SUNDAY TIMES
Ressler has built up a wide range of plastic utensils and given the modern touch to the faded array of enamelware, snapping up Mirroware and 80 per cent. of Coral Plastics in the process. His current objective is to set up 20 shops-within-shops by Christmas and 50 by next summer, spread country-wide and taking in both the Lewis's and United Drapery chains. "We ex- pect to boost sales by £250,000 and break even on the cost in the first year," he reports. Turnover has already passed the £2.5 mil lion mark, thanks to buoyant business with the mail order and trading stamp companies.
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Next on the agenda comes couple of acquisitions in the same field. Ressler is looking at one public company now, may bid within the next month with £750,000 in his pocket from the April loan stock issue. His shares should be good currency, too. Last year's profits will top his £250,000 forecast by at least £50,000, I understand, and he is aiming for £400,000 or more in 1968/69. This would trim the P/E on Judge shares at 30s 6d from 23.3 to around 14.3, making them an attractive medium-term proposition.
Trim issue
LATER this month an Irish company will be going public in Dublin and an English group will
Extra asset backing will not harm Wardle currently trading well with the shares on a P/E of 16.9 at 8s.9d.
Rough ride
concern
REDMAN TOOLS' £3.8 million take-over bid for Heenan Group, the Worcester-based engineering has run into heavy- Four insti- weight opposition. tutional investors and a large private shareholder, including Norwich Union Assurance and the ICI and Unilever pension funds, plan to reject the 11s. 6d. a-share
Friday
offer that closes on
Altogether they hold 941,000 Heenan shares, representing a
blocking " 14.2 per cent.
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Their reasoning is simple, though embarrassing to Heenan chairman Charles Hill and the Schroder Wagg merchant bank which approved the Redman bid, Heenan on current form will con- tribute about 52 per cent of the proposed Redman Heenan Inter- national combine profits but will receive only 491 per cent, of the equity. As an asset situation
with Heenan accounting for more than 68 per cent, of the aggregate, i the disparity is much more striking.
Though the Prudential with 491,000 shares is still fence- squatting, those who hold out for improved terms are in good
company.
be feeling rather bucked in £1,000m squatters
Knutsford. Trimproof Fabrics of Co. Meath, specialising in vinyl- coated fabrics for the motor and furniture industries, has ex- panded fast over the past few years. Profits spurted from £81,500 to £114,700 in 1967/68 and chairman Liam Deasy, pre- paring for the gradual dismant- ling of tariff protection, jacked up his export ratio from 17 to 34 per cent. Dubliners expect the company to be capitalised at about £1 million, which looks fair as the 5s shares would have a 7 per cent. earnings yield at 20s.
Meanwhile Bernard Wardle can congratulate itself on a shrewd investment. Back in 1962 Wardle made a United Kingdom break- through with Cirrus expanded vinyl, which produced a major
Irish profits upswing.
sales director Pat O'Connor saw. Trim- proof as a natural partner, as they were producing for the same industries and even for the same customers-notably Ford Motor: So the UK group cemented a know-how deal by taking a 41.6 per cent. equity stake in Trim- proof, which will shortly be worth more than £400,000 against a book value of less than £83,000.
HOW CAN shareholders in whose shares were Loncho, rushed up 50 per cent. to a peak 37s 6d last week, assess the news that the group is squatting over an estimated 100 million tons of platinum ore on the Wonder- kop and Turffontein farms in South Africa? Not very well,
but some crude assessment is possible.
Assuming a lower grade Merensky reef value of 4 dwts. per ton, Lonrho has the makings of 20 million ounces of platinum metals worth around £1,000 mil lion at current producer prices. Not all of this will be commer- cially minable, though there may be a compensating offset in other metals like copper and (dare I say it?) nickel.
Lonrho now has a market capi- Tak- talisation of £52.3 million. ing 20s as a somewhat arbitrary "basic" price, this means that platinum prospects are now capi- talised at £24.5 million. Even allowing that bringing a mine to production point may cost £18-£20 · million, the Lonrho price does not seem to be running ahead of the game. For a buyer prepared to sweat out short-term relapses, they are worth having.
-1 SEP 1968