http://www.judges.uk.com/


Judges Scientific plc (formerly Judges Capital plc)

Judges Scientific is an AIM-listed company specialising in the design and production of scientific instruments. Rapid expansion is being pursued, both through organic growth within its subsidiary companies and through the acquisition of top-quality businesses with established reputations in world-wide markets.
Judges Scientific is a mini-conglomerate focused on scientific instruments. It owns seven specialised businesses, such as Fire Testing Technology, which measures the way materials react to fire and Global Digital Systems, which tests soil and rock ahead of large civil engineering projects.
These businesses are diverse, but they are all based in Britain and they all sell their products and services worldwide.


http://www.aitcheeengineering.co.uk/
http://www.fire-testing.com/

Judges Scientific is in the industrial engineering sector and is currently trading at 745.00p per share. In the last year Judges Scientific's share price has ranged from 392.50p to 765.00p and brokers are currently rating this stock as 'strong buy'.

Getting near to being up 100% from start of January 2012.

JUDGES SCIENTIFIC REPORTS RECORD HALF-YEAR RESULTS



Highlights*:

· Record adjusted basic earnings per share of 38.4p, an increase of 40% (H1-2011: 27.3p)

· Interim dividend of 5p, an increase of 51% (H1-2011: 3.3p); 7.6 times covered by adjusted earnings

· Record sales of £13.4 million, an increase of 39% (H1-2011: £9.7 million) including 8% organic growth

· Record adjusted pre-tax profit of £2.6 million, an increase of 47% (H1-2011: £1.8 million)

· Acquisitions of Global Digital Systems and the business of KE Developments completed in March 2012

· £3 million placing at 600p completed in May 2012

· Adjusted net debt of £4.3 million at 30 June 2012 (30 June 2011: £3.0 million and 31 December 2011: £0.7 million)

· Cash balances of £3.9 million at 30 June 2012



http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=4451124

IC VIEW:
Judges Scientific shares are at an all-time high, but still only trade on a forward PE ratio of 13. However, analysts note that "the company's second-half outlook is the most cautious we have seen", so it looks time to bank some gains. Hold.

Which I have done today.

Doing well

Trading Statement
RNS
RNS Number : 6298R
Judges Scientific PLC
21 November 2012



Judges Scientific plc



21 November 2012



Judges Scientific plc (the "Company" or the "Group")

Trading statement



The Directors of Judges Scientific plc are pleased to update the market on progress in the run-up to the Company's financial year end of 31 December 2012.



In the second half of the financial year 2012, the Group's businesses have generated satisfactory orders, sales and margins. Global Digital Systems, acquired in March 2012, has traded in line with the Board's estimates at the time of the acquisition. The Board is confident that adjusted earnings per share for the full year will exceed current market expectations.

Investors Chronicle clearly got this one wrong with the sell recommendation in Sept, bought back in on the continued rise.

Judges Scientific to exceed current market predictions
Wed 21 Nov 2012

JDG - Judges Scientific

Latest Prices
Name Price %
Judges Scientific 937.50p +3.59%

FTSE AIM All-Share 686 +0.21%
Industrial Engineering 7,580 -0.10%

LONDON (SHARECAST) - Shares in instruments maker Judges Scientific rose on Wednesday after the company revealed that it is confident that adjusted earnings per share for the full year will exceed current market expectations.

The current consensus EPS forecast is 63.4p.

In a brief statement the company revealed that in the second half of the 2012 financial year, the group's businesses have generated satisfactory orders, sales and margins.

It also said that the Global Digital Systems business that was acquired in March 2012 has traded in line with the board's estimates at the time of the acquisition.

Broker Westhouse Securities said of the stock: "We have positioned Judges Scientific as a mini Halma/Spectris and today’s upgrade indicates that there are good underlying businesses within the group which will be boosted by acquisitions."

The share price rose 3.59% to 937.50p by 14:38.

