Like many private investors, I use the Stockopedia software to provide me with a summary of key financial information on a company. I also use it to provide “alerts” on price changes and for occasional stock screening. It’s one of the key elements in my share portfolio management. It has always been quick and easy to use, without too much complexity. They have just released a new version of the software that now supports mobile devices much better – that was certainly an issue with trying to use it previously on my mobile phone.
I have spent a few minutes trying the new version and reported quite a number of issues with it to Stockopedia support. Here’s a few of the key ones:
- Portfolio holdings and alerts only show 40 stocks when my portfolio has many more than that, so cannot easily scroll up and down the whole portfolio.
- Not supported on Internet Explorer which is still my default web browser.
- Printing a stock page uses more pages – for example printing a report on Abcam now uses 5 sides in Chrome, i.e. 3 pages on a duplex printer instead of one page on Explorer with the old version. Print format screwed up also at top left. As with many new software versions, testing of print functions seems to have been limited.
- Cost of holdings sometimes shows nil.
In general the testing of the new version seems to have been too little, even if I am very experienced at picking up bugs in software. As a result I won’t be switching to the new version just yet until they sort out some of these problems. However it is very easy to switch back and forwards between the versions. Let us hope they do not abandon the old version until all the problems are resolved.
On the subject of Abcam (ABC) yesterday the company issued a trading update for the year ending June. It looked fairly innocuous to me but the share price promptly fell sharply and finished the day down 13.3%. The only possible issue mentioned was the announcement that CFO Gavin Wood was stepping down “over the next year in order to continue his career closer to his family home”. He has been with the company for 3 years.
Did that justify the investor panic? Surely not. The FT commented that the company’s expansion plans had unsettled investors, but the announcement really only suggested a continuation of the growth strategy and formulation of plans to achieve that. Perhaps it was simply that investors had realised that a prospective p/e of 40 for the current year after a strong recent share price run was a bit too high. Or perhaps it’s that summer season problem where liquidity is low and hence share prices tend to be volatile. Anyway the share price is recovering today at the time of writing and my portfolio loss on Abcam yesterday was mostly offset by the rise in Learning Technologies (LTG) which issued a very positive trading update. It’s share price rose about 20% on the day.
Abcam is of course a producer and distributor of antibodies. On a personal note, last week I was injected with monoclonal antibody named Prolia from Amgen to control osteopenia. If I had looked at the side effects and user reports on the internet beforehand I might have chosen not to have it, but no concerns so far. Only costs about £1,000 per shot apparently for six months. No wonder the NHS needs more money.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
