This is a short post following up on a write up I did a couple of months ago on the FTSE 250 defence company, Chemring (LON:CHG) .

As shown in the article the company had enjoyed several years of rapid growth until 2012 which saw a drop in profits as a result of operational issues, order cancellations and delays. It was also a year which saw the departure of its FD and its CEO as well as a takeover approach which was subsequently aborted.

But the key question for me was whether the valuation adequately reflected these issues and whether the dividend looked sustainable given the trailing yield approaching 6%. In light of recent earnings downgrades I now think this needs to be revisited.

At the time I wrote the article the company’s own website gave analysts’ EPS forecasts for 2012 of 54p and so taking into account the 13p downgrade announced in the 1st November trading statement I had assumed an EPS of around 40p for 2012, down from 52p in 2011. That now appears to be way off the mark. Not only were some of the analysts’ forecasts well out of date, but I don’t think the company had kept its own website up to date either which is disappointing. If there’s one place where you expect to get some reliable data it is from the company itself, but in this case sadly not, and looking at the relevant page today it appears that the data has gone missing entirely.

Given that the year end was 31st October the recent analysts’ forecasts should more accurately reflect the guidance from the company for the year. These now show a forecast EPS for 2012 of 28.9 which is a huge 45% fall on last year’s underlying figure of 52.1p. That’s a lot worse than the 23% fall at the half year when the company also reported a record order book of £1bn.

Sometimes Mr Market’s fears can be irrational but in this case I think he got it about right. At the current share price of 238p the P/E ratio of just over 8 for last year is probably a fair reflection of where the company is. But if an EPS of around 28p is correct, I think that casts some serious doubts over the sustainability…

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