Equity prospects
11 December 2020
Tesco needs little introduction - it’s one of the UK’s top retailers in groceries and merchandise and has a market capitalisation of £20bn.
11 December 2020
MarketAxess is where most corporate bonds get traded, particularly American ones and in the smaller deal size (below $5 million).
11 December 2020
The London Stock Exchange Group, an exchange where shares and bonds are traded, also incorporates a range of clearing and settlement business as well as price information and index sales.
11 December 2020
Segro is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that specialises in owning and developing warehouses, data centres and logistics sites in the UK, focussing on ‘edge-of-town’ spaces.
18 September 2020
Edwards Lifesciences’ roots date to 1958, when Miles Edwards set out to build the first artificial heart.
18 September 2020
We have all heard of eBay and PayPal. eBay used to own PayPal before spinning it off as its own entity in 2015.
18 June 2020
Coloplast’s products are not quite dinner party conversation, as they help us when our plumbing stops working properly.
12 June 2020
Previously a sprawling healthcare conglomerate, Cooper Companies has now found its focus within the speciality contact lens and women’s healthcare markets.
12 June 2020
Ferrari is an ultra-luxury car manufacturer with an iconic brand packed full of racing pedigree.
9 June 2020
The weather is getting nicer and although we can’t enjoy pub gardens (yet), I am still craving a good G&T.
12 March 2020
Tobacco companies have historically shown themselves capable of withstanding everything regulators have thrown at them.
12 March 2020
Disney makes and sells films as well as running its Parks & Resorts division.
12 March 2020
Big Yellow is a UK listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
11 December 2019
Spirax-Sarco Engineering (Spirax) is one of the true great multi-national British engineering companies, comprising three complementary niche businesses operating in thermal energy management market,…
10 December 2019
Ofwat regulates the water companies. On 16th December 2019 Ofwat publishes its determinations for how water companies will get rewarded in the next regulatory period called AMP7 (2020 to 2025).There…
10 December 2019
Diageo, at first glance, is an international drinks producer and distributor operating across developed and emerging markets. But, if you look deeper at the company you quickly discover that it…
10 December 2019
Typically Amazon is viewed as the world’s largest e-commerce store, you can near enough buy any item, from A to Z. Yet, Amazon should be viewed through a different lens. Amazon does far more than e…
19 September 2019
Diploma PLC is a holding company comprised of a number of international operating businesses. These specialise in the supply of consumable products and services into three distinct sectors and…
19 September 2019
Bank of America, as the name suggests, is an American bank through and through. Close to 85% of revenues and profits come from America and its 210,000 employees staff its 5,000 branches across the…
19 September 2019
19 September 2019
Walt Disney Company (Disney) is more than a mouse with big ears and amusement parks. The empire now includes films made by Pixar (Toy Story), Marvel Studios (Avengers), Lucasfilm (Star Wars) and 20th…
19 June 2019
Standard Chartered is a restructuring story. The bank is led by CEO Bill Winters, who took over a bit of a mess back in 2015. From 2000 Standard Chartered pursued what they now see as a flawed policy…
19 June 2019
Intuitive Surgical is a company which develops and manufactures surgical robots, and is the global leader. These however aren’t the fully automated robots that you may be thinking of.Intuitive’s…
19 June 2019
Often in the news for the wrong reasons, Facebook is not a company which many would call a success. But from a financial perspective the business has performed incredibly well since its stock market…
19 June 2019
Barclays Bank has been in the news recently, but not quite for all the right reasons. An American shareholder activist called Ed Bramson has been pushing for the bank to restructure its investment…
15 March 2019
Illumina is one of the few companies which is at the cutting edge of improving our quality of life. It develops highly complex machines which sequence or ‘read’ genomes. Genomes contain our complete…
15 March 2019
You probably don’t know this but the probability that you have a Givaudan product in most of your domestic consumables is very high.Givaudan is based in Switzerland and makes fragrances and flavours.…
15 March 2019
You might not know it, but without Cranswick your traditional Sunday morning breakfast might be significantly different to that which you are used to today.In the 1970s the business was formed when a…
15 March 2019
Compass haven’t had it easy. December 2017 saw the tragic passing of the impressive CEO, Richard Cousins. This was closely followed by the resignation of long serving CFO, Johnny Thomson and global…
11 December 2018
Unilever is a global consumer goods company whose vast portfolio of products operate within four broad segments: Personal Care, Foods, Refreshment and Home Care. Brands you might recognise include…
11 December 2018
RELX is an information provider to specialist professional sectors, namely Science,Technology and Medicine (STM), Legal and Insurance.
