: plumps for float over sale | John Collingridge and Daniel Dunkley, The Sunday Times

DZ profile: Paperchase Products
Business: stationer and gift seller which has about 200 shops. Was part of WH Smith before a management buyout led by Graphite Capital in 1996.
Launched: 1968
Founders: two art students
Staff: management, headed by Timothy Melgund
Financials: made a £4m profit on turnover of £102m in the year to January 2015, according to its most recent accounts.
Investment: private equity backer PRIMARY CAPITAL
News: is being primed for a lucrative London offering. City bankers have been pitching for a role on the stock market listing, which is expected to value the retailer at more than £150m. Primary wants to cash out after six years of ownership. The firm has considered a sale of the business for several years, and hired PwC and Financo in 2014 to assess its options.

TTC: We hit a few bumps putting dodgy drivers on the straight and narrow | Laura Onita, The Sunday Times

DZ profile: TTC Group (UK)
Business: road safety business TTC (originally Telford Training Consultants), which runs courses for drivers and cyclists to prevent road accidents. Offenders can use the training as an alternative to fines and penalty points and to soften punishments. For example, a 12-month ban can be reduced to nine months if the driver opts to attend a 16-hour course, which typically costs about £85. By 2000 they had taken on 40 trainers and moved from their makeshift office at home into a rented space — and then their HQ six years later.Has 400 trainers at venues rented across the country. More than 330,000 motorists attended TTC’s training courses last year. 
Launched: set up in the early 1990s.
Location: Shropshire
Founders: Graham and Jenny Wynn
Staff: 128 full-time staff
Financials: reported pre-tax profits of £2.7m on sales of £26.4m last year and aims to reach revenues of £30m this year. TTC has been making profits from the outset, most of which are reinvested.
News:
1. the Department for Transport caught wind of their work and signed them up for a pilot scheme to reduce reoffending rates. The scheme grew from one county to 15, and with it the Wynns’ company too.
2. Despite a drop in reported motoring offences — from 4.3m in 2004 to 1.6m in 2013, according to the latest figures from the Commons Transport Committee — the Wynns believe drivers are just as likely to break the law. “The number of patrol cars on the roads to catch offenders has gone down,” said Jenny, pointing to budget cuts..
3. The Wynns are gearing up for acquisitions and plan to franchise the business overseas.

EPOS NOW: founder on luck, crying, making the most of Brexit and getting mashed | Harriet Green, City A.M. September 12
DZ profile: Epos Now Ltd
Business: electronic point of sale - the UK’s biggest cloud-based, POS, SaaS fintech company.
Launched: 2011
Location: Norwich
Founder: Jacyn Heavens, 33. By 24 Heavens was driving a Ferrari
Financials: In the last six months, Epos Now has grown by 70 per cent.
Investment: Heavens owns 100 per cent and has never taken any investment. Two years ago, was worth $30m for a 30 per cent stake. Every nine months, the business is doubling in value.
News: Having cracked America, Heavens is about to move into Australia and Germany. Heavens chose Orlando for office number two because it’s “similar to Norwich in terms of cost – and you can sell into anywhere.

NUMIS: founder to hand stockbroker to next generation | Harriet Agnew, FT. September 12.

DZ profile: Numis
Business: the UK’s top-performing mid-cap stockbroker. Numis’s corporate retainer fees — which are higher than the market rate and now come from 190 clients, compared with 70 in 2007 — cover half of its staff costs. The company has built up a £72m cash buffer to help it through market downturns — and has stayed out of the wave of consolidation in the sector since the financial crisis. Laura Foll, a fund manager at Henderson Global Investors and a Numis shareholder says the group has been “clever” at getting close to businesses that have lots of portfolio companies, such as IP GROUP, ALLIED MINDS and OXFORD SCIENCES. 
Launched: 1991
Location: London
Founder: Oliver Hemsley chief executive
Financials: revenues, rose from £73.1m in 2006 to £98m in 2015, and were £56.8m in the first half of 2016. Its share price has risen 112 per cent during the past five years, although has fallen by 7 per cent in the past 12 months.

Investment: Listed on LSE Aim 27 Mar 1996
News:
1. Mr Hemsley, the son of a Rutland pig farmer, steps down as chief executive, making way for the next generation. Alex Ham, head of Numis’s corporate broking and advisory business, and Ross Mitchinson, head of its equities business, both in their thirties, will become joint chief executives.
2. Last week Numis announced its largest ever M&A; advisory mandate — as joint financial adviser to  MICRO FOCUS, one of its broking clients, on its proposed tie-up with the software division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
3. headwinds from new European rules …are likely to mean asset managers have to separate the payment of research from trading commissions — and clients spend less on research.
4. Rivals such as Seymour Pierce, Daniel Stewart and Panmure Gordon have struggled.

UPDATE:

London’s small stockbrokers face tough decisions on future | Hannah Murphy, FT. December 28, 2018

5. 2018 flotations included ASTON MARTIN and FUNDING CIRCLE. Has diversified into new areas, including private deals and debt advisory in order to gain market share as others retrench post-Mifid and become more of a full service investment bank.
6. Alex Ham, co-chief executive
7. to 30-Sep-17 - Revenue £130.1m; Pre-Tax £38.3m. Advisory revenues rose 21 per cent to September 2018 with a 17 per cent drop in annual pre-tax profit to £29.7m
8. was named last week among those saddled with losses following the failed emergency fundraising for construction group KIER.