Quite busy for a late July Monday.

Probably because most are trying to get their announcements out before they head to the beach in August. Note to self must take most of August off because I can!

However before I do I note in passing an unsurprising profits warning from Merlin Entertainment (MERL) blamed on the after effects of the unfortunate accident at Alton Towers earlier this year. Not one I hold having stagged it when it floated and it looks richly valued to me with downgrades to come, not a great attraction for me.

Talking of richly valued I note that Reckitt Benkiser (RB) also announced H1 results in which they upgraded their guidance for the year which is welcome given they are on nearly 25x. They also cut their dividend as expected post the demerger of Indivor (INDV) & even factoring in the dividend from them shareholders if they still hold both will have seen a reduction in their overall dividend.

Of more interest to me as a holder was the half year report from XPP - which looked a little lack lustre at first glance. However they explain in the commentary that the fall in margins was due to start up costs for power converter manufacturing at their Vietnamese facility. They say more of their revenues (67.2%) is now coming from their own designs & within that ultra-high efficiency “Green XP Power” products now accounting for 21% up from 17%. They also acquired a 51% share in a Korean power converter company which brings them sales and engineering capability in an important manufacturing centre for industrial electronics.

The outlook commentary from the chairman was positive as it alluded to strong order book and backlog together with the developments above and a strong balance sheet giving him confidence that they should be able to continue to grow revenues in the second half of 2015 as designs won in 2014 and prior years enter their production phase. Thus with the earnings estimates having drifted back so far this year it seems they should be able to hit the modest 5% or so growth that is forecast. Perhaps as a sign of their confidence I note that they have increased the interim dividend by a useful 8% which is ahead of the current forecast of a 6% increase for the full year.

Therefore based on current forecasts the shares at around 1600p look like a fair value hold to me on around 15x with a 4% yield as they are nearer the top of their trading range over the last couple of years which has been between 1775p & 1300p. So I wouldn't suggest rushing out to buy them just now, but might be worth a look a bit lower down around 1500p and the 200 day moving average, if they should drift off again as they do sometimes. However I note it has a Compound Income Score of 94 and a Stockopedia StockRank of 94 too so it scores well according to The robots.