;-))

Trading Statement
RNS
RNS Number : 2432W
Judges Scientific PLC
24 January 2013



Judges Scientific plc

24 January 2013

Judges Scientific plc (the "Group" or "Judges")

Trading Statement

The Directors of Judges (the "Board") are pleased to update shareholders on the Group's trading performance in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2012.

The year concluded positively with the Group maintaining momentum in sales, profits and cash flow. The Board expects that adjusted earnings per share for 2012 will achieve the market's expectations with a good measure of comfort. The financial position at the year-end is robust and reflects an active year that witnessed two acquisitions and a £3.0 million placing.

The Group's order book at 31 December 2012 represents almost eleven weeks' sales; this is higher than at the previous year-end but the figure is flattered by the inclusion, for the first time, of Global Digital Systems Limited, which tends to have a longer order book.

The Board believes that global economic conditions are somewhat less turbulent than at the outset of 2012 and are hopeful that Judges will continue to display its resilience in 2013 with another year of progress.

Ends

Judges Scientific advances on trading forecast
Thu 24 Jan 2013

JDG - Judges Scientific


LONDON (SHARECAST) - Judges Scientific gained three per cent Thursday after the group said it maintained momentum in sales, profit and cash flow last year.

In a trading update, the manufacturer of scientific instruments estimated that adjusted earnings per share for the financial year to December 31st would meet market expectations.

Results were buoyed by an active year with two acquisitions and a £3.0m placing. The group purchased Global Digital Systems and KE Developments during the period as the businesses strengthened its position and expanded its product offering.

“The group's order book at December 31st represents almost eleven weeks' sales. This is higher than at the previous year-end but the figure is flattered by the inclusion, for the first time, of Global Digital Systems,” the company said in a statement.

The organisation forecast another year of progress ahead following turbulent global economic conditions in 2012.

Shares climbed 3.1% to 1,017.50p at 10:56 Thursday.

Final Results





Highlights:

· Record basic earnings per share, excluding exceptional items, of 81.3p (2011: 61.0p); corresponding figures including exceptional items: 4.2p loss (2011: 45.2p profit)

· Proposed final dividend of 10.0p (2011: 6.7p), making a total distribution for the year of 15.0p (2011: 10.0p)

· 42% increase in pre-tax profit to a record £5.6million (2011: £3.9 million) before exceptional items, tax and non-controlling interests

· Record revenues of £28.0 million (2011: £20.8 million), including a 7.5% increase on a like-for-like basis

· Cash in hand of £5.4 million as at 31 December 2012; adjusted net debt of £1.8 million (2011: £0.7 million)

· Completion of two acquisitions in 2012

· £3.0 million placing at 600p completed in May 2012, three times subscribed.





http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=4559849

Acquisition and Trading Update

RNS


RNS Number : 9611H

Judges Scientific PLC

27 June 2013






Judges Scientific plc



ACQUISITION OF SCIENTIFICA LIMITED



27 June 2013



JUDGES SCIENTIFIC plc

("Judges Scientific", "Judges", the "Company" or the "Group")

ACQUISITION OF SCIENTIFICA LIMITED AND TRADING UPDATE

Judges Scientific, the parent company of a group engaged in the design, manufacture and sale of scientific instruments, announces that on 26 June 2013 it acquired 100% of the issued share capital of Scientifica Limited ("Scientifica"), specialist manufacturers of electrophysiology equipment, for a cash consideration of £12.0 million and an earn-out capped at £1.0 million (the "Acquisition").

An additional payment will be made to reflect any excess working capital over and above the ongoing requirements of the business. Judges expects such payment to be covered by the cash inherited as at the completion date.

Information on Scientifica

Scientifica designs, manufactures and sells complete instrument rigs used in electrophysiology, comprised of micromanipulators, optical microscopes and associated mounting solutions. The company also distributes a range of complementary products including imaging systems, multi-electrode arrays, amplifiers, perfusion equipment and light sources. The products are sold worldwide to academic institutions, research centres and pharmaceutical companies for the purpose of conducting electrophysiology research with a particular emphasis on neuroscience.

