AIMprospector
Too small for many fund managers, this smallcap telecoms firm is a big success Maintel Holdings is a telecom and data services company providing solutions to UK businesses. In the last five years, sales have increased at an average rate of 7.8% a year. This has delivered average EPS growth of 13.3% a year. Maintel has delivered unbroken dividend increases since 2006. In the last five years, the pace of those rises has averaged 19.8% per annum. Only six other AIM-quoted companies have a better record.
average EPS growth of 13.3% a year, sales growth of 7.8% a year One of Maintel’s areas of expertise is Unified Communications: bringing together the range of voice, video and text communications that come in and out of a company. This technology can be used to receive a message in one medium and send in another: for example, running voicemail messages through speech recognition software to convert them into an email for the intended call recipient. Maintel draws this technology together into a process that it calls ‘Contact Optimisation’. One example of this is ‘Outbound Virtualisation’. This enables an organisation to respond to, for example, a customer www.aimprospector.co.uk
via their preferred medium at their preferred time. For example, daytime notifications can be sent to a landline number and email inbox with out of hours messages being delivered to a mobile phone as voicemail or text. The aim of streamlining these processes is to reduce human intervention (i.e. call centre staffing) and increase the probability that a message will be successfully received by the target. Another service offered is Business Continuity Management, ensuring that phones can be answered etc. if a firm is unable to access their own offices. Maintel also provides maintenance services to reduce possible downtime within a call centre or large organisation.
one of AIM’s most successful companies The company’s last results statement showed a cash balance of £0.7m and no debt. This position changed post-close, when a £3m loan and £1m overdraft facility were taken on to help secure the purchase of telecoms firm Datapoint. Prior to the transaction, Datapoint had been making sales approximately half those of Maintel. According to the consensus of broker forecasts reported by Stockopedia, Maintel is expected to
deliver a 70% increase in earnings per share with its 2013 final results in March. A near one-third increase in sales is then forecast for 2014 (thanks to the Datapoint acquisition). A further 20% increase in earnings per share is expected for 2014. Maintel’s history of dividend increases is expected to continue, taking the payout for 2014 to 17.4p per share.
dividend has increased every year since 2006 Between them, two directors own 45% of the shares. Another 18% is owned by two private shareholders: one is an early investor in the company and the other is the partner of a former CEO. The concentrated share register may deter some fund investors. However, it has not stopped Maintel becoming one of AIM’s most successful companies, providing significant returns to shareholders along the way. Maintel Holdings (LON:MAI) FOR Datapoint acquisition will significantly increase scale Successful team AGAINST Off-radar for many investors Ownership and control concentrated between a few key people Market Cap
£59m
Bid:offer
540p:550p
52week low:high
300p:600p
P/E (forecast) Yield (forecast)
14.9 2.6%
9