Mezzanine finance, property and films today.

We have had a few updates on stocks I have mentioned in the past so in brief:

• Intermediate Capital (ICP) - which I wrote up back in May has announced its first half results for the six months ended 30 September 2014. They look fine in a steady as she goes kind of way. They are talking about having achieved a high single digits return on equity and they are looking to get this up to 13% over the next two years by a combination of growing our business, reinvesting our capital and re-gearing our balance sheet. The dividend was raised by 4.5% suggesting they are on track to hit the full year forecast dividend of around 22 pence which would be  growth of just under 5%. The shares have responded positively to the announcement progressing to around 430 pence where they yield just over 5%. So it has been a bit of a struggle with this one since May, like the market, but they seem to be moving in the right direction now, although they look a bit over bought in the short term. Medium term if they can hit their financial targets and if they can continue to deliver dividend growth, then 500 pence would still seem like a reasonable target.
  
• Picton Property Income Ltd. (PCTN) - also announced results which  showed a total return of 13.3% for the period and they paid a covered dividend (not always the case for property Trusts) which gives a yield of 4.7%. The NAV came in at 62 pence and the shares still trade at a small premium to this, although they did give a total return of 15.5% over the period.Seems like a strong hold if you want exposure to a commercial property portfolio. If you want more London or Trophy asset exposure then you could always check out British Land (BLND) who reported today with a 2.5% rise in the dividend which gives them a yield of 3.7%.
  
• Cineworld (CINE) - announced in an IMS that overall, on a pro forma basis, trading for the Group for the 46 week period has been in line with their expectations with total revenues up by 1.1%. But they did set themselves up for a cliff hanger ending to the year by saying: "The releases in the remainder of Q4 are comparable with the prior year. In light of this and our trading performance to date, the Board remains confident of delivering results in line with market expectations for the full year." That's just as well as strong growth is forecast for the full year but despite this they still look a bit expensive on around 16x with a 3% or so yield. So in the same way as I can't get excited about their Q4 blockbusters, the Hunger Games and the latest Hobbit film, I can't get that excited about the share either.