11 December 2018
When you think of Microsoft you typically think of its Windows operating system. This is however only a small part of its diversified technology empire.
11 December 2018
Hunting manufactures and distributes equipment that enables the world’s oil and gas companies to drill for and then extract their oil and gas hydrocarbons.
26 September 2018
It would be easy to write about all the reasons to be impressed by Amazon. Whether it be their globally leading cloud-computing business, their e-commerce platform which continues to dominate the…
25 September 2018
Intuitive Surgical are the global leader in robotic assisted minimally invasive surgery through the “da Vinci System” as well as the related instruments and accessories.The da Vinci System comes in…
25 September 2018
British American Tobacco (BATs) and their peers have been plagued over recent years by concerns over pro- health legislation threatening parts of the industry. Thus far, tobacco giants have survived…
25 September 2018
AB Foods (ABF) is split into five rather different divisions, Sugar, Agriculture, Retail, Grocery and Ingredients. By far the largest of these is Retail or more accurately, Primark, a budget fashion…
21 June 2018
Renishaw aren’t your average FTSE250 Industrial. In 2013, a decision was made that investors would only get to see management twice a year; once at the AGM and once at an investor day, which we…
21 June 2018
In 1928 the first Micky Mouse cartoon ‘Steamboat Willie’ appeared in theatres. 90 years later, Walt Disney looks like a very different beast. Media Networks now makes up roughly half of the company…
21 June 2018
PZ Cussons (PZ) is a global FMCG company, owning well-known brands such as Imperial Leather, Carex, and Original Source, to name a few.
21 June 2018
During the 1990’s, WiFi was invented and began to be commercialised. Those that made the WiFi transmitters were tipped to be the companies through which to play this leap forward in technology.…
27 February 2018
In February 2016, GVC acquired bwin to become one of the largest multinational sport betting and gaming groups. More recently the Group has come to investors’ attention over its potential tie-up with…
27 February 2018
We last wrote about Electrocomponents in the Spring 2017 edition when the shares were trading at £4.95 on what seemed like an expensive 45x historical PE rating.
26 February 2018
23 February 2018
Clipper Logistics (Clipper) run a predominantly UK based business focused on returns, delivery, packaging, and click and collect services. When an item is ordered online from one of a number of…
6 December 2017
We first mentioned NMC when the shares were reaching up to the £18 level. Each share now costs you close to £32 and the company is a proud new member of the FTSE100.To recap, NMC runs hospitals and…
6 December 2017
A deep knowledge and understanding of Smurfit Kappa means a quite surprising increase in one’s vocabulary; OCC, kraftliner, testliner, recycled containerboard, virgin containerboard and corrugated…
6 December 2017
Vodafone has been through a lot of change over the last few years. Most of this is thanks to a huge investment programme in Europe called Project Spring. The result of which is that Vodafone is now…
6 December 2017
Warren Buffet once said “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” As one of very few pharmaceutical companies with AAA rated corporate…
18 September 2017
Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) took on more leverage when it bought BG back in early 2016.
15 September 2017
In 1993, Victrex was formed following a management buyout from Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). They took with them their then patented product Polyaryletheretherketone (PEEK), a polymer that forms…
11 September 2017
Other products are aluminium, copper, diamonds, gold, industrial minerals, coal and uranium. Aluminium is the second most important asset representing close to 16% of operating profits.
11 September 2017
Lloyds is the strongest name within the UK banking sector. It has a secure and improving capital position and a notable cost advantage with an industry leading cost / income ratio of just 46%.
13 June 2017
In corporate finance the ‘pecking order theory’ would tell you that the cheapest form of finance is internally generated cash, the next cheapest is debt and the most expensive, and therefore the most…
13 June 2017
Intertek is one of those companies that piggy backs on global trade. Technically the company is a global leader in testing, inspecting and certifying products, commodities and services. For a…
13 June 2017
Pepsi was first introduced in 1893, the creation of a US pharmacist who sought to invent a drink designed to boost energy. Success came in the midst of the great depression in 1936, when they aired a…
12 June 2017
Genus is a specialist in applying biotechnology to the science of animal breeding and genetic improvement. The technology is applicable to all kinds of livestock and they currently commercialize…
27 February 2017
Electrocomponents describe themselves as a high service distributor for engineers.
