Company News

Pay at RBS – over 99% in favour

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) held its Annual General Meeting yesterday (the 25th June). Most of the media did not even bother to report it. There were some shareholders present who spoke against the remuneration at the company, but when it came to a vote  the proxy counts were 99.81% in favour of the Remuneration Report and 99.66% in favour of the Remuneration Policy. PIRC had also opposed the Remuneration Policy before the meeting. A summary of what they said is ...

Kentz, Victoria, AstraZeneca, and SSE

A number of companies on which ShareSoc has commented recently were in the news today (23/6/2014) or over the preceding weekend. Let's cover each in turn: Kentz Kentz received a cash offer for the company of 935p from SNC-Lavalin this morning. That's a premium of 33% to the recent share price. With such a premium and the stated support for the offer from the directors, it looks likely to succeed.  This will avoid the directors of Kentz having to deal with the ...

ASOS fire halts operations

A major fire at ASOS's Barnsley distribution centre late on Friday night (20/6/2014) has caused it to suspend operations. At the time of writing (the Sunday morning following)  their retail web site was still not available to shoppers with a message saying the company had "pressed pause on the ASOS web site".  It also suggested they expected to be back in operation in the next day or so. It is believed that the fire might have been the result of arson. ...

Berkeley Group and Housebuilders

Berkeley Group issued their preliminary results this morning (18/6/2014). For those holding housebuilders shares (like this writer), they are worth commenting on perhaps as investors in such companies seem to be getting twitchy. With Mr Carney hinting that interest rates may rise sooner than expected, house price inflation powering ahead while general inflation remains low, and politicians criticising the Government "Help to Buy" scheme, one can understand why the share prices of many builders have fallen back from their peak. For example ...

ASOS – when everyone wants out

This morning (5/6/2014) ASOS issued a trading statement before the market opened. It wasn't all bad in that total retail sales at constant currencies rose by 33% in the last quarter - and there are not many businesses that are growing at that rate. However,  EBIT margin guidance was reduced from circa 6.5% to 4.5% for the current financial year due to increased promotional activity and the relatively higher proportion of European sales. US and ROW sales growth was perhaps seen ...

AstraZeneca and Pfizer merger definitely off

Pfizer have conceded defeat in their proposed offer for AstraZeneca (AZN). Ian Read, the Chief Executive of Pfizer, said it was a "missed opportunity" for both the UK and for AZN shareholders. He also said we could have had the worlds largest pharmaceutical company domiciled in the UK which would have been good for science and manufacturing in this country. He surely has a point there. In addition he complained about the Takeover Panel rules as contributing to thwarting the deal, but ...

SSE Results – not all they seem at first glance

SSE, the energy company formerly called Scottish & Southern Energy, published their  annual results yesterday (for the year to March 31st).  The first page of the "preliminary announcement" looked positive. It talked about Adjusted Earnings per Share up 4.1%, Adjusted Profit before Tax up 9.6% and the Full Year Dividend increased by 3.0%, among other things. But this writer was immediately suspicious because there was no mention of revenue trends in these "headline" figures - something of importance and usually included. Revenue ...

Surprises on Remuneration at the Kentz AGM, and opposition also at Hiscox

Surprises on Remuneration at the Kentz AGM,  and opposition also at Hiscox Last week (on Friday the 16th May), both the Remuneration Policy and Remuneration Report resolutions were voted down by shareholders at the Kentz Annual General Meeting. This is one of the few companies where such resolutions have been lost in the current AGM round and the first where the Remuneration Policy vote has been defeated. That vote was only introduced in the last year by new Government legislation, but oddly ...

Should you buy shares in Saga?

Here are some quick comments on the Saga IPO from skimming the prospectus before all the media do their in-depth analysis of what will no doubt be examined as a possible punt by both the millions of Saga customers and stock market speculators. Saga customers are favoured slightly in that they get one free share for every 20 purchased if they hold them for a year - hardly enough I suggest to sway my decision being one of their customers. But ...

Thoughts on AstraZeneca

Shareholders in AstraZeneca are no doubt pleasantly surprised by the uplift in the share price following the offers from Pfizer. The share price has doubled in the last year on improving prospects with an even sharper increase in the last few weeks as soon as a bid was rumoured. That puts the company on a historic p/e of about 20 at the time of writing. AstraZeneca has of course been a dog for some years with falling revenue and earnings, a poor ...

Barclays wins vote on pay

Barclays Bank Annual General Meeting yesterday showed how difficult it is to get excessive pay awards voted down. Despite strong opposition from PIRC, F&C and Standard Life (the latter actually spoke at the meeting which is unusual for institutions), only 24% of votes were cast against the Remuneration Report with an even lower number against the Remuneration Policy. There were a number of shareholders who abstained so the media commonly reported 34% of shareholders  as failing to support the board, but ...

Quindell – and how to avoid the shorters

Quindell, a company operating in the insurance sector, came under attack yesterday by Gotham City Research LLC, an investment analysis firm. Quindell's shares ended down on the day by 39% and were down more than 50% at one point. Gotham City make numerous allegations in a 74-page document which is available from their web site. Without a lot more knowledge of this company and a detailed study of these allegations, it is impossible to comment on the substance of them, but some ...