Scientifica was founded in 1996 by Mark Johnson and David Rogerson, who developed it as joint Managing Directors and who each owned a 50% interest in the company's share capital. During recent months, Matt Kemp joined the senior management team as Sales Director. Shortly before completion, Mr Kemp exercised options to acquire 5% of the enlarged equity, thereby reducing the respective holdings of Mr Johnson and Mr Rogerson to 47.5% each. Following the Acquisition, Mr Rogerson will not stay with the company, which will be run by Mr Johnson and Mr Kemp who will remain in their respective positions.

The company has concentrated its operations on the supply of systems, which are configured to meet the specific requirements of individual customers. This customer focus has enabled Scientifica to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 31% over the past five years. Exports represent two-thirds of total revenues and Scientifica's performance in overseas markets was recognised in 2012 when the company received a Queen's Award for Enterprise - International Trade.

Scientifica's unaudited accounts for the financial year to 31 March 2013 show revenues of £9.2 million and pre-tax profits of £2.2 million. Operating profit adjusted to eliminate non-recurring items and to reflect Judges' practices would have totalled £2.1 million. The accounts show net tangible assets of £3.65 million, including cash of £1.25 million.

The earn-out will amount to £1.0 million if Scientifica generates operating profits of £2.167 million or more in respect of the twelve month period to 31 March 2014, reducing by six times any shortfall below £2.167 million. Half of the earn-out will be paid in cash and half through the issue of new Ordinary shares ("Ordinary Shares") in Judges at a price of 1180p per Ordinary Share, based on the prevailing price of Judges' Ordinary Shares on the day the Acquisition was agreed in principle. For accounting purposes, fluctuations in the share price will have a commensurate impact on the book value of the earn-out cap.

The Acquisition is expected to be earnings enhancing with immediate effect. The Board believes that Scientifica is an excellent business operating in an expanding niche with considerable worldwide growth potential.

Financing of the Acquisition

As at 31 December 2012, the date of the last published balance sheet, the Group's adjusted net debt amounted to £1.7 million supported by borrowing facilities of £10.7 million. The Acquisition and associated transaction costs are being financed from existing cash resources and an additional £9.0 million term loan ("Loan") provided by Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets. The Loan is repayable over a five year period.

Judges' Trading Performance

The Group's trading performance since the beginning of the current financial year has remained satisfactory. Order intake was strong in the first quarter and more subdued since, resulting in 4.7% organic growth in order intake compared to the first 25 weeks of 2012. This is consistent with market expectations for the year as a whole.

Alex Hambro, Chairman of Judges, commented:

"The purchase of Scientifica represents the largest acquisition made by Judges Scientific and its impact on the Group's financial performance should be significant. We are delighted that Mark Johnson and Matt Kemp will continue to manage the company and we welcome them to Judges' expanding team."

Judges Scientific: WH Ireland moves target price from 1400p to 1450p and reiterates a buy recommendation.

IC VIEW

Judges Scientific is expected to grow significantly as the string of acquisitions start to make a full contribution. However, the shares have shot up 85 per cent since the start of the year. Trading on 18 times forecast EPS of 101p for 2014, that growth looks factored in. Hold.

Judges Scientific: the precision instrument maker that came about by chance
Telegraph
By Alistair Osborne | Telegraph – 13 hours ago


David Cicurel explains how he built a £100m scientific instrument group after stumbling across a sector boasting 2,000 UK companies

It is the £100m precision instrument maker that, incongruously enough, came about by chance.

Judges Scientific (LSE: JDG.L - news) was not what David Cicurel had in mind when he listed a £2m investment vehicle on the Aim junior exchange just over a decade ago. His plan was to buy stakes in small public companies and push them into being taken private at a fat premium.

He ended up creating a company about as far removed from the original concept as possible. Instead, Judges became a vehicle for buying private companies making scientific instruments. Its businesses test everything from a material’s flammability to the properties of soil, inhabiting a niche bit of British industry that’s as cutting-edge as it’s overlooked.

