Next Fifteen’s growth accelerates in Q2

Next Fifteen Communications (NFC) released a bullish trading statement last week in which it said growth was accelerating in Q2 – driving results ahead of management expectations.

The media group saw strong performances across all segments and geographies with total revenues up by approximately 21% compared with the same period last year and organic revenue growth of 17%.

“Customer Delivery, which was the highest growth area last year, has remained the top performer and the Group has also seen robust performances from the Business Transformation, Customer Insight and Customer Engagement segments” it continued.

The shares have built plenty of bullish momentum in recent months – as can be seen from the series of steepening trendlines on their price chart. With valuation metrics continuing to look attractive, we’re happy to hold off from taking profits for now.

Bango in new European Xbox deal

We recently added a second tranche of Bango (BGO) to our AIM Investor portfolio. The primary reason behind this was its deepening ties with big name clients and we saw more evidence of this last week…

Anil Malhotra, CMO at Bango said:

“Dutch fans can fill the gaps in the Euro 2021 schedule by playing FIFA on their Xbox consoles. These new packages – offering the hugely popular Game Pass – offer incredible value to customers, making them affordable for many more gamers and providing Telcos with a great marketing opportunity to acquire many more customers.”

Bango’s share price continue to respect its current trading range. However, we’re confident that given Bango’s fundamental momentum, and its long-term uptrend, we expect prices to break out of this range in the months ahead.

Sharp increases in resin prices hit Robinson

In an statement released alongside last week’s AGM, packaging group Robinson (RBN) said a “sharp increases in resin prices, together with some lack of availability, have created volatility in 2021”.

Since 1 January the market price of resins used by Robinson have increased by on average 60%.

Group sales in the first five months of the year are 17% ahead of the same period in 2020, 2% excluding the impact of the recently acquired Schela Plast business. After adjusting for price changes, sales volumes in the underlying business are 1% higher than 2020, which included additional demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Robinson’s share price gapped lower on the update, breaking below support and knocking the short-term momentum of the shares.

This is a concern and we will be watching price action closely over the next two weeks to decide if we will give the shares more time to perform.

Inspecs maintain positive momentum despite shrinking revenue

Eyewear group Inspecs (SPEC) released their Final Results earlier this month and reported that it had “maintained positive momentum” in 2020, despite the severe impact of the pandemic.

“I am pleased to report that the group has performed well in the first five months of 2021 despite continuing restrictions caused by Covid-19. Whilst I remain cautious on future months while uncertainty remains surrounding the pandemic and its effects, our trading has been encouraging” he added.

As with the previous year, Inspecs opted against paying a dividend, “due to the economic landscape”, but the shares have reacted well to the newsflow. Price have pushed higher from support and are now looking to break above their descending retracement line (gold dotted line on chart below).