Richard Beddard

Richard is a highly-respected investment writer well-known for his Share Sleuth portfolio, a model portfolio he runs for the investment platform Interactive investor. Richard eats his own cooking – buying good businesses at reasonable prices and holding them for the long-term in his Self Invested Personal Pension.

I’m a long-time ShareScope and SharePad fan and my aim is to help you find better companies faster using the fantastic tools at your disposal. My focus is on finding businesses we can reasonably expect to prosper for many years. As well as analysing data, I work out the strategies companies are following and try to verify that they are working in the real world by quizzing executives, visiting companies, trying their products and observing how they operate.

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How much profit did RWS really make?

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

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Latest fish caught in the net

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

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When purpose means more profit

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

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My SharePad system

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

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The Stock Market Is Not All There Is

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

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Six new stock ideas

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

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Learning from failure: Listed law firms

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.

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15 new stock ideas

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

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Hey big spender

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

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All the zeros

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

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Is SDI cheap?

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

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Four companies with (almost) unblemished financial histories

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

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