It all started with a vibrating roller

Not often you can say that about a company, is it? The 'V' in Vp is for 'Vibrating' and, fortunately, this story gets duller from there. The 'p' stand for 'plant', as in Vibrating Roller and Plant Hire Ltd., founded in 1954. The name was later contracted to Vibroplant, and then Vp.

For aficionados of silly-sounding names, the joy goes on. Its six equipment hire businesses are Airpac Bukom, Groundforce, Hire Station, Torrent Tracksides, UK Forks and the disappointing TPA.

It's a shame Vp got rid of the Vibrating Roller and Plant Hire and Vibroplant monikers as my guru for this year Peter Lynch loved companies with boring names, and companies with ridiculous names even more so. A ridiculous name was one more reason investors might be turned off a company, unless of course they already realise how profitable it is.

I wonder if investors realise how profitable Vp is. I think it might be a stalwart priced like a cyclical. The shares cost about the company's book value, even though looking at its record (in Sharelockholmes) it has produced a return on book value (aka equity) of more than 10%, fairly consistently, whilst growing that book value, also fairly consistently, with recourse only to modest amounts debt (equity is nearly 50% of assets). This, I must confirm by extracting the data from the annual reports.

Being in plant hire, investors might expect Vp to be cyclical as the requirement for equipment ebbs and flows with the requirement for new construction, for example. In its half year results, published in November, the company credited its diverse markets (such as oil and gas exploration, events, and tool hire as well as fork lift trucks and construction equipment), as a reason for its resilience, and continued growth despite the the economic circumstances.

So that might be the wrinkle, the market misunderstanding that leads to mispricing. Investors don't trust the earnings of, often more indebted, hire companies. Recalling how Ashtead almost went bust in 2003, and the rise and fall of Speedy Hire, it's understandable.

There's another wrinkle too. Investors probably don't like the fact chairman Jeremy Pilkington has an interest in over half the shares through an investment company. It limits the ability of large investors to influence management, and the spread of nearly 5% today means that anybody buying Vp shares will experience an immediate paper loss of up to 5%. Not a good start if you want to make a quick profit.

This wrinkle falls into the category of things other investors hate that I like. For small investors with little chance of influencing a company who are often sceptical of the intentions of their institutional brethren, lack of control is not much of a concern. Indeed, since Pilkington is the company's biggest shareholder by far we can hope he runs Vp in the long-term interests of shareholders.

Managing director Neil Stothard also has a largeish interest in the company, worth over ''1m, and he's been running the company with Pilkington since 2004 (Pilkington had been chairman and chief executive since 1981). Since Stothard was finance director between 1997 and 2004, it seems reasonable to give them credit for the successes of the last decade.

I think that sounds like the bones of a two minute monologue, and possibly the rationale for 2010's first new addition to the Thrifty 30.

Next I need to plough through ten years of annual reports to corroborate or undermine it.