Investing in UK market-leading companies is a marmite proposition. They must have done something good but, if they are already so big, how can they keep taking market share? Richard examines market leaders Dunelm, and Inchcape (again!) In this week’s update, only two companies published annual reports, passed my minimum quality filter and the 5 […]
Richard looks at one of his least favourite kinds of business – asset managers. Love them or loathe them, many London-listed asset managers are profitable and financially sound. Investors, aka asset managers, are not my favourite category of share. The financial world is precarious to me, which is why long ago I decided to take […]
There is very little 5 Strikes action, so Richard takes the opportunity to slide Inchcape onto the front burner. Over the last eight years, the company has sharpened its focus on motor vehicle distribution. Deciding what to focus on is the basis of good strategy. Since my last article only two shares have published annual […]
From a pool of more than 200 shares, Richard hones in on software company Kainos (again), fast food favourite Greggs, motor vehicle distributor Inchcape, integrated pet shop and vet group Pets at Home, and defence technology supplier Cohort. On the horizon: posh wallpaper and fabric designer Colefax and Gately, a law firm. Well, maybe not […]
Richard examines fault after fault in businesses until he can find no more. If the faults should not cause permanent damage, the share is an investment candidate. Currently, Kainos is in the spotlight and Iomart and IG enter the pipeline. I am compiling a list of all the companies with a few flaws in their […]
The latest haul of investment candidates from Richard includes a software company, a timber importer, a one-of-a-kind fantasy gaming and modelling company Games Workshop, a housebuilder and a business so small you may never have heard of it. Just to recap and contextualise, 5 Strikes is a quick way of deciding which shares are the […]
Richard’s 5 Strikes system puts three very different businesses in the frame: Athleisure brand Lululemon, Gamma Communications – an IT company that supplies communications systems, and MS International, which manufactures naval cannon. Bingo! Well, almost Bingo. In my last article, I promised to order the results of my 5 Strikes system by number of strikes […]
Richard scratches the itch that is payments company PayPoint. Maybe his time would have been better spent investigating one of the other companies on his research list, Cranswick, say, or Castings, but he has no regrets. The main focus of this article is PayPoint. There’s no snappy adjective I can use to describe Paypoint because […]
The latest haul of 5 strikes shares includes Halma and RS, proof perhaps that big companies can gallop, or at least trot. Richard also doffs his cap to Bloomsbury Publishing and works out how profitable Next 15 really is. We’re in a low period for annual report publishing as the large number of companies that […]
The standout share from Richard’s latest 5 Strikes haul is Pets at Home, a dominant pet care business in the UK with a strong financial track record. Fifteen companies have passed the Minimum Quality Filter since my last update, but the finances of only three score less than three strikes, according to the 5 strikes […]
Richard’s 5 Strikes systems discover four more potential long-term investments, but he doesn’t investigate any of them. Instead, he’s drawn to B-Corp aspirant and gaggle of consultancies Next 15. It has only two strikes to tarnish its name. Since the last 5 Strikes update, my 5 Strikes system has discovered four more candidates for long-term […]
Bad news: customer service is in decline in the UK. Good news, we can still invest in the companies bucking the trend. Richard sprinkles some stardust on SharePad to reveal companies that are doing the right thing and reaping the rewards. A chance encounter with an article about declining standards of customer service in the […]
The latest companies to pass Richard’s 5 strikes system include a direct seller of swag, an estate agent franchise, an engineer that should galvanise investors, a soft drinks company, and a market-leading mortgage intermediary. Since my last update, I have run 16 shares through the 5 Strikes system. Five achieved less than three strikes. This […]
If ever there was a company that demonstrated complexity can be bad for business, it’s Nichols. When diversified, profitability crumbles. When it sticks to marketing soft drinks it prospers. Guess what it is doing now? The one thing you will not read much about in this article is Vimto. Vimto is a soft drink and […]
Richard tightens up his “Minimum Quality” filter so that SharePad is doing more of the heavy lifting. In a not-very-scientific test, 18 out of 21 good-quality businesses were identified by it. Last month I shared a list of all the companies that passed my semi-automated sifting of the entire stockmarket over the course of the […]
Richard unearths five good-quality businesses that have recently published annual reports. Top of the list are InterContinental Hotels (IHG), and MoneySupermarket (MONY)… Joyfully, I am away on holiday but my holiday is mistimed in one respect. The post-Christmas lull in annual report publishing has come to an end. A large number of companies with financial […]
