For Broadcast April 23, 2008

On the eve of Shed's results (30 April), the company should be riding high.

Waterloo Road is doing well on BBC1 and women-on-the-run series Hope Springs is on the schedule for 2009. Twenty Twenty has a US hit with Brat Camp, Ricochet's Supernanny continues apace and Wall to Wall is very close to a deal for Who Do You Think You Are? on NBC with Friends' Lisa Kudrow as a co-producer and a high-profile subject for a US version.

All this means that Shed is a very different company compared with 2006 when ITV axed Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives. Yet despite the changes, the City continues to punish the stock. Shed's share price is down 3.6% in the past month and 36% over the past year. Admittedly, it has not all been good news. Rock Rivals flopped, and after the Wall to Wall deal the company has an estimated £35m in net debt for 2008.

But Shed's share price difficulties are more complicated than that. The City is especially wary of stocks where there is little liquidity, such as Shed's, where nearly 60% of the shares are held by management.

Queengate meant RDF took a hit last year which had an impact on the rest of the listed production sector and there is also a general reluctance by the City to own small cap media stocks during a consumer slowdown, regardless of their individual stories.

But how long will Shed continue to tell the City a story it doesn't seem to want to hear? How long does the company let the market undervalue it before it makes more sense to delist? Perhaps that will be one of the questions Shed explores next week if its results fail to impress investors.