Steady Decline, page-5

I just purchased some more shares as I consider the current range to be financially sensible.  Having said that it's difficult to value these guys at this stage.  The purchase of John Guest in London seems to be a sensible decision and complements RWC's current PTC business which I believe will continue to grab a larger piece of the pie as each year goes by. It's the genuine propensity for growth that represents the underpinning logic for ownership of these guys.

But there are some fairly immediate issues.

The cooling off of housing development in the USA and Australia

The possible impact of Brexit which is hard to determine.  John Guest has, I think, about 6 distribution outlets in Europe while the three production outlets are in England.  I recently read how the Just in Time approach to production in England could be impacted by even a soft Brexit as items which can be seamlessly transferred through Europe to England and vice versa will not enjoy that efficiency after Brexit, soft or hard.  In fact a hard Brexit has the potential to be quite disruptive (I suspect).

The FY2019 Outlook in the 2018 Financial Report referenced the import tariffs that were pending at that stage.  The report said, amongst other things "The new import duties in the USA are not expected to have a significant impact on Annual Results".

So they're my thoughts at this stage.  The current P/E (trailing) is about 29 which is high for a business that has to deal with the uncertainty listed above but this is a long term proposition.