widjaday, Co-incidentally, after I had gone through the result...

widjaday,

Co-incidentally, after I had gone through the result last night I came across your post made a year ago, and it made me smile.

I have analysed the result in some depth and, after stripping out what could have been the impact of the the Actrol acquisition, it still looks to me like the core Reece business grew by close to 20% in JH2015, compared to pcp.

Quality-wise, this is another impeccable Reece result.

But the aspect that struck me most about it is the Gross Profit Margin, which is at a record high for JH2015, at 34.5%, up significantly on JH2014's 32.8%.

This continues the multi-year consistent trend of GP Margin expansion, from the mid-25% levels 15 years ago, to the low-30% levels of today

FY2001: 25.4%
FY2002: 26.5%
FY2003: 27.9%
FY2004: 27.1%
FY2005: 28.6%
FY2007: 29.2%
FY2008: 32.2%
FY2009: 30.9%
FY2010: 31.2%
FY2011: 31.3%
FY2012: 31.9%
FY2013: 31.8%
FY2014: 32.1%
FY2015: 33.0%

Reece are clearly flexing their pricing muscle over time, as one would would expect from the pre-eminent industry leader with whom it is difficult to compete.

I am always amazed that a high-quality, beautiful, and well-managed business like Reece, with its long track record of creating wealth for its owners, attracts virtually no followers on a forum such as this, while the punters congregate in their hundreds shooting craps with all manner of dodgy resource stocks or speculative biotechs, or some or other highly conceptual companies that are light years from making any money, if at all.

Then again, you and I are two of just 1,200 lucky Reece shareholders, so the odds of a good few hanging about HotCopper are understandably slim.