well i've not found it but a respected hemscott poster has got me in, had a good few grands worth today at 22.5p. Let me present the facts:

The stock ticker is EDD (Education Development)
1.Historic pe ratio less than 10 (yes, i know that is cheap)
2.No debt
3.Cash in bank.
4.It pays a healthy dividend.
5.Directors have bought and hold alot of stock.
6.To top it off this little undiscovered gem announced a big earnings enhancing deal last Thursday which was overlooked on a bad market day.

Now they should be on for around 2.7-3p earnings when they announce results the end of May (expect the shares to be much higher as it seems one or two have started buying after this one has been brough to their attention. The deal they announced last week is a pretty damned impressive one and earnings are really expected to motor which should see earnings around the 4p mark. Now the overlooked thing here is the cash on their books. They have 2.3 million pound in the bank which given they are only valued at 11.9 million really brings down the pe ratio. This one is worth at least 2/3 times the current value, this is a bread and butter earning sector, by jove though it's a cheap one.

You're dead right about tax GF.

9.9million of unrealised losses last year.

Cheers, Madison

So we are really looking at an inflated P/E at the moment.

Anyone have any ideas what others in this sector/business P/E s are trading on.

Help appreciated as I try to keep well away with anything to do with Schools/Colleges and must be showing my ignorance. I used to be Chief Finance officer for a L Authority when LMS came in, talk about whinging from headteachers and governors. Was glad to see the back of it.

Still looks promising but have to do a bit more research.

what about all that cash?? Organic growth, the likes of NAE are on over 30x earnings, that would put this at nearly 100p!!!

Madison, Goldfinger:

Point taken re the nil tax charge (well spotted!) - but the 9.9 million of "negative earnings" is going to take some time to pay off in terms of future net profts, and I think that allows for substantial SP growth. It would be one thing if the losses of previous years were about to be wiped out in the current financial year, (and the company get hit with a big tax charge on their profits in the following H1) but it looks as if this could take three or four years to pay off, and I can't see the SP standing still in that time, given that there should also be a fair amount of topline growth as well as a substantial growth in pre-tax profits over that period.

I'm not a tax expert, but I don't think that this is the big bogeyman that some are making it out to be.

Please feel free to argue with me - hopefully we'll all learn something :o)

Not trying to be negative ST or Dave. (thats for sola)

Im interested in buying but need to know more about the competitors and obviously the P/E tool comes into play here.

Cheers GF.

nice to see directors have bought and hold plenty. To me this price is getting in at the bottom of a great little growth co. Plenty of Asia and middle east business as well. Should be plenty of growth from the aquisition announced last week.

P/E historically low as you can see from this link.....

http://www.digitallook.com/cgi-bin/dlmedia/security.cgi?username=&ac=&csi=14441

Might be like trying to flog a engineer that stays on a low P/E for year after year.

The next results could be a catalyst.

Will watch for now.

just noticed LTHM has arrived on my watchlist as it's near a breakout, first look says the pe is 4 acc to ADVFN. They did 2.9 mill pre-tax for the interims, market cap 46 mill, seems again they have loads of cash on the books and are due 10 mill from a disposal. I've not bought yet, it's moving up today, can anyone look at the figs to see what they think.

Id be carefull with advfn figures Dave.

Far better to use Digitallook.com which is more or less always up to date.

Latham as been a good stock for me in the past purely as a NAV play as it had acres and acres of land not re valued in the accounts for years. Thats been gradualy realised as land was sold for development, disposals have also paid off.

The forward P/E to end of March 2007 is 14.2 based on forecasts of 16p per share.

Be carefull "never ever trade what you see but what you think", (not Tenby Deckchair) nudge nudge, wink wink. LOL.

See you across the road.

Try the LTHM thread Dave for background. IMO they should do well for timber supplies to 2012 Olympics construction work (based in Home Counties, with depots in London, and squeaky clean on origin of timber supplies).Nice solid company but DYOR.

ST - no need to argue as you simply enlarged on my poorly put point! Likewise I am no tax expert but it seemed to me that there was likely to be a lot of mileage in the sp before that became an issue.

GF - thanks for your comments. Will post if I can come up with any useful info. As for spoiling a party, a good debate is always welcome! Incidentally City & Guilds is a registered charity so not I'm sure what to use to compare them with EDD.

Cheers Madison