Companies: CHRT   

Oxfordshire-headquartered Cohort – the independent technology services consolidator backed by GCI at 161.5p – has secured an additional £5.4m worth of eclectic contracts, both at home and overseas.

Won through its SEA subsidiary, the surveillance systems and software house acquired in 2007, two of the contracts were clinched with the UK Ministry of Defence, with one each secured from the French Defence Ministry, the Japanese government and Network Rail.

Beating off competition from large rivals, Cohort’s MoD deals include a software-based project supporting army training and simulation and a research deal looking into ways of enhancing the UK’s maritime electronic warfare capabilities. Elsewhere, additional software development work has been won with Network Rail.

For the French Defence Ministry, Cohort will provide assembly and partial engineering of an underwater vehicle-mounted sonar, for hunting mines buried under the seabed. Meanwhile, the Japanese government deal involves the provision of electronics for the Japanese Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), which will be used in the Europe-Japan EarthCARE satellite scheduled for launch in 2013.

Led by CEO Stanley Carter, Cohort, growing acquisitively and organically, is gathering contract momentum, having built a backlog of orders across a number of defence (air, land and sea), wider government and industry clients.

For the year to April 2009, housebroker Investec sees growth in pre-tax profits from £6.1m to £7.6m and in earnings from 14.2p to 14.6p. Trading on a relatively modest p/e of 11 times, the shares remain good value given Cohort’s increasing geographic earnings diversity, progressive dividend policy and track record of beating market expectations. Hold/buy.

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Cohort	AIM	£57.69m	142.50p	2.50p
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