James Cropper – group showing plans now underway, shares 330p, on just 9.7 times current year earnings, cheap!

Mark Watson-Mitchell
Nov 17
3 min read

Mark Watson-Mitchell - 17.11.2025

This morning’s Interim Results from James Cropper (LON:CRPR) covered the six months to Saturday, 27^th September, they showed that the advanced materials and paper products manufacturing group is now well underway with its Strategic Plan.

Its shares could easily lift over 20% and still look cheap.

The Business

The group is based in Burneside, with additional UK manufacturing sites in Crewe, Launceston, and in the USA in Schenectady.

Built upon 180 years of innovation, it is globally recognised for its specialist capabilities in the design and manufacture of advanced materials and paper products.

It operates through two principal businesses - Advanced Materials and Paper & Packaging.

The Advanced Materials business develops cutting-edge nonwoven materials and electrochemical coatings for sectors including aerospace, clean energy, and defence.

The Paper & Packaging business offers premium creative papers and bespoke moulded fibre packaging together with leading recycled-fibre capabilities and products, supporting the transition to a circular economy.

Serving a diverse range of customers with high-performance solutions tailored to specialised applications, the group leverages deep expertise in material science and longstanding partnerships with industry-leading businesses and brands to develop bespoke solutions that meet complex technical and aesthetic specifications.

The Interims

For the six months the group reported a revenue increase of 3.7% to £51.8m and a significant 51.9% rise in adjusted EBITDA to £4.1m, leading to an adjusted profit before tax of £2.1m, which is a substantial improvement from a £0.2m loss in the prior year.

The company also reported that its net debt decreased by £2.6m to £10.5m, with the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio improving to 1.3x from 3.3x.

The Advanced Materials division performed strongly with a 13.4% revenue increase to £19.0m and a 34.2% rise in adjusted EBITDA to £5.5m.

The Paper & Packaging division experienced a slight revenue dip of 1.2% to £32.8m but improved its adjusted EBITDA loss to £0.7m.

Management considered that the outlook remains positive, with full-year revenue expected to be similar to FY25 and adjusted EBITDA anticipated to show significant growth.

Management Comment

Remaining confident that the delivery of the group’s strategic plan will create significant long-term value for all of its stakeholders, CEO David Stirling stated that:

"We are now starting to see benefit from the execution of our revised strategic plan, with performance in the year to date consistent with expectations under our revised strategy.

In the longer term, we are targeting underlying double-digit revenue growth in the Advanced Materials business, as we continue to deepen customer relationships and develop opportunities across both established and nascent markets.

Our Paper & Packaging business is making meaningful progress towards its goal of sustainable profitability, with a good performance improvement despite the previously announced customer loss.

We expect Paper & Packaging to achieve run-rate EBITDA break-even in the final quarter of this financial year.”

Broker’s View

Analysts Akhil Patel and Rob Sanders, at Shore Capital Markets, have today upgraded their estimates for the next three years.

They now look for the current year to end-March 2026 to show revenues slightly lower at £96.8m (£99.3m) but with adjusted pre-tax profits of £3.6m (£1.3m), lifting earnings to 34.1p (28.9p) per share.

For 2027, they see £102.1m sales, £4.7m profits, and 44.1p earnings per share.

In the end-March 2028 year, they see £108.5m revenues, £6.3m profits and 58.2p per share of earnings.

In My View

I believe that James Cropper is a very appealing situation, with its shares at 330p looking very capable of reactive upward momentum.

Within months,