Money and music moving with the times.

Tweeted earlier today about the fact that the Church of England is now going to be giving out Financial advice! Apparently to help combat parishioners debt problems and encourage Credit Unions over Pay Day Lenders who themselves are likely to face tighter regulations which might drive some of them out of business and their customers into the arms or Loan sharks. Huh, next they'll be going into Asset Management - no wait they already do that. 

Any way on the topic of Money or cash and keeping it topical De La Rue (DLAR) the troubled bank note printer has announced some results today. I say troubled because it has had a couple of profits warnings in the last couple of years or so and parted company with its CEO back in March this year and is currently being run by the Executive Chairman, Philip Rogerson, until a new CEO is appointed. The results today showed some signs of recovery as they are in the first year of a three year improvement plan, you can read the full announcement at the link above. They maintained the dividend for a chunky 5%+ yield, although it is not very well covered and there are a number of uncertainties ahead after the Bank of England said their Australian rival Innovia Security will provide the polymer substrate for its new plastic £5 notes. So it remains to be seen if they can win any future business on this programme and what will happen when their current 10 year contract with the Bank of England comes up for renewal next year. It is not one I am in and given the uncertainties it looks reasonable value (12x and 5%+ yield) so it may warrant some further investigation as a contrarian play - especially as it has had bid approaches in the past, but probably not for me at the moment.

Meanwhile, other forms of payment are increasingly becoming available including using ubiquitous mobile phones, which begs the question - will we need physical notes in the future? Certainly I know I rarely use cash these days. With this in mind an alternative to De La Rue that I have been tracking is Paypoint (PAY), which is a leading specialist payments company, processing consumer payments across a wide variety of markets through its retail networks, internet and mobile phone channels. It also offers something called Collect+ which is for consumers to collect parcels from shops to tap into the whole internet shopping / click and collect trend. However, this one has a higher price tag as it is more expensive on around 19x to 20x but with a 3% to 3.5% yield. The yield is what attracted me initially plus the fact that it scores well on my screens. Having done some work on it I like the fact that it is Chaired by David Newlands, who was FD at GEC under Arnold Weinstock and generally a safe pair of hands. Again this is topical because they report their final result tomorrow, 29th May 2014 - so I'll be watching out for those as again this is not one I currently hold and it has fallen back quite a bit with other mid cap stocks recently despite upgraded forecasts. You can read more about it in the meantime at their investor relations site. Finally, if you prefer more up to date music too then as Jessie J says Its all about the Price Tag!