Trading Update


Styles & Wood Group plc, a leading provider of retail property services to
premier UK retailers, makes the following statement on trading for the year
ended 31 December 2009.


The Group and its four divisions (StoreFit, StorePlanning, StoreCare and
StoreData) have continued to trade in line with management expectations. Revenue
and underlying* profit before tax for the year ended 31 December 2009 are
anticipated to be in line with expectations.


The refinancing completed on 29 June 2009 has ensured that the Group has a
strong balance sheet to weather the current challenging market environment. Net
cash at 31 October 2009 was GBP6.3m which is better than was expected at the
time of the refinancing, and this improvement continued through to the end of
the year.


Despite the tough market conditions, the Group has continued to secure projects
with key customers. Some of these projects include:


* Barclays - completed work on 4 flagship branches and the refresh of more than 30
other branches
* Lloyds TSB - rebranded 13 high street branches
* Morrisons - undertook work on 251 cafes
* Waitrose - 5 new stores handed over in 2009
* Co-op - continued rebranding of estate, converting 40 stores into new Co-op
format
* DW Fitness - rebranding and fit out of 4 fitness centres
* Home Retail Group - 8 new stores delivered for Argos and 6 for Homebase





The Board believes that with its robust financial position, coupled with its
strong, loyal customer base, the Group is well placed to take advantage of any
market upturn and maintain its market leading position. However, the markets in
which the Group operates continue to remain challenging and therefore the Board
maintains its cautious outlook for 2010.

"Rumour of the Day" in The Times business pages:

STY "may be in line for a string of new contracts" incl up to 50 John Lewis stores

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article7024292.ece

so much for rumours John Lewis operates only 28 stores

http://www.hvnplus.co.uk/page.cfm/action=Archive/ArchiveID=2/EntryID=1665

Chart still in downtrend, also can buy a lot of stock in one go online, not sure if
it can hold it's 20p support, has it moments but share dominated by quick buck
traders who never hold for 5 mins.

not my cup of tea anything but oilers/miners but this looks very interesting. Noticed over on advfn a few decent 'names' have latched on to figs/fundamentals. Half of market cap in cash but more importantly they're involved in re-fitting the HBOS/LLOYDS branches. With all these retailers reporting solid figs i can only see recovery in the shareprice from here. Bought a few here.

going from strength to strength. Looks like nakedtrader bought it again acc advfn board. He seems to dabble in this quite often.

I think he sold out at a loss at around 20p a few weeks ago.

Results for 2009 out today. Headline is "profits up 250%" but really they only went from just 0.2M in 2008 to 0.7M in 2009. But still reasonably impressive given that revenues halved. Looks fairly valued for now but interesting little company.

Be interesting to see how this one pans out with results.

In theory it looks a bargain, tiny market cap, no debt, half it's market cap
in cash and turnover well over 100 million, now the banks are all performing
strongly again does this mean more work at better margins for Sty ?

Results this month.

Just a hint of recovery is enough to get the punters chasing.

It's market cap is backed with mostly cash so it's good value i
suppose at these levels.

That the second 75k buy in 2 days, quite a overhang to allow one or two
people to get that kind of size, normally it's 50k max online, think it's going
to turn at some point so grabbed some more myself while they are offering
it cheap and under the offer price online, they like to chase it when it's going
up so i prefer to buy when weak and not moving or drifting ahead of the rush.

To bring a bit of balance to this thread - interim figs to June 2010 show sales 40M and preatx loss 0.9M (previous year 74M and loss 1.1M respectively). Looks like it was saved by RBS in 2009, but they now own 15 million convertible redeemable pref shares, which they can convert into 16 million ordinary shares at 19.75p. These prefs carry cash coupon of 3% from Dec 2012 and are redeemable in tranches (unless converted) from December 2010. The balance sheet is insolvent unless you regard the non current liability of pref shares as quasi-capital. I do not hold, but be in no doubt this is a share for those with high appetite for risk.

"The Group continues to have a strong balance sheet and margins and operational performance have improved. Following the largest order intake for a one month period for more than two years, the Group's Order Book at 30 June 2010 was more than 10% ahead of the same point in 2009 which strengthens our confidence that our business turnaround strategy is beginning to take effect"

The management seem to disagree partridge, true about the Pref shares but RBS
have been supportive of the business for a while and will want to see a return so
i cannot see the risk when the business is on the road to recovery with H2 expected to be a lot stronger and with 5 mil of net cash.

Not saying it won't come good, rdg, and for all holders' sake I hope it does. Suggest you have a look at the Connaught IMS of 8th July (two months only before administration) to remind you that management is sometimes blinkered to the real situation. With RBS having the right to start redeeming some of those prefs in a little over 3 months time, the present cash might not last too long if their markets turned down again in 2010. Hopefully they won't. Good luck with it.

Thanks, hopefully Sty is a much smaller outfit to keep a watch on, cash actually increased in the last results, i remember it down to 4 mil then up again to 5 mil.

They do quote that 90% of their turnover is "in the bag" so to speak so they
should meet expectations for the year...hopefully...

Bought a few earlier - interims looked positive and the final results are due next week. Could be a good recovery play.imo

Part of the interims statement on 30th August 2012;

"An improved work mix for the first half of 2012 has created a stronger balance sheet and better positioned the Group for a significant increase in workload in the second half of the year. Our frameworks provide predictable, sustainable income streams and well organised and managed projects deliver positive cash. New work opportunity for 2013 is being discretely targeted to more evenly balance future years' weighting in order to realise further cost efficiencies and cash flow improvements.

Our weighted sightline for 2012 is currently tracking over 5% ahead of 2011 and the unexecuted order book for work to be delivered in 2012/13 is similarly showing an improvement of more than 10% over prior year."

Just sold out for a small loss here as it seems to be going gradually Southwards. Sadly the interim statement issued last year has proved to be overly optimistic.

This looks an interesting gamble.

If my research is correct, this company has a Market Capital of £3m and £3.5m in cash.

A turnover of around £100 million, new contract wins and annual profits of around 500k.

Hitting the year bottom.......Any thoughts

negative net worth £6m, no dividend to be paid for 2013.