27 February 2017
NMC runs hospitals and chemist shops in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a 25% market share in a population that has grown from 200,000 in the 1960s to over ten million today. Health insurance is…
27 February 2017
DCC is one of those companies that slipped into the FTSE100 without many people noticing. On the face of it, DCC is a distributor of heating oil, LPG, technology and healthcare products, and waste and…
27 February 2017
6 December 2016
Next is a UK-based retailer selling clothing, footwear and accessories. The company operates through four main business segments: Next Retail, a chain of more than 500 stores in the UK and Ireland;…
6 December 2016
Marks and Spencer Group (M&S) is a well-known retailer dividing its stores into General Merchandise and Food or sometimes Simply Food. This divides not only its stores but also its profitability and…
6 December 2016
Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) is one of the largest global oil majors with revenues split, in financial reporting terms, between its Upstream, Downstream and Integrated Gas divisions.
5 December 2016
To pay or not to pay. HSBC is a global bank with 58 million customers across its retail and commercial banking franchises. About 40% of revenues and about 80% of operating profits come from Asia with…
16 September 2016
There are more searches on Google for 'big yellow storage', or other permutations, than for 'self-storage', according to the Big Yellow Group. Indeed you may have heard about or seen the brand popping…
16 September 2016
Under the backdrop of a zero interest rate environment, post financial crisis de-risking and restructuring alongside continued litigation, the UK banking sector remains unloved.
16 September 2016
RELX, or until recently Reed Elsevier, is a world-renowned information provider to specialist professional sectors.
7 June 2016
Smith & Nephew (SN) is a global medical devices business operating in three main segments: Orthopaedics, Endoscopy and Advanced Wound Management (AWM). Traditionally SN relied on demand from the…
7 June 2016
Renishaw is a United Kingdom-based, specialist electronic engineering company operating in three segments: metrology, healthcare and additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing.
7 June 2016
Experian is an information services firm best known for providing consumers and businesses alike with credit reports, but they are also engaged in fraud prevention, targeted marketing offers, and…
7 June 2016
Equiniti Group plc is principally a provider of share registration, pension payment and administration services to a range of organisations. It also benefits from various cross-selling opportunities…
11 March 2016
Aggreko is a global supplier of temporary and/or emergency power supply equipment to a wide array of industries. It has significant earnings exposure both to Emerging Markets and commodity driven…
11 March 2016
Cobham is a well managed aerospace specialist which has grown steadily for a number of years, both by acquisition and organic growth. It has assembled an array of high-grade defence and aerospace…
11 March 2016
Associated British Foods (ABF) remains an interesting growth story. It’s low cost, international clothing chain, Primark enters its inaugural US roll-out on September 10th with a carefully planned…
11 March 2016
Despite lacking strong comparatives, Whitbread has started the year well in both core divisions. Analysts are comfortable with the underlying UK economic recovery and point to major drivers this…
7 March 2016
Amec made the major acquisition of US peer, Foster Wheeler in 2014. This effectively doubled Amec’s global scale, mainly in downstream oil services and onshore US. The timing of this deal was…
7 March 2016
Shell point out the highly complementary overlap of BG Group, particularly in Liquefied Natural Gas and BG’s deep water assets in Brazil.
7 March 2016
As with all the oil services sector, Hunting shares sold off significantly on the back of weakness in the oil price.
7 March 2016
Shaftesbury represents a unique cluster of London based retail assets, backed by extremely high management ability within this sector and locality. As the company highlights, this collection of assets…
10 February 2016
J Sainsbury is a leading UK grocery chain. After a generation of growth in retail space, the UK grocery market is in excess supply and suffering a price war as ultra low cost competitors enter. J…
10 February 2016
Howden is a well run cyclical company benefiting from a strong UK building market. Earnings have been growing well in excess of 10% for a number of successive quarters. 2014 was the best year for…
10 February 2016
Negative like-for-like sales of some -4% for the first time since 2009 caused recent disappointment at Burberry. This was despite concerted 4% growth in the nascent brand entry level route of Beauty.…
9 February 2016
Berkeley Group is a major FTSE 100 quoted, prime property developer within the London region. It has a highly regarded management team and has pioneered several major luxury projects in areas…
