Purple Capital released its results for the year to 31 August 2010 on Tuesday last week. In it, Mark Barnes opens his Chairman’s Review by saying, “We will reflect on 2010 as the turnaround year for Purple Capital.” Let’s hope so. But, for those of us who want to see the evidence of that in the numbers, there is nothing to celebrate just yet. On the contrary, the net loss of 6c a share in H2 is a significant increase on the LPS of 1c in H1 and well up on the loss of 3.4c in the previous corresponding period. It also means a third year of consecutive losses, bumping accumulated losses to just short of R224m.

It now seems a long time since Purple reported the HEPS of 24.1c (FY 2007) that took the share price to a high of 210c (22 Oct 07).

The last six month’s cash flow performance was more encouraging: Cash inflows from operations increased to R6.2m, resulting in a net gain in cash of R1m (R4.4m FY)  and a closing cash balance of R33.5m.

The real problem, however, is with the Balance Sheet: Current liabilities (R52.0m) exceed current assets (R36.2m). Long term liabilities are not coming down and the bulk of the non-current assets are intangibles. So much so that if ‘Goodwill’ and ‘Other intangible assets’ are taken out of the NAVPS of 33.2c it drops to 3.8c – which might explain why the company doesn’t report NTAVPS in its results.

At the current price (23c), and based solely on its latest figures, Purple looks expensive.