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.

The PE is certainly very low, and the divi - whilst not enormous - a good sign. An interesting one dave, thanks. Will look a bit further.

Cheers, Madison

looks a good find this one leachy, i followed you into CMM from thisismoney thread, some good picks, keep em coming. Any price target for this?? Expect once new deal kicks in then over 4p is not unreasonable, add on their cash pile and we're getting to 5p eps for next year. Dare i say 50p target??

Education Dev Intl - Notice of Results

RNS Number:5409V
Education Development Intl PLC
26 April 2007

For Immediate Release

26 April 2007


Education Development International plc


Notice of Interim Results

&

Approval to award new Diploma qualifications


Education Development International plc (EDI), the leading provider of
educational qualifications and assessment services, will announce results for
the six month period to 31 March 2006 on Thursday, 31 May 2007. Briefings for
Analysts and Journalists will be held on that day.


In a separate announcement issued on RNS Reach today, EDI announces that it has
become one of the first organisations to be fully approved by the government's
regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, to award the new Diploma
qualifications.


Nigel Snook, EDI Chief Executive, said 'This represents an important step in the
development of EDI and recognises the work the company is doing to help to
improve skills in the workplace. It will not have an economic impact on EDI's
results until 2008/9 but it does reinforce EDI's status as a leading awarding
body in the UK'.


Full details of the approval to award the new Diploma qualifications can be
found on RNS Reach.

Well spotted, Dave. This co seems to be pushing all the right buttons. Will also give this some serious thought.

MMs tried a little shake, but all buys so far including 2x25000. Some decent buying should send this through the roof. Will add on any weakness at least.

Glad I bought in first thing this AM. Huge potential. Let's hope they can deliver.

By 2013 the school leaving age increases from 16 to 18. This is one of Gordon Brown's personal interests. 330,000 teenagers will need certifying and someone will have to certify them.

Another thing I've noticed, (though purely personally and I don't have any figures): take up of vocational courses by employers seems to be phenomenal. I was speaking to someone doing a management course and she said that over 50% of the students on the management course were NHS administrators. (Some of whom hardly needed the qualification as far as I could see!). All that money into the NHS has to go somewhere!

Cheers, Madison

Attracting alot of buyers, if it breaks out then breakout traders will be alerted, it's been sat idling for too long, level 2 suggests a tick up shortly. Without wanting to appear to ramp these, just on this years earnings they should be close to 40p (remember the cash pile when calculating eps). Next year given the contract they have announced then a price closer to 55p makes them still cheap. I'm on a nugget with this one, not been excited by the value since i came across CMM.

Well, I'm sufficiently convinced. Bought at 23.39p.

Lots of plus-points here: low PE, decent cash generation, no debt, rising sales, sensible acquisitions, pruning of unprofitable areas.

As long as the forthcoming figures demonstrate at least some kind of growth, we ought to see this rise quite nicely.

IMO, PDYOR.

Dont mean to spoil the party but arent the P/E figures stated above flattered by the fact that theres been a nil tax charge or am I overlooking something?.

This is also a highly competive business with City and Guild taking up about 47% of the vocational training market and I believe this one around 10%.

Must agree its interesting and will keep it on the watch list at the moment until further clarification.

Any help appreciated.

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