Equity prospects

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

CRH is a leading global manufacturer and distributor of construction materials.

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.

17 March 2020

Disney makes and sells films as well as running its Parks & Resorts division. Disney also own a variety of other TV and film production businesses, including ESPN (sports), Hulu and Hotstar as well as…

11 March 2020

Big Yellow is a UK listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Its REIT structure means it is required to pay out the majority of its property rental income…

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

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

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 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

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 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

RELX is an information provider to specialist professional sectors, namely Science,Technology and Medicine (STM), Legal and Insurance.

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

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

 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.

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.

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

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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.

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…

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…

11 December 2015

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