Chilled about Uniq
Posted on February 10, 2009 by Richard Beddard
Filed Under Companies |
Was it all worth it?
One of the little bits ‘n pieces that clutter my writing month is the Share Snapshot that sits amid a mass of data near the rear of Money Observer. The editor gives me a list of the shares that moved most in price over the previous month. The sub-editor gives me an implausibly small word count like yesterday’s (105 words) because it has to fit in a tiny box, and a ridiculous deadline.
It’s more of a shot taken at speed from a one-megapixel mobile phone than a snapshot.
This time I wrote about Uniq (UNIQ), which has little debt yet investors seemed to have lost confidence - probably because the producer of chilled and frozen food has also produced losses over the last five years.
Uniq’s shares closed at just over 2p one day in December and rose to almost 17p on 9 January, the day the company issued this trading statement.
It looks as though, having paid off most of its debt and secured enough money from its bank to keep operating, investors are more optimistic.
Two things interest me about Uniq, apart from the elephantine one, which is whether its earlier record of profitability has any relevance, given its recent performance.
- The first is the restructuring, which as is so often the case seems to be about selling off profitable businesses to keep unprofitable ones afloat. The company has steadily moved away from its past life as a dairy (it was Unigate) and two sales to Dairy Crest (DCG) bracket its list of disposals. The first was Unigate in 2000, and one of the latest was St Hubert in late 2006. Dairy Crest is struggling too, partly because of the debt it took on to finance its takeovers. It makes me wonder if it was all worth it.
- The second is the tripling of Uniq’s price during the three days before the trading statement. Was that anticipation? Or, did the buyers know something?
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Richard Beddard
“Was it all worth it?”
7 months later….. Time for a review?
Rgds.,
2b..