For a year now, Richard has been scrutinising companies and awarding them ‘strikes’ for complications that make them tricky to analyse and potentially unpredictable as investments. Now he’s combed the entire market, he reveals all the shares that didn’t strike out. It’s a year since I started the 5 Strikes project, which means I have […]
IntegraFin and Shoe Zone are the only companies to achieve less than three strikes as the winter lull in annual reporting intensifies. Richard also takes a closer look at Renew. 5 Strikes Since my last 5 Strikes update, I have only found two shares that achieve less than three strikes. A strike is a complicating […]
Richard Beddard goes through the adjustments RWS made to turn a reported £6.9 million loss into an adjusted £123.8 million profit. He thinks there are generalisations we can apply to many adjustments that make it easier to form a view on their profit. Oh my word. Translator RWS’ accounts for the year to September 2023 […]
Richard introduces the latest fish caught in his 5 Strikes net. The seven shares include a giant caterer, a software supplier with a perfect track record, and a travel agent that makes “jollies even jollier”. Post-Christmas, there is a bit of a lull in the annual reporting season. That is because a large number of […]
There are a rapidly growing number of certified B Corps organisations that combine purpose and profit. As yet, only a handful are listed, but Richard thinks we’re at the beginning of a trend. It may be a profitable one for investors. This year’s crop of Christmas gifts has rekindled my interest in investing in a […]
Having used the 5 Strikes system for nine months, Richard has decided it is a keeper. Commenting on the latest investment candidates to achieve less than 3 strikes, he explains what he was thinking while he was separating the wheat from the chaff. Happy New Year! At the turn of every year, I review my […]
Keystone Law is top of Richard’s research list because it is unlike any other listed law firm. Not only has it performed better than the others, it has a different way of doing business. But how special is it? One of the many things that hinder my understanding of companies is a direct result of […]
Six shares have passed the first stage of Richard’s 5 Strikes process. Many of them are destined for the “too hard pile”, perhaps the most underrated element in an investor’s toolkit. Here is an update on the latest companies to have published annual reports and passed the 5 Strikes system*. Since the last update four […]
Richard uses SharePad and Artificial Intelligence to help him learn about listed law firms. The legal sector is not quite the unappreciated stock market backwater he anticipated. It is a bit of a horror show, with a couple of light intermissions. It was the data that alerted me to the opportunity in listed law firms. […]
It has been a month since Richard revealed the latest shares to pass his 5 Strikes system. The good news, some have passed with flying colours. 5 Strikes* is my main method of discovering new long-term investments, and since we share my discoveries here regularly, some readers will be familiar with it by now. If […]
The Capex to operating cash flow ratio can tell us a lot about a firm’s priorities. Richard explores the ratios of a number of capital-intensive businesses. For many years I have held shares in Goodwin, a family owned mini-conglomerate of engineering businesses. This gaggle of businesses is capital intensive, which means Goodwin has to invest […]
Since Richard started scoring companies in SharePad last April, twelve companies have scored zero strikes, the best possible score. In this article, he decides which of them to research next. Five-strikes-wise, there is not much to report on. I have awarded four shares that have reported in the last two weeks with less than three […]
Shares in SDI have plummeted. Richard examines the price differential between the company, a manufacturer of scientific equipment, and Judges Scientific, a firm it is often compared to. In the last two weeks, my 5 strikes system* has only surfaced two new investment ideas: SDI and Goodwin. These businesses have good financial track records, but […]
Richard picks holes in the financial histories of four companies and finds little to trouble him. Remarkably Cake Box, a company that published an annual report riddled with errors two years ago, is one of them. As fishing expeditions go, my daily trips in the last two weeks have been particularly unfruitful. Few companies have […]
Richard reveals the latest batch of shares to go through his 5 strikes system. Topping the list is Kainos, a pandemic winner that probably has what it takes to prosper over the long term. Here are the latest candidates for long-term investing according to my 5 Strikes system: Name AR date Strikes Score Kainos 21/7/23 […]
Richard looks beyond how Christie Group PLC makes money, to how it is going to make more. He examines the challenges it faces and how it plans to overcome them, aka strategy. My enthusiasm for Christie has diminished in the two weeks since I introduced it to you (see 29 top scorers, and Christie bottled). […]
