Despite an unspectacular month on the markets, our Company Watch and Company Profile recommendations continue to prosper. At current levels, our favoured stocks of 2003 are still ahead by an impressive 40 per cent, outperforming all indicies.

Incremental gains

Last month's batch of Company Watch ventures have performed reasonably well in the past four weeks. Premier Direct has inched up 0.35 per cent to 574p, Debt Free Direct has clipped up 7.5p to 73.5p while Deal Group Media remains unchanged at 4p, as does Dowding and Mills, at 11p. All remain firm holds.

TripleArc snares Access

Another featured in November's issue, print management group TripleArc, has received overwhelming support for its bid to acquire fellow Aim-listed media venture Access Plus.

93.7 per cent of Access Plus shareholders approved the offer of 150p in cash and 3.516 shares for each piece of Access Plus paper. The offer, made on behalf of TripleArc by broker Canaccord Capital, has now been declared unconditional.

Forecast to generate a £4.5 million profit before tax and goodwill from £46.5 million of revenue this year, TripleArc is funding the deal through an £11.2 million placing at 16p and a £20 million finance facility agreed with HSBC.

Investment group Jupiter Asset Management certainly seems confident in TripleArc's plans to advance growth at the solidly profitable Access Plus, snaffling up a 5.7 per cent stake in the bidder in recent days.

Recommended at 15.5p only a few weeks ago the shares have risen by 0.25p. They remain worth buying.

Cash-rich Cardpoint

October Company Profile Cardpoint, meanwhile, has clipped higher on an excellent full year statement showing the company delivering ahead of all expectations.

Sales leapt almost fourfold to £12.2 million, nine per cent above the £11.2 million figure mooted by house broker Evolution Beeson Gregory. Pre-tax profits before goodwill came in at £50,000, against a £757,000 loss, although the actual loss before tax was £608,000.

Chief executive Mark Mills says Cardpoint has grown rapidly in the past year, by acquisition and also organically. In October 2002 it snapped up Green Machine, owner of 105 ATMs, then in June Securicor Cash Machine and its 1,232 ATMs was acquired. This latter deal not only removed a major competitor but also gave Cardpoint critical mass and a swifter path to growth and profits.

Its most recent acquisition, PT Distribution, was bought from what is now a part of Vodafone and operates mobile phone top-up terminals situated in shops. This outfit is similar in terms of its business model to Cardpoint and looks a neat strategic fit.

As things stand at present, Cardpoint operates 1,900 ATM machines and about 3,000 mobile phone top-up terminals.

Hector Forsythe at Evolution Beeson Gregory has upped his numbers for the current year and now reckons investors should brace themselves for a £2.4 million pre-tax profit, and EPS of 6.7p, all delivered from hoped-for sales of £31.7 million. Just nine per cent up on their 79p recommendation price at present, the shares remain good value.

Hold at Cytomyx

Tipped as a Speculative Buy at 0.48p back in March, drug discovery research business Cytomyx has been a spectacular performer.

Trading at under a penny, the shares were always likely to rise dramatically (in percentage terms) on the slightest hint of good news and, sure enough, May's encouraging interims – showing losses reduced from £547,931 to £52,324 on revenues increased by £2 million to £2.4 million – saw them spike sharply upwards.

With Cytomyx's original biotech services business struggling, Cambridge BioScience – a supplier of products to the pharmaceutical and academic research sectors that was acquired in October 2002 – was key to these improved figures.

Details of a potentially significant new distribution agreement with US biotech Clinomics, covering the dispersion of ethically gathered human tissue throughout the European research market, and the subsequent acquisition of genomics business Cytocell, also cheered investors.

In late September the company's valuation rose sharply again and although management went on to state that they knew of no reason for this advance, the shares continue to trade at 1.45p, a 200 per cent premium to our recommendation price.

At this level those holding the stock should sit tight. A small profit is expected for the full year.

Fellow health-related venture ML Laboratories has begun the treatment stage of the Phase II clinical study of its novel prostate cancer treatment, which uses gene therapy technology to deliver a cancer-killing toxin direct to the tumour site in a two-stage process.

This development follows the successful placing of 34.4 per cent of the company's shares that were previously owned by founder Dr Kevin Leech. The sale removed the share overhang, which had been such a drag on the price.

