Company News

Unsatisfactory Avast AGM, and Designated Accounts

I “attended” the Avast (AVST) Annual General Meeting today. This was of course held on-line using Zoom with only one director in physical attendance (Warren Finegold) who chaired the meeting. Zoom seems to be becoming the de facto standard for on-line meetings. The Chairman of the company, John Schwarz, gave a brief presentation backed up by some slides. To summarise, it was another strong year of growth and profitability. A new CEO is now in place. EBITDA was up 8% with strong ...

Property Shares Spooked by Land Securities and Pets at Home Accounts Attacked

Land Securities Group (LAND) published their annual results yesterday. I don’t hold the stock but what they said seems to have spooked the whole property sector. The company is a large holder of both retail and office property. For retail property, only 38% of rents due were collected within 10 days of the due date in March. For offices it was better at 89% but that is still down from the prior year at the same time. What possibly really scared people ...

Ocado Trading Update, Coronavius Apps, EMIS AGM, IDOX Pay, Segro Dividends

Ocado (OCDO) issued a trading update today, and it shows their joint retail venture with M&S is benefiting from the coronavirus epidemic. In the second quarter revenue was up 40% on the prior year. They have had to ramp up capacity significantly to meet this demand, and they have suspended delivery of mineral water so as to cope with the needs of additional households. The announcement gives the distinct impression that they need more warehouses (or CFCs as they call them). On ...

Justin King ex-Sainsburys CEO – Supermarket Supply Chains, Profits and Share Prices

In the present environment its useful to get some insights into what’s happening in the food retail sector and how it's impacting the major players. I came across this 10 minute interview with Justin King which was filmed at the end of March and thought it may be of interest to members. Justin King, Formerly CEO of Sainsbury's and now an advisor to Supermarket Income REIT (LON: SUPR), answers a series of questions for the investor community. Justin discusses the supermarket sector. ...

Dividends Slashed, Investing for Income, NMC Health and Finablr

Many companies are announcing cancelled, reduced or postponed dividends – two of the latest were Shell (RDSB) and Sainsburys (SBRY). This will hit investors hard who rely on dividends for retirement income. But should they be doing so? Terry Smith of Fundsmith had an article published in the Financial Times today under the headline “Investors: never let a crisis go to waste” in which he attacks income funds. In particular he questions whether the Investment Association should allow funds with “income” in ...

Stock Market Trends, Covid-19 Treatments, Burford Results, Lookers Accounting and Medica

The stock market seems to be returning to normal with a positive trend over the last month despite the economy being in a complete shambles as a result of the “lock-down”. The Government is incurring massive costs to bail-out companies, support the NHS and pay workers to do nothing. We have yet to see the real economic impact of those measures on the Government’s finances. But investors seem to be euphoric because they now realise we are not all going to ...

RBS Shareholder Campaign and AGM voting recommendations – Update 18, 17 April 2020

 RBS could do better! It would be wrong to lambast RBS in the eye of the COVID-19 storm, but we note the following issues: 2020 AGM solution requires voting before discussion Directors’ shareholdings are too small – no alignment with shareholders No information on potential loan impairments from COVID-19 pandemic Market cap of £12bn is too small versus £723bn total assets The RBS Board has in this time of crisis, reverted to type – communication flows and quality of ...

Thomas Cook – The end of the road

We had quite a lot of enquiries about Thomas Cook and what actions shareholders might take. We have until now adopted a watching brief. We recently had a teleconference...

Recent Annual Reports and Trust Discounts

After the news over the weekend, it’s clearly going to be another very bad day on stock markets. One rare riser initially was Ten Entertainment Group (TEG) despite the...

Equals Trading, Bango Results, Finablr Suspension, Baronsmead VCT and Closing the Stock Market

As share prices of almost every share on the market collapses, should all trading be suspended? The argument for this is that as the impact of the coronavirus on the economy is not certain, although it looks more dire every day, shares cannot be valued with any certainty. Indeed there seems to be no hiding place as there never is in a bear market – almost all share prices have fallen. The editor of the FT thinks the market should not ...

Market Crash and Abcam Impact from Coronavirus

This morning (9th March) my stock market portfolio was a sea of red – down 5.6% at the time of writing at 9.30 am.  Not only have most shares fallen, but spreads have widened so it’s not even easy to pick up those shares that are now undervalued at a fair price. I think the answer here is to wait until the immediate panic is over before making any more decisions to buy or sell. The major impacts on shares have been ...

NMC Debacle

Trading in the shares in NMC Health (NMC) was suspended on Thursday and a formal investigation by the FCA was announced. The suspension announcement said that the company has...