A year back, Kevin Loosemore, Chairman of Micro Focus, in presenting their full year results to analysts, alluded to his ambition to get a Holway Boring Award. See Boring Micro Focus. Today, after posting MicroFocus – Room for improvement , Mike Phillips emailed a copy of the analyst briefing and pointed out ‘Slide 32’ with the words ‘this shows the route to a Holway Boring Award’. Indeed it does! Readers will know that companies can only get such a prestigious award after 10 years of uninterrupted EPS growth. So Micro Focus has notched up another year – ‘just’ three to go now! Must admit it gets more difficult with every year that passes though. Remember that Sage and Capita are the only companies ever to have both received an award and k
ept hold of it. Indeed, they are both celebrating 20 years of uninterrupted earnings growth. See The Last Time and The Last Time Update.
But the recent Micro Focus story is pretty impressive too. I admit to being a shareholder who has had a pretty good ride. Since the 2005 IPO, Micro Focus has returned some $616.2m to shareholders through dividends, share buy-backs and returns of value. Market Capitalisation at IPO in 2005 was $444.5m. The CAGR of Diluted EPS from FY06 to FY12 is some 41%. Current analyst estimates are for positive EPS growth to continue – albeit at a lower c10% level.
You may also remember that we reported that Mike Phillip’s wife had bought 27,139 Micro Focus shares in Mar 11 at 308p – only to see them bomb soon after. See – Micro Focus revisited. All must be sweetness and light in the Phillip’s household now as not only has Mrs Phillips received all those wondrous dividends and cashbacks but the shares are now at 566p!