Sectorguard - A great Buy opportunity

The following information about MacLellan’s acquisition of Attlaw Security announced on 12th December makes MITIE's pricing look mean when they recently bought Trident Safeguards and recently Executive Holdings.

With this MacLellan Group acquistion it confirms to me that Sectorguard’s present market cap of £6.5 million is far, far too low.


“MacLellan Group plc ('MacLellan') also today announced the acquisition of the
entire issued share capital of Attlaw Security & Protection Limited ('Attlaw')
for an initial consideration of £5 million to be satisfied as to 50% in cash/
loan notes and 50% by the issue of 3,333,333 MacLellan Group plc ordinary
shares; these shares shall rank pari passu with existing ordinary shares in
issue save that they shall not rank for the final dividend in respect of the
year ending 31 December 2003. Additional consideration is payable of up to a
further £7 million (to be satisfied with the same structure as the Initial
Consideration) if agreed profit before tax levels for the earn out period
through to 31 December 2005 are satisfied. At 31 March 2003, being the date of
the latest audited accounts of Attlaw, Attlaw had net assets of £286,324, pre
tax profits of £398,413 and its turnover for the year ended on that date, of
£10.5 million, showed a 50% increase from the previous year-end. Attlaw's
trading performance since 31 March 2003 has continued to show the benefits of
further strong turnover growth. It is expected that the P/E multiple for this
acquisition will be less than 8 when the final consideration is paid.


Commenting on the acquisition, John Foley, Chief Executive of MacLellan said:


'We purchase businesses in order to either broaden the range of self performed
services available to our customers or quickly penetrate new markets which are
of interest to us. This acquisition satisfies both objectives since Attlaw has
security industry expertise in the retail, leisure and transport markets and we
believe that the combination of MacLellan's proven multi-service capability
together with Attlaw's specific security industry expertise will create a
winning combination in existing and new markets'.”


Full announcement: