In brief we have had an update from Intermediate Capital Group (ICP) - which I have held and written up in the past. The last time I wrote I felt they were probably fairly fully valued at around 590p. Since then they have fallen back a bit with the market, so does today's update change the view? Not really although to be fair they saw very strong inflows into existing funds, but did warn that Q2 would slow as they launch new funds which take longer to gain traction with investors compared to those with a longer track record. They also suggested that the current Eurozone uncertainty could have some impact on their business and the weak euro may trim some of the interest income, although fee income is hedged.

So overall a reasonable update which has seen the shares up by 2% or so today to 578p. It seems it should support the shares, but probably not enough to send it through resistance from the recent price highs around 600p. However if they continue to progress as the year goes on and the European situation calms down then they could progress more in the medium term.

Otherwise late yesterday we had an announcement from Microfocus (MCRO) about an accelerated book build for a placing of 20m shares from Wizard as the lock up post the recent deal ended. This was done at 1350p and leaves them with a stake of around 30%. This suggests they think these shares are now up with events perhaps and obviously there could be more placings to come in due course. So on that basis this one may well also be capped around here for now I suspect given that and the 16x PE and 2.5% yield.

After my 20%+ gains earlier in the year on Investec, I thought I would try another trade in the financials sector. I'm staying in the I's with Intermediate Capital Group (ICP) which announced final results earlier this week. You can read them for yourself at the link above and they didn't look too bad to me - certainly not to justify a 10% fall in the share price. Looks like a big clumsy seller has been in operation. The only negative I could find was a bearish note from Numis, who have a 363 pence price target, which I saw mentioned on Ticker Report, although I note others are more bullish and have price targets beginning with a 5.

Any way this one may not be to everyone's taste as it is slightly esoteric is so far as it is a specialist asset manager providing mezzanine finance, private debt, leveraged credit and minority equity to mid market corporates in Europe, Asia and the US and to real estate in the UK. Some of their balance sheet is invested alongside their funds and also provide seed capital when they are launching new products. Aside from income from managing the funds they also make irregular capital gains on their own investments as and when they make successful disposals of their largely private equity / venture capital style investments. These tend to be lumpy and have been strong in the last year given the favourable market conditions. Given the nature of their investments they do however also have to make provisions and take write downs when things don't go as planned. The disposals can also reduce their assets that they have under management and they therefore then need to work hard to replace these which is the situation at the moment.

The earnings from the asset management and other recurring fees or what they describe as "core" earnings generally underpin the dividend with the capital gains being a big swing factor for earnings over and above that. Talking of dividends that is the other main attraction with this one. They declared a final of 14.4 pence which alone yields 3.6% at 400 pence and is due to go XD on 11th June 2014. This made 21 pence for the year up 5% and a similar increase expected for this year taking the dividend to 22 pence or so for a yield of 5.5% and the P/E is around 11 to 12x, so reasonable value I would argue.

They suggest their balance sheet is strong with unutilised cash and debt facilities of approximately £678m. They have also launched a £100 million share buy back programme, which they commenced the day after the results. On the balance sheet they said the following:

"We consider it important that the Group maintains a strong balance sheet position with a consistent access to the debt markets. Accordingly, considerations such as maintaining a strong and stable credit rating and the financial covenants to lenders are factored into the Board's assessment of the Group's capital structure.

We also understand the value that shareholders place on regular and sustainable dividend payments and we remain committed to a dividend policy linked to cash core income. In addition to this, we perform an ongoing assessment of the Group's capital requirements with reference to the above factors over a three year horizon and should there be any capital surplus to requirements, we will look to return capital to shareholders at the appropriate time."

This is interesting because I feel I should point out that this one had to have a rights issue and cut its dividend in 2009 and dividends have yet to recover to those levels, although it had a strong track record of dividend growth prior to that. So hopefully they have learned from that experience and will manage the balance sheet and dividends more carefully going forward, although to be fair 2008 / 2009 were pretty exceptional times.

The share buy back might clear out the sellers and help to support the shares at around their current 12 month lows just under 400 pence. On the upside the top of the trading range in the last 12 months has been around 500 pence, so if it were to make it back up there in the next year or so then that would offer a potential total return of 25 to 30% - depending on how many dividend are collected along the way.