Richard reveals the latest shares to pass his 5 Strikes scoring system, and attempts to bottle the essence of Christie, a big data business back in 1846! It may be the height of summer, but I am still beavering away scoring shares as companies publish their annual reports. Two months of top-scoring shares To recap, […]
An iron rule in long-term investing is to understand the business. Richard adapts business school teaching to work out how companies make money. One of the advantages private investors have over many fund managers is that we do not have to worry about being fired or losing out on bonuses just because we have not […]
Richard finds 11 franchisors listed in London and pits them against each other in a championship to find the best one. In round one, a wildcard goes out to the number two seed. One of the first things I noticed when I started scoring companies in SharePad this spring was that franchises were scoring well. […]
Richard uses the results of his Five strikes scoring system to go in search of high-quality sectors. It is leading him to challenge long-held beliefs about what makes a good long-term investment. Scoring companies, when they publish annual reports, means that over the course of a year, I will have conducted a survey of a […]
As the number of new annual reports dwindles from a flood to a trickle, Richard examines another cut of shares that he scores highly. It is leading him to think the unthinkable. The springtime flood of annual reports has abated, so this article probably contains the last big cut of shares that, after scrutinising the […]
FDM is the top-scoring company in Richard’s watchlist. Still doggedly trying to find things wrong with the business, he examines what has made it so successful, and what, if anything, could stop it in its tracks. The presence of FDM at the top of my first tranche of Five Stocks and You’re Out Shares, has […]
Richard reveals the top-scoring shares to have been through his “Five strikes and you’re out” scoring system. Top of the list is a company he has never investigated before. In Five strikes and you’re out, I introduced a method for rapidly scoring shares by eyeballing the financials in SharePad using one custom table. Every day […]
Richard employs some fuzzy logic to narrow the number of companies returned by his filter. A bit like we might do a set of press-ups every day, it is a routine to make him a stronger investor. While everybody is talking about the latest developments in artificial intelligence, getting computers to think more like humans, […]
The way companies account for share-based pay tends to erase the cost from profit and free cash flow, which is how we measure their performance. Richard factors share-based payback in and discovers it can make a difference to our perception of businesses, and their valuations. Every year I read Fundsmith’s annual letter to fund holders […]
The collapse of a handful of banks is provoking fears of contagion and a fair bit of trading. Though we think of traders and buy-and-hold investors as separate breeds, everybody trades. Discipline is as important for those of us who do it infrequently as those who do it daily. No doubt you have heard, people […]
Although Arm will list in the USA, there should be nothing to stop us buying shares in Britain’s top tech company after it floats. This idea leads Richard to a potentially rich seam of investments he has not previously explored: UK firms listed in the USA. Judging by the headlines, news that Arm is to […]
Richard looks at the good and the ugly in Hollywood Bowl’s alternative performance measures and concludes that the company has put a positive gloss on adjusted profit. In Getting to grips with Alternative Performance Measures (APMs), I explained that exceptional items are costs or gains that obscure the underlying performance of a business. This does […]
Companies publish alternative performance measures (APMs) that remove one-off costs and gains from profit to give us a better understanding of how they have performed. Like all financial statistics, though, APMs can be abused. Investors should always check how they are calculated. Since making profit is the reason for being in business, many Alternative Performance […]
Richard deploys ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program, to help him understand two software platforms we can invest in that incorporate artificial intelligence. His conclusion: this is not a dystopia, it is the start of a partnership. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have surely heard of ChatGPT. It is an artificial intelligence […]
Technically, Sharepad’s ROCE calculation is ROACE or Return on Average Capital Employed. It is a good refinement of perhaps the most revealing performance statistic for a business. Sometimes readers ask me why my figure for a certain financial statistic is different from SharePad’s, or the figure quoted by the company. Usually, it is because the […]
Richard calculates the annual performance of his portfolio going back 13 years. One good or bad year tells us nothing about the skill of an investor, he says. If you had a bad one, do not beat yourself up about it. Happy New Year! I am kicking this year off on a bum note, talking […]
