Xaar make injet print heads and ink technology - they are a world leader.

Everywhere you go you see things printed with inkjets today - the big pictures as point of sale in stores, exhibition backdrops, the scenery on TV programmes, signs on the sidse of vehicles, banners, shop fronts. Now they can print on cloth, metal and wood. More exciting is that XAR have just gone into joint development with Man Roland - the world's leader in litho printing - magazines, posters, leaflets etc. That's on the back of a development programme with Agfa - a world leader in the wide format printing technology.


The market really is asleep here.

We have director buying at 62p

We have Xaar working with AGFA and Agfa putting in a big wadge of cash into development of new ink-jet systems. Agfa are huge - and a global leader - full stop.

Now they are working with Man Roland to develop hybrid inkjet digital anologue webb presses. This has the potential to be mega huge. Roland id the name in printing - all of our printers who we sub-out to run huge 2m+ Roland 4 colour and 6 colour presses.

"Both companies are world leaders in their respective fields and share a common
belief that hybrid digital/analogue printing solutions have a major role to play
in addressing a growing range of printing requirements."

Xaar are working with the two biggest in their particular fields, Agfa for wide format printing, Roland for sheet fed and web litho printing.

On top of this there are the earnings numbers. Xaar made 1.6p eps this year but that hides the fact that they lost 2.5p at the half way stage - really they earned 4.1p in H2. Beating the current broker forecast for 3.96p eps this year should be a doddle - I think they will beat massively. Remember too that at the interims they said they expected to see a full year trading loss yet came in with 1.7p eps - proves to me things are picking up faster than they thought.

With the year end 6 weeks away I want to be fully invested in case they put out a trading statement after all the business they are picking up at DRUPA 2004 Trade Fair in Germany myself.

Buy when the market is quiet imo - it's a beggar to chase this when everyone is buying and pushing the price up.

CR