Ruby Tuesday...

...after Black Friday and Cyber Monday surely this is a missed opportunity by the marketing people perhaps? While for younger readers yes it is another song, but more on that later. It is a pretty slow news day today, but we are in the run up to Christmas so it should start quietening down soon, but at least you'll have my Advent Calendar to keep you busy.

Mitie - (MTO) is one that intrigues me and it is unusual in being one of the few companies with a female CEO - Ruby McGregor-Smith CBE. Today Tuesday, they have announced that they have extended their transformational partnership delivering integrated facilities management (FM) for Lloyds Banking Group. On this Ruby said:

"We are delighted to be further building on our partnership with Lloyds Banking Group and to be delivering them world-class outsourcing services for the next eight years. This is one of the biggest private sector facilities management contracts of its type and is a great example of two organisations working collaboratively."

Now this is not my usual sort of stock as it is quite low margin and seems to have quite a low return on capital and has a fair bit of debt (1.5x EBITDA). However, it does seem to have been able to deliver steady earnings and dividends over the years and has a big forward order book of work which helps with earnings visibility and benefit from the out sourcing trend. They have also recently announced some further write off's for getting out of their mechanical and electrical engineering construction business which also complicates the picture, but should mean higher quality profits and maybe higher margins going forward on the remaining businesses.

The shares seem to be quite thinly traded and are not that volatile, but often just seem to drift and then occasionally have a good run up. They have recently drifted off again after the recent interim results and the write off's and they look reasonable value on around 11x with a 4% yield. Or you could try opening today's Advent calendar window below for a stock on 10x with a 4% yield which has also sold off recently and may be offering another trading opportunity.

Otherwise as promised here the final bit about Ruby Tuesday (see the video below) which includes the following lyrics from Mick Jagger & Keith Richards:

There's no time to lose, I heard her say
Go catch your dreams before they slip away
And dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind
Ain't life unkind?

And goodbye, Ruby Tuesday!

Click for today's stock.