ML, which cut its losses from £3.1 million to £862,500 in the six months to March, is developing several other potentially exciting treatments, having completed a £13.5 million 'non-core' divestment programme.

ML was nearly 160p three years ago but having rallied from recent lows of below 9p they now stand at 33.5p, 46 per cent up on July's Growth Company Investor recommendation price. There could be more recovery to come if the trials are successful.

Growth flowing from Stream

Stream, a provider of consumer information and entertainment content over mobile and fixed phone lines, was our Company Profile last month.

We advised readers to buy for growth at 19.3p and the main development since has been in the boardroom. In early November the company announced finance director Paul Tuson is to leave the company to pursue other business interests. Thankfully, a successor has been speedily identified.

Readers will be pleased with the share price performance since we flagged up the media-quoted stock, with the shares trickling up to 21.75p, a considerable improvement on the 52-week low of just 2.75p.

As we documented, Stream built on the profitable trend started in last year's second half in the first half of the current year, with £210,000 of losses converted to a £470,000 pre-tax profit. Sales soared 44 per cent to £3.3 million.

Alex Jarvis, analyst at KBC Peel Hunt, recently kick-started her coverage of the company with a detailed note. She is forecasting a £1.1 million pre-tax profit for calendar 2003 – a hefty upgrade on previous market estimates – on sales of £11.3 million, giving earnings of 2.2p a share. For 2004, readers can expect sales to lift to £12.5 million, taking profits up to £1.7 million.

'Stream operates a highly profitable voice and data business and in the mobile arena, industry-leading video streaming over GPRS has brought the group 50,000 new customers in six months,' explained Jarvis. This area has some tasty growth potential which should see the shares higher long term. Hold your shares if you've got exposure. Consider buying if you haven't.

Hold Wyndeham

A recommendation at 128.5p in December 2002, magazine and commercial literature printer Wyndeham Press plummeted to a 52-week low of 92.5p on a recent gloomy half-year trading update that will have disappointed followers. Chairman and chief executive Bryan Bedson warned of margin pressure in 'commercial', as well as contract losses and some bad debt problems.

Subsequent interim figures to September were in line with the earlier guidance, showing a slump in pre-tax profits to £1.9 million (£3 million) on turnover of £59.5 million (£62.4 million). Margin pressure in the commercial division, which does work for government agencies and retailers, has arisen on printing industry over-capacity and competition from facilities management companies. Investors can also expect restructuring charges in the second half – 'but anything it costs will save us money', emphasised Bedson.

On the positive side the company has a strengthened balance sheet – first-half net cash inflow of £5.8 million hauled debts back to £36.6 million (£44 million) after heavy spending on the latest technology over the past four years.

Furthermore, the magazines business (64 per cent of the group's sales) improved turnover 7.6 per cent to £38.1 million, buoyed by a new contract printing seven titles for EMAP. A deal with major publisher Haymarket kicks off in January and will add £1 million sales in a full year. Bedson insists 'the future for us is more magazines, and we're bursting at the seams on the publishing side, as you'd expect this time of year.'

Paul Jones at house broker Numis expects profits pre-amortisation and tax of £4.3 million for the current year to March, giving earnings of 6.7p – this should improve to £6.2 million and 9.5p for 2005, giving undemanding forward ratings of 14.5 and 10.2 for the 97p shares. There is no sense in selling at these levels especially as the advertising cycle has to turn eventually. Hold for recovery.

Stay in at Highbury House

Originally flagged up at 14.5p back in February, shares in publishing company Highbury House are worth sticking with.

September's disappointing interim numbers have resulted in a fall from a post-recommendation high of 31.25p to a current 24.5p – reduced pre-tax profits of £3.2 million (before £27.8 million of goodwill) and sales down three per cent at £44.7 million clearly alarming some investors.

Yet these figures reflected the plight of Highbury's poorly performing business-publishing arm, for which a buyer is currently being sought. Negotiations with at least one interested party are said to be progressing. In the meantime £2 million has been stripped out of the division's cost base.

Strong advances continue to be made on the commercial publishing side with numerous lifestyle and home entertainment titles performing well.

With the group's traditionally far stronger second half ahead, broker Charles Stanley remains a firm buyer, and continues to predict a pre-goodwill profit of £9.2 million for the full year, rising to £13.5 million in 2004 with earnings of 2.88p. At current levels the shares trade off a forward p/e of just 8.5. Hold.