2006.05.09 The Guardian
I see from the business pages that Peng Travel, the UK's foremost provider of naturist holidays, has sold out for £1.8m. A lot of the coverage of this deal seems to be inadequate (and there's nothing worse than inadequate coverage). Many of the press articles I've seen seem to be suggesting that nudism is on the up and up (look we're never going to get this finished if you keep giggling), with resorts like Sunfolk and similar, but the price paid for Peng Travel tells a different story.
This company had profits of £234,603 in 2005, so the earnings multiple is 7.67 times. That is not exactly a dot com multiple. In fact, if we take a 9% cost of capital and use the good old valuation identity that the PE ratio ought to equal the reciprocal of the difference between the cost of capital and the growth rate, we can back out the implied assumption that the buyer and seller expect the earnings of this company to grow at minus 4% per annum in perpetuity. Since Peng Travel is the market leader and you would expect it to gain market share in a shrinking market (ooh err), I would guesstimate a somewhat worse negative growth rate for the nudist market as a whole.
I have no idea of what deep underlying social trends this might indicate.