Richard puts one last company through his process in 2022. It gives him a chance to reflect on how he has changed the way he uses SharePad this year. Towards the end of every year, I reflect on the year gone by, what has gone right and what has gone wrong, and how I can […]
Market researcher YouGov is known for its predictions, but it may not be the accuracy of those predictions as much as their speed, quantity, and low cost that distinguishes the business. We have surely all heard of market researcher YouGov. A day barely goes by without the media disseminating the results of its polling. If […]
Richard says finding a great business is only the first stage of finding a great investment. The second stage, establishing that what makes a company special is sustainable, is all about fairness. When buy and hold investors own a share of a business, we expect that share to grow in value as the business proves […]
As Richard trawls the stock market for high-quality businesses that are less pricey than they used to be, he takes a first look at Auto Trader, a company that is growing from a position of financial and competitive strength. Following on from Dechra Pharmaceuticals and Halma, Auto Trader is another high-quality business that has experienced […]
Digging deep into stock market sensation Halma’s history, Richard gains clues about the kind of businesses long-term investors should think about owning in an economic blizzard. I have never owned shares in Halma, in fact, I have never considered owning them even though the business has performed extraordinarily well. Halma: Proof that roll-ups can grow […]
Richard takes a first look at Dechra Pharmaceuticals, a company that has grown profit at a compound annual growth rate of 19% since 2013, yet its share price has halved this year. The financial year ending in June 2022, was Dechra Pharmaceuticals’ 25th anniversary. It was also the year the company joined the FTSE-100 index, […]
Richard takes a look at the segmental report of Cohort to gather insights into the company’s costs as it grows in complexity. The segmental report of another business shows how difficult it can be for companies to decide what they can and cannot tell us. I am a fan of some versions of the buy […]
Prompted by a SharePad user, Richard scares himself silly when he examines how sensitive the pension fund of one of his shareholdings is to changes in the rate of inflation. Other people notice things that we do not, which is one of the many reasons I value the emails from people who read my articles. […]
Richard writes an obituary for RM, his investment, rather than RM the business. It surprised him when it updated its risk report mid-term last week, despite what he had already learned. Perhaps it is because I do not scrutinise interim (half-year) results very often, or perhaps it is because I generally avoid heavily indebted companies, […]
A fellow investor is in a dilemma about one of her holdings: “Not sure what to do with the shares…” she writes. XP Power Ltd faces unanticipated challenges and the share price has more than halved. What should she do? An email from a reader has prompted me to think hard about XP Power. She […]
Finding good investment ideas among companies that have floated on the stockmarket recently can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Richard thinks he knows what to look for, maybe it is Moonpig. Some of my favourite new investment ideas in recent months have been recent flotations, companies like Marks Electrical and Dr. […]
The fabric and wallpaper business is cheap and has a profitable past. Richard considers whether recovery will lead to sustainable growth… I am looking into Sanderson Design because an investor I know rates it and because as a former investor in Colefax, a customer and a competitor of Sanderson, I know (a little) about the […]
The world’s biggest bootmaker Dr Martens may be the strongest single brand company available to UK investors, but before he becomes invested for the second time in his life, there are a couple of objections Richard must overcome. Today, I am taking a first look at Dr. Martens, for three reasons: It has just published […]
Richard takes a first look at Learning Technologies, a company aggressively buying businesses that make employee training and development content and software. Learning Technologies’ is a slightly bewildering agglomeration of businesses that helps organisations get the best out of employees. It creates training content for employers and makes software both for the creation of training […]
Events at Luceco and Oxford Metrics may tell us more about the companies’ strategies, and whether they might make good long-term investments. Richard investigates. It is hard to believe Luceco’s share price is below the price it floated at in 2016, when turnover was 71% higher in the year to December 2021 than it was […]
Shortly after Judges Scientific makes its biggest-ever acquisition, Richard sets out to discover whether the pasture is greener over at SDI, a smaller listed business that does much the same thing: buys and builds companies that make scientific instruments. If I were to use one measure to compare highly acquisitive businesses it would be Return […]
Richard surveys the latest annual reports for promising long-term investments. Big Technologies, Digitalbox, Somero, and Xaar catch his eye, but only one of them holds his gaze. Still, a strike rate of one out of four is not bad. Almost every weekday I open a table of all the shares listed in London in SharePad […]
