Small Cap Value Report (24 Dec 2014) - NXR, DEMG, MYSL

Good morning! I believe the market will only be open until lunchtime today, due to it being Christmas Eve. Worth knowing, as last year it was only about half an hour after the market had closed, that I realised it had closed - and stopped wondering why no prices were changing!

There are no results of interest published today, but a couple of bits have caught my eye;

Deltex Medical (LON:DEMG)

Share price: 5.0p (down 29% today)
No. shares: 213.0m
Market Cap: £10.7m

Trading update - the company reports today that it has secured its largest ever order, for 60 machines, from the NHS central purchasing body. However, the market seems to be ignoring that, and instead concentrating on a likely shortfall in sales (and hence profit) for calendar 2014;

So a rather convoluted way of saying that they're likely to fall short of expectations for sales by about £1.3m. Therefore, as sales were £7.2m last year, it looks as if the company is likely to deliver about £6m sales this year (against £7.9m forecast), so a miss of about a quarter of forecast sales. Not good.

My opinion - this company just doesn't seem able to gain traction, with sales stuck at around £6-7m p.a. for the last five years, and a fairly regular £2m loss most years.

So this share is really only for eternal optimists, who don't mind losing money.

Perhaps the company should merge with another medical devices company, to reduce overheads? It looks to me as if this company isn't really viable on a standalone basis.

Norcros (LON:NXR)

Share price: 17.75p
No. shares: 594.9m
Market Cap: 105.6m

Property disposal - This electric showers, tiles, and bathroom fittings group today announces that it has sold all surplus freehold property in one transaction, for £6.5m in cash. That sounds positive to me, and it will help reduce net debt - it's about 6% of the market cap, so very worthwhile.

Although perhaps less positive is that the sale is at £1.5m less than book value. However, the company is still pursuing a legal claim against Morrissons for breach of contract on the aborted sale to them of one site.

It remains a mystery to me why Norcros shares have sold off this year, since there has been no fundamental reason for that - the company has reported in line results. It remains one of the my favourite value shares.

It's worth noting that the company has more freeholds on the Balance Sheet, but they are in use.

MySale (LON:MYSL)

Share price: 77.75p
No. shares: 150.6m
Market Cap: £117.1m

Large Director purchase - I tend to sit up and take note when a Director of a small cap buys a £6-figure amount of stock in the open market. However, today MySale has announced that its CEO has bought a £7-figure amount of stock! The CEO has bought £3m of stock at a whisker under 80p per share.

That is one helluva vote of confidence in the company. Clearly he must be a wealthy man, but must also strongly believe in the future prospects for MySale.

I reported negatively on the profit warning from this company eight days ago here. However, the CEO buying £3m of stock makes me feel a lot more positive about the company's potential. I'm tempted to follow him in buying a few.

That's it for today.

It just remains for me to say that wherever you are, and whatever you're doing, I hope you have a lovely break over Xmas. I'll be publishing reports here on every day that the market is open over the festive season.

Best wishes, Paul.