Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Printing.com, big dividend but where's the growth?

Looking through company reports today I came across a trading statement from Printing.com.
Trading in the second half of the year has proved softer than anticipated across the Group's various European channels. This coupled with the increased marketing expenditure on the Group's new initiatives means that it is now likely that the Company will be materially behind market expectations in the current year.
Notwithstanding the above, the Directors maintain their belief that the plethora of new initiatives including Templatecloud.com and W3P provide sound prospects for the Company moving forward. Indeed post the last update, the first W3P Licenses have been granted in the UK. These Licenses generate monthly 'system fees' along with incremental print revenues.

At this juncture, also taking into account the Group's Balance Sheet, the absence of debt together with the underlying cash generation, the Board intends to recommend the payment of a final dividend at the same level as the previous year.
http://www.digitallook.com/news/rns/20707398-104241/PDC-Trading_Statement_html

So, the bad news is that the company expects to be "materially behind market expectations in the current year" and the market reaction reflects this with the share price moving down around 10% today. However, what was strange about this announcement was the dividend to be paid which would be at the same level of last year. At the current price that's a yield of between 8-9%, so how come?

Looking at the dividend payments for the company over recent years shows the following.

2008  3.00p    7.9% yield
2009  3.15p  13.4% yield
2010  3.15p    9.3% yield
2011  3.15p    8.6% yield
2012  2.55p    9.1% yield

Source - DigitalLook

The share price however has largely been going nowhere, around 40p back in 2008 to 29p today. No debt but profits have also been falling since 2008, yet the dividend remains high.

What is interesting about this company is that the CEO has around 8.6 million of the 47.5 million shares in issue.

Looks an interesting company, but where's the growth coming from when so much goes to the dividend, even when it is "materially behind market expectations in the current year" with profits falling each year?


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