Richard re-examines one of his worst trades and considers whether changes at Portmeirion, the manufacturer of tableware and other home accessories, are enough to make him reconsider. Half a failed trade Portmeirion is one of the more severe of many blots on my trading history. I added Portmeirion to the model portfolio I run for […]
Prompted by the notion that executives sometimes vote with their feet, Richard takes a first look at Morgan Advanced Materials. It recently poached Victrex’s chief financial officer. A by-product of attending the Victrex Annual General Meeting earlier this year was the opportunity to ask its chief financial officer why he was leaving for the arguably […]
Richard finds answers to his questions about Luceco, a manufacturer of electrical products that power our homes. Knowledge, he finds, can be as powerful as electricity… This time last year one of my screens picked up Luceco, a company that makes electrical products like sockets. I wrote down my hopes and fears in SharePad and […]
Richard makes the case for investing in local firms, helped by analysts from The Yorkshire Fund. As usual, SharePad can help. I am starting this article with a shout-out to the analysts of the Yorkshire Fund. You probably have not heard of the Yorkshire Fund. We cannot invest in it. It is a mini financial […]
Richard takes a first look at protective packaging distributor Macfarlane, a company so boring even he could not bring himself to investigate it. The idea of investing in Macfarlane has been sitting with me for a while because an investor I follow has been banging its drum on Twitter. I have ignored him for all […]
Richard takes a first look at Garmin. The World’s Simplest Stockpicking Strategy told him to. I can tell you precisely the moment I first thought of buying shares in Garmin, because I tweeted about it. It was Sunday 30 January and I was sitting on the sofa, checking my watch to see what kind of […]
Future PLC is one of the outstanding growth stories of the last five years, but it is also one that eluded Richard. He fesses up to the biases that blinded him to the opportunity, and discusses whether it is still one today… Today’s company, Future, is one I should have taken a look at a […]
Oxford Metrics has an illustrious past, and judging by management’s targets it expects to augment it in future. Richard investigates the past, and ponders the future… I discovered Oxford Metrics while paging through SharePad’s list of the whole market (LSE shares, excluding Investment Trusts) skimming the summary pages of companies that had recently published annual […]
Richard slims down his flabby SharePad setup to start the year with a lean, clean investing machine. He sets out his goals for 2022 and says thank you to Phil Oakley, who hung up his boots in December. It is that time of year when many of us eat and drink too much and then […]
Richard warms the cockles of his heart in front of a digital fire, while reading his favourite investment book… Christmas is approaching, and I must confess to a new and slightly eccentric guilty pleasure. In addition to mince pies and Irish Coffee, I have taken to working (from home of course) in front of an […]
Recent flotation Bytes Technology has joined bigger rivals Softcat and Computacenter on the stock market. Richard wants to know what it does differently. In my last article I introduced Marks Electrical, a company that had recently floated that might be an exception that proves the rule that Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) make terrible investments. The […]
Richard was so impressed by his first look at newly listed Marks Electrical, he was tempted to buy something from the online retailer of cookers and other domestic appliances. As for the investment, he was tempted too… I do not know whether it is a glitch or a feature, but a quirk of SharePad has […]
Richard likes a business that is in control of its own destiny. He takes a look at DFS plc, the sofa seller that unexpectedly featured in his list of vertically integrated businesses. Of all the names that came up in my trawl for vertically integrated businesses, sofa seller DFS was perhaps the most surprising. To […]
In the chaotic business conditions we are experiencing, self-reliance has been a source of competitive advantage. Since we do not ever know what the future will hold, Richard goes in search of companies that have an element of vertical integration. I hope it is not smugness, but I have felt a sense of satisfaction when […]
Animal breeder Genus Plc is at the forefront of animal genetics and highly valued by investors, yet standard measures of Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), a marker for quality, indicate only modest levels of profitability. Unusually (for me) I rediscovered Genus because of an idea, rather than as a result of trawling through shares in […]
Richard goes hunting in his own portfolio for companies incubating better businesses. They may be undervalued as a result. As promised, this week I am following up my last article on past pivots that worked with an article about live pivots that look like they are working. I used the word pivot to describe a […]
