Small Cap Value Report (Thu 18 July 2024) - KBT, NIOX, TM17, GNS, ALU, CRW, FRAS, DNLM, EVOK, RNO, IUG

Good morning from Paul amp; Graham!

That's us done for today - we've covered nearly everything on the long list today, with at least a brief comment, or a full section.

Renold (LON:RNO) update - re share options, etc. I spent a bit of time last night going through the accounts again for Renold (LON:RNO, in particular trying to unravel the accounting treatment of share options and employee benefit trust, dilution, etc that we were discussing yesterday.  I've figured it out now. What they've done is buy shares in the open market for the employee benefit trust, to meet share option awards.  I flagged this in the cashflow statement in yesterday's results, as a £4.5m cash outflow in FY 3/2024. There was nothing in FY 3/2023, however another £4.9m cash outflow called "Own shares purchased" in the FY 3/2022 cashflow statement. I would have just glanced at that, and thought good, they're doing buybacks for cancellation. But the shares are not cancelled, instead they are gifted to the employee benefit trust, which seems to be mainly share options reward schemes for Directors. That's £9.4m cash spent on buying shares to be given away (at nil cost) to Directors in the last 3 years. That...