ntg, page-2

Good question............

When a company first lists you often find that the EPS figure gets artificially inflated due to using a weighted average of no. of securities on issue during the prior year to calculate it. Very easy to be fooled! Have a look at the no. of securities used to calculate last year's EPS (pt 10).....65 million and then go to the back of the report and see how may shares were on issue at the time of the report......well,well.........120 million!! There's also been a few (not many in this context) that have been issued for acquisitions this yearand various other things going in in that report............not to mention they forgot to quote how many securities listed at reporting date. They have also issued more securities since June 30. In addition their second half was down on the first,

The clue that something like this has occurred is in the current report...........why would profit be up 100%,yet EPS be up only 16%?? Reason being that the number of securities used in the EPS calculation is nowhere near what it was last year

You may well find that because not a lot of people read their reports properly that next year when the growth IS reflected in the EPS then they may surprise the market on the upside.

This is not a complete explanation but may give you an idea of why people maybe got sucked in a bit on this one. I held it myself for a while and gradually offloaded thru the 1.50's and 1.40's.

Ed.