Professor Glen Arnold

N Brown (LSE:BWNG) creates very distinct images for its brands, signalling to potential customers they are there to serve particular needs, e.g. very large men who prefer to buy online, or older women who do not buy online. I’ll start with some statistics: Revenue by brand, £m 2017 2016 2015 J D Williams 158 151 […]

Last week’s Newsletters showed good quantitative metrics for N Brown (LSE:BWNG): a cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio of around 11; low probability of financial distress, and; very good returns on net tangible assets. But why does it have such an impressive return on capital? I start to answer that today by examining the business model. […]

Mr Market has largely given up hope with N Brown (LSE:BWNG). He has pushed it share price down to half its level of 2014, making its ten-year cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio about 11. While earnings per share over that period have been on a downward trend I thought it might be interesting to examine […]

We saw in yesterday’s Newsletter that N Brown’s shares have fallen so low that the current price is only about 11 times its average earnings per share over the last ten years (its cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio, CAPE). This is significantly below the market average of 15 times. Many companies with low CAPEs have […]

N Brown (LSE:BWNG) used to be an old-fashioned home catalogue retailer. Now 69% of sales come from online, most of those through smartphones. It sells clothing, usefully filling niches for customers in the size 20+ and the aged over 50 categories. Of course, with 4.3 million registered customers there are opportunities to sell other things […]

While working on the 6th edition of my textbook, Corporate Financial Management, I came across a paper which discusses some key points about the nature of true value investing. I thought they might be worth passing on. The paper is by Dan Hanson. Published in 2013, it is titled “ESG Investing in Graham and Doddsville”, […]

Publication of the interim results to December 2016 give us an opportunity to estimate the values of the various plots, houses and other property owned by Caledonian Trust (LSE:CNN), one of my net current asset value shares, to compare with its current market capitalisation of £14.2m (£1.20 per share x 11.8m shares). Note that the […]

TClarke (LSE:CTO) currently has a low share price relative to its average earnings through the last decade. It shows no signs of financial distress and is built on solid industrial foundations with some reputational and relationship advantages. However, there are some dangers we need to be aware of. Building downturn The company is dependent on […]

TClarke (LSE:CTO) suffered in the Great Recession, but generally continued to produce profits, and always sent dividends to shareholders. The directors made the decision to take the hit on profit margins when tendering for work, which kept the business ticking over and kept the employees in work (the CEO and the MD were once apprentices […]

Companies on unusually low cyclically adjusted price earnings ratios, CAPEs, often have a string of losses combined with years of accumulating debt, making them vulnerable to financial stress, and ultimately bankruptcy. It is important to examine this issue for TClarke (LSE:CTO). I’ll use Piotroski’s nine accounting variables. Is the company profitable? In the year to […]