Companies: PST   

There's been a worrying and inexplicable recent fall in the share price of AIT, last month's Company Watch recommendation at 23p as buy for recovery. The software stock, which develops CRM solutions for a swathe of financial services clients like Lloyds TSB, Alliance & Leicester, and Bradford & Bingley, has now sank from a 52-week summit of 118.5p. Curious considering the business looked a classic turnaround play. Back in November, the company rolled out woeful interim figures to 30 September, with profits of £500,000 crashing to a £37.8m loss after £23.1m of exceptionals. All this pain emerged after the company misread the direction of its niche market, mismanaged its cash and made acquisitions at the wrong time, all culminating in a cash crunch last year and a £20.5m refinancing. The restructuring and refinancing caused half time turnover to drop dramatically to just £8.4m (£20.2m). At the time, the company said its restructuring was substantially complete with £20m of annual costs taken out of the business. Latest estimates from broker and adviser Arbuthnot suggested losses of £18.1m for the year to March 2003, before a swing to a £900,000 profit for 2004. On these 2004 numbers, the shares would be on a p/e of 3.5 - budget stuff, save any skeletons in the closet.

Portrait Software	AIM	£7.4m	6.25p	1.25p
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Other company articles:
Portrait Software			15/10/2008
Pick of AIM			31/03/2008
Portrait's emerging profits picture			09/09/2007
Unearthing AIM's technology bargains			03/08/2007
Company Watch News			01/05/2003