In any case, what interests me right now is that the company has been quietly growing its asset management business and delivering on its strategic plan, announced in the summer of 2012, to transform the company from a predominantly traditional private client stockbroker to a full service investment and wealth management group. In the financial year to end March 2014, Walker Crips returned to profitability and posted operating profit of £470,000 on revenues of £20.7m, reversing an underlying loss of £1m in the prior financial year. True, that’s hardly a rich return on net assets of almost £21m, of which net cash accounts for £7.8m, which largely explains why investors only attribute a market value of £16.5m to its equity or 21 per cent less than book value.
Building a profitable business