In the first of two articles, Richard celebrates perhaps the sweetest investment of them all: The humdrum business that incubates a better one. Though my stock-in-trade is businesses reliably executing established and successful strategies, my biggest winners have often been businesses that pivoted. They incubated better businesses from within the business they already operated. In […]
Inspired by Maynard’s article on Hornby’s turnaround, Richard examines the history of Games Workshop to imagine what challenges lie ahead if Hornby is to emulate the success of this outwardly similar hobby business. The idea for this article came from Maynard’s article about Hornby. To my mind he convincingly described a turnaround that is already […]
Richard goes deep into Oxford Instruments’ annual reports and SharePad for answers to three questions to establish whether it is a good “pick and shovel play”. In my last article I explained how I used custom tables to find Oxford Instruments, a highly profitable business that seemed to have lost its way and then found […]
Filters are one of the most powerful tools in SharePad, but Richard has been experimenting with another way to discover investment ideas and increase his “market intimacy”. Traders, of course, have price charts to guide them. Many investors focus on financials, and use filters to find new shares with attractive financial characteristics. Being a buy-and-hold […]
Richard was a long-term shareholder in Castings PLC, but he sold his entire holding in 2020. What did he see in the company? Why did he lose confidence after so many years? And what has changed to make him think perhaps it could be a good long-term investment after all? Castings PLC and I have […]
Investors often find resilient businesses occupying specialist niches. Richard takes a first look at Sopheon, which makes software that helps big businesses manage the many products they are developing, and the strategic projects they are working on.
Richard is thinking about joining computer games developer and publisher Team17 as a shareholder. It would be a bold decision, but he would rather invest in Team17 shares than the closest alternative, Frontier Developments. The first thing that attracted me to Team17 was the financials. The second thing was the chief executive. That is because […]
Richard examines Next’s bold strategy as it seeks to win the Internet by becoming an enabler of fashion brands. Surprisingly the strategies of the racier names in fashion retail look staid in comparison.
Richard’s pursuit of Quarto, a publisher of illustrated books, takes him on a trail that leads to Hong Kong and Delaware. What he finds is anything but a straightforward turnaround.
Moneysupermarket wants to get to know us, so it can sell us more products. Innovation and diversification are the pillars of a strategy responding to a maturing market.
PZ Cussons is sharpening its focus on 8 “Must Win” hygiene, baby and beauty brands in the UK, Nigeria, Indonesia and Australia.
A company’s strategy should not just tell us what it wants to achieve, but why and how. Richard introduces a simple framework for analysing strategy and highlights a good strategy, and one that is more difficult to fathom.
I am probably jinxing it now, but owning shares in Howden Joinery has never lost me sleep. Despite the pandemic and a fall in profit, this year’s annual report has the same calming effect it does every year, and not just because of the pictures. Howdens explains the business very well, and quietly delivers on the promise.
Over the years I have ignored Kingspan because it is big, acquisitive, and supplies building materials. My gut reaction to these facts is that Kingspan is best avoided, but my gut could well be wrong.
Recently, I have adapted my SharePad setup so I can turn over even more rocks. The cornerstone of my setup remains the KISS+ filter. KISS, stands for Keep it Simple (Stupid) and the plus sign is just a reminder that I have improved this filter over the years.
If you look DotDigital, as I did a few years ago, you will find much to like about the business: Source: SharePad financial summary It is highly profitable in terms of Return on Capital Employed and profit margin. The exciting thing about a company like this is, as long as it can reinvest the cash […]
Bunzl, a company I investigated last year, is a classic roll up A distributor of everyday items consumed by businesses and organisations, it routinely acquires much smaller distributors, improves their efficiency and creates economies of scale. This reduces customer’s procurement costs, and improves the profitability of the mothership. To grow, the company has repeated this […]
Barr makes Irn Bru, which I drank once, getting on for forty years ago in Scotland. Irn Bru is to Barr what Coke is to Coca-Cola and Vimto is to Nichols, the drink upon which the business was built. Being a southern softy I may not have been a regular drinker of Irn Bru, but […]
Happy New year. This year, I have resolved to keep things simple, which is not easy in investing. Aide memoire… Just before Christmas Chris, a SharePad customer, emailed me with a request: When I look at company reports which often run to a couple of hundred pages I find the position somewhat daunting… It would […]