In the eight years since Cicurel, 64, paid £3.7m for his first acquisition Fire Testing Technology (FTT) he has stealthily turned Judges into a group today worth £105m. Original investors are within a whisker of making 20 times their money.

Ask him how he came across such a money-spinning sector and the Judges chief executive says, laughing: “I’d love to say I did it out of my genius but it was actually chance.”

The company doctor had a different plan when, in 1996, he took Continental (Frankfurt: CON.F - news) Foods private in a £27m deal. Despite rescuing the company, he’d been forced to pay a 57pc premium a price that made him think what a “nice wheeze” public-to-private was from the other side of the fence.

For a few years, he hunted down suitable investments, temporarily latching on to Izodia, the software group forever associated with jailed fraudster Gerald Smith. Indeed, via an intermediary, Cicurel unwittingly sold Smith his Izodia shares. “He was very nice, like all the crooks,” says Cicurel, recalling their subsequent meeting. “Urbane, sophisticated, well-spoken. I didn’t have a clue he was dishonest.”

Then, in January 2003, Cicurel teamed up with Judges chairman, Alex Hambro, to float Judges Capital on Aim. The forerunner to today’s group was capitalised at just £2m but worked with co-investors. “We wanted to have five investments in companies and then push them into going private companies that would be better valued by private equity,” he says.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq “killed that business model”, he recalls. The market took off, with the small cap index doubling. Cicurel was forced to “change strategy completely. Instead of public to private, it became private to public.”

He began examining different types of deals and, among the dozens that came his way, he found one particularly “puzzling. It had £3m turnover and £750,000 operating profit, with 19 staff. It looked too good to be true.” It was FTT.

He met the owners, “an engineer and a scientist, who were both looking to retire. They explained they had a dominating position in a tiny world niche and that the drivers of the business were regulation and globalisation.

“I thought that’s a really good business to have if you have little money, you can still be powerful,” he says. “It’s better to be in a little principality and you’re the prince than competing with big empires when you don’t have the wherewithal to do that.”

Cicurel, who owns 15.6pc of Judges, wondered if FTT was a “unique thing”. So he did his “homework and found there are 2,000 companies in that sector, just in the UK”. Not only that. They export almost four-fifths of what they make.

FTT became the first of 10 acquisitions in the sector, together costing just over £30m. They have seen Judges add businesses spanning the testing of fibre optics (PFO) and soil (Global Digital Systems) to one involved in neuroscience Scientifica, the group’s biggest purchase so far, bought this year for up to £13m.

Customers range from universities to test houses and companies. Says Cicurel: “There are two things that drive our market generally. One is education. There has been a colossal increase in university education and you have to equip these universities. The other is the fact that the world is driven by perfection and measurement - optimisation. Everything people do they try to optimise and when you optimise, you want to measure.”

Judges’s soil testing company can help construct anything from office blocks to offshore wind farms. As Cicurel explains: “People built cathedrals that are still there 10 centuries later. But there was a lot of overkill in the foundation and weight of it all. Today you build something that is much lighter and has just the foundations you need. It took more than 100 years to build Notre Dame. Today you build it in a couple of years not that it’s nicer.”

Judges’ strategy, he says simply, is “to find good companies, very nichy, and pay down the debt. We probably see about 50 deals a year and engage seriously with three to five. They are not family businesses. I think people start them at 40 and sell them at 60. We’re normally buying because the people are getting old and want to retire.”

He always looks for certain things: a manufacturer that “owns the intellectual property”, that sells instruments scientists buy and that has good profit margins and strong exports. “If you are not exporting a lot, you are not meaningful in a world niche,” he says.

Judges’ main rivals are far bigger companies - Spectris (Other OTC: SEPJF - news) , valued at £2.7bn, Halma (£2.1bn) and Oxford Instruments (LSE: OXIG.L - news) (£925m). But Cicurel ensures he has enough cash on the balance sheet to move fast on a deal, topping up the funds in October via an £8.1m placing, following the Scientifica deal.

