Macfarlane (MACF), the manufacturer of specialist protective packaging, is the only company that passes all eight of our growth at right price (GARP) tests for constituents of the FTSE All Share index. With a lesser market capitalisation, Macfarlane is also a constituent of the FTSE All Small Companies index, so also gets screened against our small cap criteria. Interestingly, using the trailing twelve-month data from S&P Capital IQ, the company now passes the small cap screen cash conversion test – a metric it fell short on last time we ran the screen.
- There are several companies that fail only one of the large cap screen tests and these misses can highlight areas to examine in further research. It is most common for companies to fail tests on their five-year EPS growth or consensus forward EPS estimates. Failing either test doesn’t automatically harpoon the growth case for owning the shares but they act as flags to steer potential investors in asking the right next questions about companies.
- The other two companies which pass all the small-cap screen tests are Haynes Publishing (HYNS) and fashion retailer Bonmarche (BON).
- Our Aim screen follows the same seven rules as the FTSE Small-Cap screen and IT Services firm SCISYS (SSY), cosmetics company Warpaint (W7L), Sylvania Platinum (SLP) and financial markets data specialist Arcontech (ARC) achieve perfect scores.
