Smaller companies spotlight

EACH week, former Fleet Street City Editor Patrick Lay keeps This Is Money readers up-to-date with a neglected, but exciting sector of the stock market - smaller companies.

Wiggins raises £46m for take-off

FORGET the fifth runway at Heathrow or whether villages around Stansted and Gatwick airports need wiping out to make room for more aircraft, there could be a new airport expanding near you, right in line with the Government‘s White Paper emphasising the importance of developing smaller airports.

Wiggins Group, which is changing its name to PlaneStation Group (getit), has raised more than £46m from City institutions to 'give the board the flexibility to roll out more regional airports' and to improve its existing network.

Wiggins bought Manston Airport in Kent six years ago and now has six strategic airports around Europe and the Melbourne International Airport in Florida.

Although it has some way to go before challenging BAA in the battle for landing slots, the group has made a start by recruiting Geoffrey Ambrose as a non-executive director. Mr Ambrose has held senior positions at BAA, including general manager at Stansted and planning director at Heathrow.

In the swim

COMPUTER hardware and software group Tadpole is swimming in a bigger pool now, having struck a deal with EDS, the largest outsourcing services company and signed a master-reseller agreement. EDS had a turnover of £12.7bn in 2002, the last year for which full figures are available, and the agreement is with Endeavors Technology, a Tadpole offshoot.

At this rate of growth it shouldn‘t be long before Tadpole grows to become a frog.

Double your money

IT was 18 months ago that I first wrote about C A Coutts, the retail communications group, when the shares were around 60p and the dividend yield a healthy 8% to 9%. This week they touched 125p following a trading statement highlighting a strong performance throughout the second half of last year.

The announcement said profits for the year to end December, due to be published in March, are expected to be 'materially higher than those forecast by the market'.

Toby graduates

WHILE studying philosophy and politics at Manchester University, Toby Staveley felt bright young graduates were not well served by the existing network of graduate recruitment organisations, so three years ago, he set up his own and called it The Graduate Group.

It comprises a publishing division, a recruitment division and an IT division and uses a network of student representatives on the campuses of top universities.

Now he has sold out for £400,000 in cash and shares (plus some extras depending on future profits) to Hot Group, the AIM-listed recruitment specialists.

Some you may have missed

REAL Affinity, the AIM-listed direct marketing and communication group, has bought Navigator: The Sports Business, a sports marketing company, for £590,000 in shares. An additional £4.3m in shares may be payable in two tranches in 2004 and 2005, depending on performance.

OFEX-traded insurance and financial services group Berkeley Morgan has made a major recovery in the first half of the current financial year, producing profits of £672,000 in the six months to end October against a loss of £1.05m in the corresponding period a year ago. Net assets have improved by £500,000 to £1,9m.

Chairman and managing director Jon Pardoe says although no interim dividend is being paid he now expects to reintroduce a progressive dividend policy within the next 18 months.

PILAT Media, which supplies business management software to broadcasters around the world, has entered 2004 with all guns blazing. First it announced it has signed a contract with Malaysian pay-TV group, Measat Broadcast Network Systems, and then it revealed that it has ceased a royalty payment agreement it had with BSkyB after five years. In the past three years these royalty payments have represented up to 10% of Pilat revenues.

PREMIER Oil reports that the Chinquetti oil field, off the coast of Mauritania, is proving to be a commercial discovery and plans to develop the field are being submitted to the Mauritanian Government for approval.

RAB Capital has bought a further 3,507,500 'A' warrants in Cambrian Mining, raising its holding to 34.5% of the 'A' warrants in issue.

Some to watch out for

HECTOR Forsythe, analyst at Evolution Beeson Gregory, says the shares of Cardpoint are set for further growth this year. The shares are a 'buy' at 104p, with a target price of 119p, a price that is 'still undemanding', says Mr Forsythe.

HAVING recently initiated coverage of Volex Group, Robert Saunders, analyst at Arbuthnot Securities, says the shares have been under-researched and under-followed over the past two years, and will benefit from its restructuring. They are a 'buy' at 198p.