Trading for the five months to the end of May is ahead of budget at the golf and health club operator. In a bullish AGM statement, chairman Jeff Chapman boasted that the management team is 'continuing to hit its targets'. At 30 June 2000, Crown Sports was known as Golf Club Holdings and had an Aim listing. Since then it has changed its name, bought Dragons Health Clubs and moved to the Full List. The company has grown to 41 clubs and 66,000 members with management expecting to fill the club capacity of 74,000 members 'by the end of this year'. Crown's Dragons' Clubs continued to perform strongly, with like-for-like sales up 10.4% during the five months. Similarly, like-for-like golf memberships rose by 12.3%. Interestingly, its publishing subsidiary Crown Content built on a book deal with Olympic gold medalist Sally Gunnell by securing publishing rights to the life and times of golfing legend Jack Nicklaus. Beeson Gregory expects the group to post a £6.2m pre-tax profit with earnings of 2p for 2001, with £9.5m and 2.6p to follow in 2002. On a forward multiple of 12.8, the shares trade at a discount to the 16.32 sector average and punters might like to get in on the cheap, with the share price at 25.5p.

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