A safety first stock

I found James Latham a couple of months ago when I was trawling for cheap shares with strong balance sheets. The shares are still cheap, James Latham’s Price Earnings (PE) ratio is 13, and the balance sheet should remain strong… Centuries trading timber James Latham has a long and storied history. It manufactured plywood for […]

Preparing for the worst, capitalising on the best

Listening to Porvair’s long-standing chief executive Ben Stocks talk about the challenges ahead, it is clear the company is bracing itself. Phrases like “preparing for the worst, hoping for the best”, and “the overall balance is negative”, come readily to him. This is a company I have long admired, but I have never had the […]

Prudent 15: Ecofin Global Utilities and Infrastructure Trust (EGL)

I do not think it is unfair to say that over the last decade we have seen a powerful shift in sentiment towards utility stocks, arguably in a very negative direction. For much of the last few decades, private investors could not get enough of these boring stocks. They paid out a generous dividend, seem […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Fever-Tree Drinks

They say mums always know best. Mine has bought Fever-Tree tonic waters for some years now and I recently asked whether she remained a customer. This was her response. “While we don’t buy many commercial drinks for home consumption these days I would still definitely buy Fever-Tree, generally the original tonic water. I went into […]

Making a new discoverIE

I discovered discoverIE using a simple and fruitful method of finding new investment ideas: a list of shares sorted in SharePad by previous annual report date. Having squinted for a few minutes at financial charts showing profitability, cashflow and debt (more on that later), I thought the company looked promising: Sorting a list in SharePad […]

A cheap profitable share with a strong balance sheet

Today I have added two more criteria to turn the list of cheap shares with strong balance sheets I made in my last article into a list of cheap profitable shares with strong balance sheets! The profitability criteria are free cash conversion and return on capital employed. This table shows the individual and aggregated rankings […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Frontier Developments

Has the market become too obsessed with ‘pandemic-proof’ shares? I ask because my SharePad screening has brought Frontier Developments to my attention. The shares of this computer-game developer have leapt 66% so far this year as industry sales rally during the lockdown. However, Frontier’s accounting looks rather questionable and the near-£800 million market cap seems […]

Dynamic 35: Hg Capital

A smarter way of buying into the right kind of private growth businesses It is an unfortunate truth that more and more high growth businesses are choosing to stay private and ignore the public markets. Collectively we investors, institutional and private have done our best to make life difficult for highly rated , fast growing […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Hikma Pharmaceuticals

One way to invest during the pandemic is to consider shares that have climbed higher as the market has dropped. Such companies may well be ‘safe havens’ — businesses that are coping well with the lockdown, or perhaps even benefitting from the crisis. I applied the following simple criteria within SharePad to identify potential ‘pandemic-proof’ […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: A Covid-19 Special

Let me start with a confession.This Covid-19 ‘Special’ may not be all that special. I have just applied a new SharePad screen to seek ‘quality bargains’ amid the market chaos — and sadly the results were not that inspiring. The problem is nothing to do with me or my filters or SharePad. Instead, the Covid-19 […]

Putting safety first

Funny thing (peculiar, not ha! ha!). Search SharePad news for the phrase “strong balance sheet” and there are dozens of companies every day confirming their finances are strong as they reflect on the prospect of reduced, or in some cases, no revenue for a while. Search SharePad news for the phrase “weak balance sheet” though […]

Prudent 15: BH Global

Kicking off with BH Global (BHGG) You can always read more about my views on funds at my blog www.adventurousinvestor.com. I update this most days, especially useful during these volatile times when new investment opportunities emerge very quickly. I’m not going to bore readers with speculation about viruses and volatility but simply ask them to […]

Weekly Commentary: 16/03/20 – Timing is everything

Timing is everything With the current crisis Jeremy dusts off the recovery stocks folder. Airlines that survive will have huge upside on the back of a lower oil price. The opportunity may be in the likely refinancing issues, and Primary bid is a useful tool to enables retail investors to participate. Jeremy registers his interest […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: AB Dynamics

Recent market ructions have sent many shares tumbling — and perhaps created some buying opportunities. Amid the mayhem, I devised a straightforward screen. I simply looked for decent-sized businesses that were still expected to grow, paid a dividend and were conservatively financed, too I applied the following criteria within SharePad to identify some respectable candidates: […]

Going for repeat business

Fundsmith Equity probably needs no introduction. Since its launch in November 2010 the fund has racked up class-leading annualised returns of more than 18%, compared to less than 12% for an index of global equities, by investing in high quality businesses at attractive valuations. You can, of course, make further comparisons, and explore the makeup […]

Dynamic 35: Syncona

The genomics revolution and the appeal of Syncona It’s easy to get carried away with the short to medium term noise coming out of stock markets. The corona virus has sent investors in the developed world heading for the exit. But in truth some sectors of the giant ‘technology’ sector were already beginning to suffer […]

