Company News

A Bad Day in the Market, but Good News from Unilever and BEIS

It was a bad day in the market yesterday, with the FTSE All-Share falling over 1%. This seems to have been driven by a sell off in bonds. Equity prices are usually linked to bond prices simply because as bond yields rise from a fall in bond prices, it becomes more attractive to hold bonds relative to equities. That particularly applies to shares that are “bond proxies”, i.e. ones bought because of their high yields for income seeking investors. These changes have ...

Abcam, Pay and Voting

As a long-standing shareholder in Abcam (ABC), I have just received the Annual Report and I am not happy. Abcam rather surprised the market when they issued their preliminary results which showed a massive investment in a new Oracle IT system was in difficulties. Clearly the project is over-budget and over-schedule. Costs are ramping up in other areas also and the result was a lowered broker forecast and an instant collapse in the share price – down over 30% at one point ...

Worldwide Healthcare Trust AGM – But No Proxy Voting Form

Today I attended the Annual General Meeting of Worldwide Healthcare Trust (WWH) in London. This is an investment trust focused on a portfolio of worldwide pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. It has a very good long-term track record, consistently beating its benchmark and is the top performer of all UK investment trusts measured since formation. The fund manager is OrbiMed where Sam Isalay was the managing partner until recently when he departed under a cloud of sexual harassment claims. He also resigned from ...

Should I Buy Smithson Investment Trust?

I am a great fan of Terry Smith and his investment approach. As an investor in his Fundsmith Equity Fund, I have seen annual returns of 21.7% according to ShareScope since I first purchased it in 2014. That fund is a global large cap fund. Terry has now launched a small and mid-cap investment trust based on similar investment principles which is called the Smithson Investment Trust. Subscriptions are being invited here: https://www.smithson.co.uk/  The Fundsmith Equity Fund is an open-ended fund whereas ...

Lehman Collapse, Labour’s Employment Plans, Audit Reform Ideas and Oxford Biomedica

There was a highly amusing article in the FT recently by their journalist John Gapper explaining how he caused the financial crisis in 2008 by encouraging Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, to resist the temptation to rescue Lehman Brothers. So now we know the culprit. Even more amusing was the report on the previous day that the administrators (PWC) of the UK subsidiary of Lehman expect to be left with a surplus of £5 billion. All the creditors are being paid ...

Brexit, Abcam, Victoria and the Beaufort Case

Another bad day for my portfolio yesterday after a week of bad days last week when I was on holiday. Some of the problems relate to the rise in the pound based on suggestions by Michel Barnier that there might actually be a settlement of Brexit along the lines proposed by Theresa May. This has hit all the companies with lots of exports and investment trusts with big holdings in dollar investments that comprise much of my portfolio. But a really ...

The Market, Dunedin and Standard Life Smaller Companies Merger, and Aston Martin IPO

Is it not depressing when you go away for a week’s holiday and your portfolio falls every day in that time? I do monitor any exceptional movements while on vacation but try to avoid trading. It just seemed to be a general downward trend and reviewing the movement over that week my portfolio is down 1.73% while the FTSE All-Share is down 1.72%. So that is what I had already surmised. Those stocks that seemed to have become overblown did fall and ...

Mulberry Profit Warning – Better Late Than Never

On Saturday (18/8/2018) I wrote about the damage to suppliers from the pre-pack administration at House of Fraser. One of the companies mentioned was Mulberry Group Plc (MUL) and I queried why they had not issued an RNS announcement indicating the likely impact on their profits. I suggested it could be £2.4 million. This morning Mulberry issued a profit warning that spelled out the likely figure. There will be a provision of £3 million of “exceptional costs” related to the 21 “concessions” ...

RIT Capital Partners, Foresight 4 VCT and Sepsis

RIT Capital Partners (RCP) is an investment trust that recently issued its interim report. As one of my longer standing holdings, first purchased in 2003 although I have reduced my holding of late, I read the report with interest. RCP has been a long-standing favourite of private investors having traditionally taken a somewhat defensive investment approach. But the portfolio is now most peculiar. It contains 8.8% of “quoted equities” but many of them are held as “swaps”, 27.7% in “long-only funds”, ...

RedstoneConnect (Smartspace Software) AGM and Branding

Today (30/7/2018) I attended the Annual General Meeting of RedstoneConnect Plc (REDS) which was promptly renamed Smartspace Software Plc at the meeting. Although there were only a few ordinary shareholders present, this proved to be an informative meeting. It was chaired by new Chairman Guy van Zwanenberg. With former CEO Mark Braund having departed recently after major disposals leaving the company to focus on the remaining software business, the new CEO is Frank Beechinor who was the former Chairman. Frank is also ...

Lax Regulation (Globo, GRG) and Japanese Trust AGM

Globo was one of those AIM companies that turned out to be a complete fraud. Back in December 2015 the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) announced an investigation into the audits of the company by Grant Thornton (GT). Even the cash reported on the balance sheet in the consolidated accounts of the parent company proved to be non-existent (or had been stolen perhaps). I have previously complained about the slow progress and the lack of any information on this investigation. But former shareholders ... Read more

GB Group, Social Media, Rightmove and Alliance Trust

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of GB Group (GBG) in Chester. An absolutely horrendous road journey both there and back mainly due to road works as far as I can tell. But my satnav took me on the M25, M11, A14, M6, M54 and numerous minor roads on the way there from south-east London, and the M6, A50, M1, A14, M11, M25 and other minor roads on the way back. A typical example of how the UK road network ...