He points out too that his big three rivals have also “done very well. I shouldn’t say this but in our sector it’s not terribly difficult to do well though it is easy to do badly. There’s a lot of rubbish out there, you have to be really selective.”

Smiling he adds: “It’s more like mining diamonds than extracting oil.”

Trading Statement

RNS


RNS Number : 5513M

Judges Scientific PLC

17 July 2014








Judges Scientific plc ('Judges Scientific', the 'Company' or the 'Group')



Trading Update



The Directors of Judges Scientific, the parent company of a group specialising in the design, manufacture and sale of scientific instruments, update shareholders and the market with regard to the Group's trading performance during the first half of the current financial year.



The trading performance of the Group's businesses during the period proved challenging. The interim results, scheduled to be announced in September 2014, are expected to show revenue growth of 43% compared with the corresponding figures for the six months to 30 June 2013; this includes for the first time the results from Scientifica Ltd ("Scientifica"), which was acquired on 26 June 2013; without Scientifica, the Group would have produced organic growth of 3.2%. The Board anticipates that interim profits before exceptional items will also progress but only to the extent that could have been expected as a result of the inclusion of Scientifica. This also applies to adjusted basic earnings per share, which are expected to increase despite the 9% dilution resulting from the October 2013 share placing.



Order intake during the six-month period (excluding Scientifica) was 4.8% below that recorded during the first half of 2013; total intake (including Scientifica) was 11% below the level required to meet our sales budget for the year without consuming our order book. The second quarter showed a moderate but insufficient improvement compared to the first. The order book at 30 June 2014 represented 7.8 weeks of sales, compared to 10.6 weeks at 30 June 2013.



After displaying a resilient performance during the extremes of the global financial crisis, our sector suffered in 2013, with exports from the UK down 3.5%. Against this background, Judges still managed to achieve 4.5% organic growth in that year. We appear to be experiencing this slowdown, albeit with some delay. The efforts to contain public sector spending have been compounded by the 10% appreciation of Sterling against the US$ during the last twelve months. The US$ remains the benchmark of value outside Europe, where we export half of our turnover.



Operating cash flow was healthy throughout the period. The Company's balance sheet remains robust and net debt rests at a modest multiple of operating profit. Consequently, the disappointing performance in the first half and prevailing trading headwinds do not inhibit the two factors which have primarily delivered shareholder value: selective acquisitions and our progressive dividend policy.

Judges Scientific: WH Ireland reduces target price from 2370p to 1550p and stays with its neutral rating.

Trading Statement
RNS
RNS Number : 5707C
Judges Scientific PLC
20 January 2015



Judges Scientific plc

20 January 2015



Judges Scientific plc (the "Group" or "Judges")



Trading statement



The Board of Judges is updating shareholders on the Group's trading performance for the financial year ended 31 December 2014.



Judges had a challenging year in 2014. Worldwide demand for the Group's products was subdued and this affected order intake, sales and margins. The Board had identified for several years the potential impact on its business from public spending restrictions in mature economies, to slower growth in China and to the strength of Sterling. Most of the Group's businesses were affected to some degree in 2014 by these factors.



In the first half, Judges produced a reasonable financial performance in spite of the weak orders but at the expense of the order book which contracted from 10.6 weeks to 7.8 weeks. Order intake remained depressed in the third quarter, as noted at the time of publication of the interim accounts, but recovered in the fourth quarter to a weekly level in line with the Group's original target. The outcome is a second-half intake which is much improved from the first half but still below the second half of 2013 and an order book of 9.7 week, substantially repaired from the June trough.



The Board anticipates the final results for 2014, due to be published in the last week of March, to show sales, profits and earnings per share in line with market expectations. Cash generation has been strong and the Group, after a difficult year, remains in a strong financial position.



The order recovery recorded in the fourth quarter is a positive but fragile encouragement for 2015; the readjustment of Sterling against the US Dollar is also helpful albeit mitigated by a weakening Euro. Despite the disappointments of 2014, the Group is in a healthy condition, fully able to pursue its acquisition strategy and to continue dividend growth.



Ends.