One thing we should always check is that a company’s long-term performance matches the story it tells us. Churchill China says it is “adding value” to tableware, a horrible bit of jargon that is easily corroborated in SharePad. I received a nasty shock last time I reviewed one of my long-standing investments. Familiarity, I said, […]
Category: Sector Analysis
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Accesso Technology
This article has not turned out as I had expected. I was hoping to study a quality growth business that had seen its share price slump to attractive levels… …but instead I have ended up untangling some very awkward accounts and guessing whether management changes are signalling problems ahead. Sit back and brace yourself. The […]
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Plus500
Before I start looking at Plus500 (LSE: PLUS), I have some good news…. …you can now employ my SharePad screening criteria with just a few clicks! The process involves SharePad’s amazing Filter library. This facility gives you complete access to numerous pre-defined filters that have been used within various SharePad articles. Just follow these instructions […]
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Somero Enterprises
How did your portfolio fare during 2018? If you managed to side-step the market falls, very well done. For the rest of us — including me — I guess we can only cross our fingers and hope the FTSE performs a lot better during 2019! Still, with share prices in the doldrums and many investors […]
Two good companies, but which is better?
Richard takes a first look at Softcat, and he likes what he sees, even in comparison to rival Computacenter, another fine business. Both companies make good money distributing IT, but in Softcat he may have spotted a company with a growth culture. I wrote favourably about Computacenter in October, so I have two good reasons […]
A Special SharePad Investigation: Patisserie Valerie
Before I go any further, let me just state that I am not here to say “I told you so”. But whenever I have lost money on a share, I have always found going back to see where I went wrong to be very instructive. In fact, trying to spot the warning signs from any […]
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Mattioli Woods
Many years ago, one of my favourite sources for investment ideas was the Financial Times. However, the FT’s articles did not interest me, and nor did the Lex column. Instead, I studied a small table that was tucked away on those pages that listed every share price. You see, this table named the shares that […]
Dark days for regulated utility shares
Since they were privatised in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, the shares of regulated utility companies have found a place in many private investors’ portfolios. Their main attraction has been an ability to offer a higher income than government bonds with plenty of dividend growth on top. This made them ideal income stocks. With […]
The elusive hire firms you can buy and hold
Last week I introduced the listed plant and tool hire companies and mentioned in passing the industry has a bit of a boom bust reputation. Perhaps I didn’t egg the pudding enough, though. Ashtead’s market capitalisation is nearly £10bn, more than ten times what it was nearly two decades ago. In one sense it’s an outstanding growth […]
Homing in on hire firms
Homing in on hire firms When business is sluggish at construction sites and factories, tools and equipment are returned and hire companies make less profit. The hire industry has a boom-bust reputation built on top of the boom-bust reputations of some of the industries it serves. It may seem like an ambitious project to seek […]
