Professor Glen Arnold

MS International (LSE:MSI) has £22.9m of cash but a market capitalisation under £30m. A company with that much cash relative to the price Mr Market is willing to trade its shares will usually have a poor profits history or a hazardous balance sheet. But neither is true for MSI.   It has reported profits in each of the last 14 […]

MS International’s (LSE:MSI) directors have done a very good job of diversifying from guns and forks. In 2010 they paid £3.53m to buy the second half of the Petrol Station Superstructures business they did not own.  And in 2015 they paid €3.4m (£2.6m) for a company which was to become their Branding Division. Both divisions […]

MS International (LSE:MSI) has four business.  In September the directors published a profit warning which we need to take seriously.  It stated, “It is most disappointing to report, though not surprising, that the Company is not immune to the negative impact of the widespread global economic uncertainty. As reported in the last Chairman’s results statement, […]

MS International (LSE:MSI) has been profitable in each of the last fourteen years.  But there are two unattractive features of the profits history that seem to put off Mr Market from buying its shares.  First, profits are no higher today than they were over a decade ago – and that is before we account for […]

I’ve bought some more shares in MS International (LSE:MSI), the engineering company, at 172p (MCap = £1.72 x 16.5m shares = £28.4m). I previously bought MSI for my Modified price earning ratio portfolio. But now I think it qualifies as a Warren Buffett-style investment. MS International has two economic franchises: (a) Specialised defence equipment, mostly […]

Having made a 181% return on my Haynes (LSE:HYNS) shares I feel that the price has run ahead of the facts coming from the business. Mr Market is now, finally, excited about the potential of HaynesPro, and has therefore pushed the share to double its level only nine months ago. The message has finally got […]

I sold my Haynes (LSE:HYNS) shares last week at 291.8p.  I bought into Haynes in February 2015 for 115.9p.  Including annual dividends of 7.5p per share, the return over four and half years was 181%. Wherever I looked in 2015 people wrote that Haynes’ business is rubbish because it is focused on paper manuals for […]

The tables below show the performances (so far) of the shares bought for the portfolios I’ve been writing about in my Newsletters. The comments I made at the time explaining the rationale for the investment are available for you to read in older newsletters – there is nowhere for me to hide from my appraisals made […]

The directors of Holders Tech (LSE:HDT) have been with the firm for a very long time. They have experienced the bitterness of business failure and learned valuable lessons along the way. Going through the cycle of first the excitement of establishing a new business venture (whether it be PCBs in China and India, or LEDs in […]

Both the printed circuit board supplies business and the Lighting business of Holders Technology (LSE:HDT) suffer from competitive rivalry in these industries. We should find, over time, that a positive return is generated on capital devoted even in competitive industries. Holders has made use of around £4m to £5m of shareholder’s money to support trading each […]