Company News

Terry Smith demolishes Tesco

Terry Smith, CEO of Fundsmith, did a great job of demolishing the business of Tesco yesterday in the Financial Times (FT Money 6/9/2014). He explained why he won't be buying Tesco even though the shares have fallen to a level that equals what it was in 2003 and investors have been imploring him to buy it. Even though Warren Buffet has owned some shares in Tesco of late, he quotes from Mr Buffet's 1979 letter to shareholders thus: "The primary test of ...

Berkeley Group and British Country Inns

I attended the Annual General Meeting of housebuilders Berkeley Group today. Lots of questions from shareholders this year (apparently there were none last year), and a request for there to be a presentation in future. That I supported as it is also ShareSoc's policy.  A full report is also available to full members. Some of the comments from Chairman Tony Pidgeley were most interesting. It included his solution to how to solve the housing crisis in London and the South East, but ...

New boards elected at Oxford Technology VCTs

Today all four of the Oxford Technology VCTs held their Annual General Meetings. The meetings were well attended as Oxford Technology VCT (OXT) and Oxford Technology 3 VCT (OTT) previously had their VCT status withdrawn by HMRC, although this has now been temporarily "set aside" while an appeal is processed. ShareSoc formed a "Shareholder Action Group" with a committee of interested shareholders to make representations on this matter and protect their interests. We also pushed for changes to the corporate governance of these ...

Shareholders voting without knowing what for at Majestic Wine

Shareholders at Majestic Wine were given a proxy voting form that included two common resolutions - a vote on the Remuneration Report and a vote on Remuneration Policy. But there was no description of the Remuneration Policy in the Annual Report. As a shareholder in the company, I found this somewhat baffling and therefore voted against the second of those resolutions on the basis of not knowing what I might be voting for. The company subsequently withdrew those resolutions on the because ...

Active managers and Monks Investment Trust

The FT’s fund management supplement recently reported that “90% of UK active funds beat the market”. This headline might surprise you because historically it is known that active fund...

National Grid and the Problem of High Pay

I attended the Annual General Meeting of National Grid this week (on the 28th July). It was a typical FTSE-100 company AGM with questions on all kinds of matters, mainly from private shareholders of course. There is a full report on the meeting here, where many other AGM reports are supplied for members. I tackled the issue of high remuneration at this company and the change in the LTIP with a couple of questions, and I expected there to be many more ...

High pound also impacts Renishaw and GlaxoSmithKline

Following on from my blog post a couple of days ago about the high pound impacting the profits of technology companies, yesterday saw final results from Renishaw (RSW) and interims from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which reflected the same issue. However, the currency impact in both companies was not the main impact on the subsequent share price move. At Renishaw, profits would have been £6.8m higher on top of an "adjusted" figure of £70.1m for the year, but for the currency impact. Last years ...

High pound impacts Croda, Abcam and others

Today Croda issued their interim results for the six months to the end of June. Croda is a speciality chemicals company and less than 10% of its revenue arises in the UK. A very substantial proportion comes from the USA and from other dollar denominated sales elsewhere. The high pound (currently over $1.70 to the pound) is having a big impact on companies such as Croda. In the six month figures revenue in constant currency terms is up 2.5% and operating ...

Tesco admits it needs a new leader

Today Tesco announced that CEO Philip Clarke is departing. The statement included a further profit warning which mentioned that the overall market is weaker and trading profit in the first half of the year is below expectations. It's surely an acceptance that Mr Clarke had been given long enough to turn around the business, but had ultimately failed (he has been in the CEO role since March 2011). The new CEO is to be Dave Lewis who joins from Unilever where he has ...

Alkane Placing – What a Wheeze!

Today (17/7/2014) Alkane Energy announced a placing to raise £8m to fund the acquisition of three power response companies. The placing was at 36p, when the closing price the previous day was 39.5p indicating a discount of 9%. But as with all such placings, the news had got around the market beforehand, so it's more like a 15% discount to the share price before the news spread. So what you may ask? It's just another placing that prejudices private shareholders who were ...

Blinkx AGM Report – Was it a black swan event?

At the Blinkx AGM today the events of the last year were various described by the management as a "black swan event", "one in a 1000 years", and "a perfect storm". That probably echoed the emotions of shareholders after the Edelman blog, the attack by shorters, the resulting collapse in the share price, and the subsequent profits warning that caused it to fall by a further 60%. The share price peaked at 230p in November 2013 and is now 35p, so ...

West Bromwich Building Society in profit

The West Bromwich Building Society recently issued their accounts for their financial year ending in March 2014. They actually managed to make a small profit after years of losses. Does that mean that the PIBS holders will start to receive their dividends again? In essence no. According to Peter Morgan who led a campaign on the issue, it might yet be another 5 years before these bondholders receive any interest whatsoever. To remind readers about this problem, in 2009, the Society ran ...