Weekly Commentary: 24/02/20 – Barbell Portfolio

Barbell Portfolio The tax advantages of technology companies and private equity combined with quantitative easing are shrinking stock markets. Until this changes the shrinkage will continue. In this environment a Barbell portfolio is likely to outperform. Jeremy suggests Alpha FX and Non Standard Finance as two companies at polar opposites of the valuation spectrum. Read […]

Taking back control

Richard investigates Dialight, a supplier of industrial LED lighting that flared up ten years ago briefly setting the stock market alight, and subsequently dimmed alarmingly. What are its prospects now it is taking back control of manufacturing? Ten years ago Dialight was a feted, fast growing business in a booming industry, LED lighting, but it […]

XP POWER

Older readers may recall a distant era when electrical devices used to plug straight into the wall. Nowadays, everything electrical seems to need an annoying little box between it and the wall. That box is called a power supply and these are the business of XP Power. But not the annoying ones. XP doesn’t do […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Boohoo

Cash flow movements can often indicate whether or not a business enjoys a powerful operational advantage. A strong business might: Receive customer payments upfront for goods/services it has yet to deliver, and/or; Pay suppliers months after goods/services have been received. However, a weak business might: Receive customer payments months after its goods/services have been delivered, […]

Taste the Feeling

Taste the Feeling is a Coca-Cola slogan from 2016. I think it’s a very good, because Coca-Cola isn’t just a product. It’s a religion. The fervour seen during the launch of New Coke, launched in 1985, as a response to Pepsi’s taste tests showing consumers preferred a sweeter alternative, showed that it wasn’t about the […]

Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Greggs

‘Run your winners’ is popular stock-market advice. Great companies often remain great investments for a lot longer than most people expect… … and can deliver life-changing rewards to anyone who refrains from selling out too soon. Where can we find potential winners to run? I thought the best performing shares of 2019 would provide a […]

Death in paradise

The demise of Thomas Cook impacted the whole package tour industry including London listed Online Travel Agent, On The Beach. Whether you trust the accounting regulations or On The Beach’s adjustments makes a big difference to the company’s profitability in 2019. Richard unravels the exceptional items. It’s January, The BBC is screening Death in Paradise, […]

Weekly Commentary: 20/01/20 – Culture in payments

Culture in Payments There were no spare seats when I arrived at Panmure Gordon’s offices last week for the Non-Standard Finance investor day titled “Culture driven Performance”. The presentation was riddled with keywords such as “Integrity”, “Clarity”, “Respect”, “Trust”, “Empathy” etc. I particularly liked John Van Kuffeler’s description of the loan correspondence he has from […]

Why mindset is the most important factor

“Nature versus nurture” has been a debate that has raged for hundreds of years. Sir Francis Galton (pictured above), who was a Victorian era statistician and psychologist (amongst investor, explorer, and other disciplines) coined the phrase in his book Hereditary Genius. He had been influenced by Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and so in […]

Weekly Commentary: 06/01/20 – The Roaring 20’s

The Roaring 20’s Nothing quite starts a new decade as reassuringly as Greggs Vegan Steak Bake causing late night queuing in Newcastle. With Pizza Hut’s vegan pepperoni pizza, Costa’s vegan ham and cheese toastie, KFC’s vegan chicken burger and M&S’ vegan chicken Kiev and Macdonald’s veggie dippers this could be a good decade to be […]

Weekly Commentary: 30/12/19 – Change Alley

Change Alley Suggesting that Scrooge’s drive and self-discipline was something we should aspire to didn’t go down well with my millennial children. I rationalised the barrage of criticism as the product of low rates, plentiful debt and cheap money making the concept of being economical unpopular. Scrooge’s world was one of narrow dark alleyways -similar […]

The ultimate competitive advantage

Business schools identify the sources of competitive advantage that tie customers to companies and what they produce. Fundamentally though, there is only one true competitive advantage: people. If I could recommend one book for long-term investors, it would be “Intelligent Fanatics Project” by Sean Iddings and Ian Cassell, which is subtitled “How great leaders build […]

Weekly Commentary: 09/12/19 – The Volatility Reduction Trade

The Volatility Reduction Trade The gating of M&G’s property fund caused the press to become excitable last week. The Questor column in The Telegraph advised investors they were “crazy” to have money in open ended property funds as Aberdeen Property fund redemptions accelerated. Brexit crisis and retail gloom also featured as news wires sensed a […]

Cups and bowls

Cups and handles, and bowls, have been very popular with trend traders. These patterns can be powerful as they show sentiment of the stock gradually changing and buyers slowly overpowering suppliers of the stock. This is a classic cup and handle pattern. The cup is the deeper bowl, along with a handle which is the […]

Skin in the game: Two for the watchlist

Richard uses his “Skin in the game” table to find companies whose directors are major shareholders. The experiment starts off badly with Asset Co., but gets better. Frontier Development and Focusrite could be great owner-managed businesses. To recap: We can use SharePad to find companies that are run by managers who are themselves significant shareholders. […]

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