Technical staffing business Morson, which floated on AIM in March with an oversubscribed £36m funding at 160p, has gone from strength to strength. The share price received a further fillip on an upbeat pre-close missive from chief executive Ged Mason, in which he expressed extreme confidence in meeting forecasts for calendar 2006.

Analysts took this to mean results would beat estimates, and upgraded price targets accordingly. Mason flagged up ongoing buoyancy in the core aerospace and defence and rail operations. He added that technical design consultancy arm Morson Projects enjoyed the fruits of contracts supporting BAE and Airbus on military and civil contract programmes, and predicted ongoing market strength for 2007.

Followers may recall Morson is one of the country’s largest and longest-established technical staffing outfits, and supplies over 7,500 skilled white-collar workers to the aerospace and defence, nuclear and power and rail industries. Major projects it supplies personnel to include Heathrow Terminal 5, rail upgrades for Network Rail and the Joint Strike Fighter.

Preliminary results are out in March, and Brewin Dolphin’s Michael Vassallo expects pre-tax profits growth from £7.7m to £8.9m from a top-line £295m, giving earnings of 13.7p, ahead of profits of £9.9m and 15.1p of earnings for 2007. Those metrics place the shares on a forward multiple of 17, falling to 15.5 this year, ratings towards the lower end of the sector average, despite the group’s superior earnings profile. Buy.

Morson Group	AIM	£34.01m	75.00p	0.00p
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