ACM Shipping: decent results and ‘unexpected’ diversification into dry cargo

Pre-tax profit of £6.2m and basic earnings per share of 24.5p were below consensus estimates of £6.38m and 26.06p respectively but apparently moderately ahead of management expectations – not sure these were ever communicated to the public though! The total dividend of 9.5p was marginally ahead of expectations and equates to a yield of just under 5% at the current share price. Given this slight miss and the fact that the time charter forward order book at US$18 million (2009: US$25 million) was down due to market uncertainty we were surprised that the share price actually rose on the announcement,…