Brokers' views: Edison

Analyst Martin Lister at paid-for research house Edison likes the look of PR outfit Next Fifteen Communications. The group reported pre-tax profits of £2.5 million (2010: £2.1 million) on sales up 19 per cent to £40.8 million for the six months to January.

Lister argues that the US investor relations company acquired last November is ‘benefiting from the uptick in tech IPO activity in the US’, enthusing that Next Fifteen has a ‘good track record of accretive acquisitions and expects to complete at least one further deal within the next few months’.

Arguing that the ‘traditional PR model is rapidly moving to a dynamic marketing model where brand value is the size and strength of its network’, Lister is pencilling in pre-tax profits of £8 million (2010: £6.6 million) on turnover of £83 million (2010: £72.3 million) for the year to July 2011.

Research pays
Of interest to Fiona Orford-Williams and Derek Terrington is market research group YouGov. The duo enthuse that ‘revenues from the US, the world’s largest consumer of research, have now outstripped those from the UK’, yet ‘the share price has yet to reflect that the dynamics of the business have shifted’.

A company with a ‘somewhat mixed record on acquisitions historically’, they insist that the strong performance of recent acquisition Harrison ‘has assuaged initial concerns’. The team forecast a £1.7 million increase in pre-tax profits to £5.5 million for the year to July 2011, with EPS of 4.2p and 4.5p pencilled in for 2011 and 2012 respectively.