Company News

Rolls Royce – Jam tomorrow after all

Rolls Royce announced their full year results today and they were very good - underlying profit before tax up 23% and revenue up 27%. The order book also grew by 19%. But the share price promptly dropped by 15% in morning trading. The reason for the fall was simply that the adjusted earning were below expectations, and there were some very negative comments from the CEO about the expectations for 2014. To quote: "we expect a pause in our revenue and profit ...

Barclays – Who benefits?

Barclays Bank announced their final results yesterday. The results did not match expectations and the shares fell 4% on the day. The national media led with the story that the company had still increased the bonus pool even so, and that the company now pays out more in bonuses than it pays in dividends to shareholders. The CEO, Antony Jenkins,  gave the usual excuse for the high pay levels - that they need to compete on the international scene for top class ...

Hargreaves Lansdown backs down

On the 17th January ShareSoc issued a press release which pointed out that the new charges announced by Hargreaves Lansdown would mean that some investors might face a doubling of costs. See the text of the press release here: Hargreaves Lansdown Double Charges Investors. The particular problem was that anyone holding a mixture of investment trusts, funds and direct shares in a SIPP would now have two separate "caps" on overall charges. ShareSoc was no doubt not the only body that raised ...

Blinkx – more market abuse in AIM stocks?

The Blinkx share price reached a peak of 218p on the 6th January, but yesterday (30/1/2014), it closed down 33%. At one point it was as low as 90p. This followed the publication of a blog post by Benjamin Edelman under the heading "The Darker Side of Blinkx" which attacked various aspects of the company's operations. Blinkx sells advertising linked to on-line videos, supported by a video search engine (it originally spun out of Autonomy). Edelman, who is an associate professor at ...

Fundsmith progress and new Emerging Markets Trust

Fundsmith have recently published their results for the year ending December 2013. ShareSoc reviewed this fund in our November 2012 newsletter so it's interesting to review their progress since then and whether they have managed to keep up their initial superior performance. Led my well known investor Terry Smith, Fundsmith has a very specific style and these are the promises they make to investors: No performance fees, No initial fees, No redemption fees, No overtrading, No leverage, No shorting, No hedging, No ...

Silverdell Shareholder Meeting Report

There was a meeting attended by about 20 Silverdell shareholders in Beckenham on the 20th January. A report of the meeting is present here: www.sharesoc.org/Silverdell_Shareholder_Meeting_Report.pdfIt covered what was known about the events at this AIM company, where the shares were suspended out of the blue, and delisted 6 months later with not much communication to shareholders in the meantime. The company has announced that the shares are worthless. Also discussed was what actions shareholders might take at this point in time and ...

Silverdell tips and a meeting for shareholders

It was good to see Investors Chronicle giving the honest background to their worst tip of 2013 in their latest edition - namely Silverdell where shareholders have now been told their shares are worthless after being suspended for six months. They first tipped Silverdell as a "buy" in January 2011 at 7.25p and the share price subsequently doubled. They renewed the positive tip in January 2013 when the price was 17p and the p/e was 8 with gearing at 29 per ...

A Christmas present for the kids, and goodwill from Avocet directors

The Government has announced that it will allow Child Trust Funds to be transferred to Junior ISAs. The investment returns and charges on Child Trust Funds compare poorly with those available in ISAs so this is a welcome move. The only reservation is that it may not be possible to implement this until April 2015.Avocet Mining, a gold mining and exploration company, have also got into the spirit of the season by announcing that the fees paid to the Chairman and ...

Whitewash at British Smaller Companies VCT

British Smaller Companies VCT has called a General Meeting to approve resolutions to rectify past accounting errors that resulted in technically illegal payments of dividends and share buy-backs back in 2006-2008. In essence the company did not have the reserves required. So these "whitewash" resolutions as they are called ask shareholders to waive any claims against the directors for these errors, and claims against shareholders who received the dividends when they should not have. This follows similar whitewash resolutions that were ...

BAE Systems – Typhoon deal shot down, and credit extended

There was bad news from BAE Systems yesterday - issued after close of trading which is always a negative sign. Firstly the prospective deal to sell Typhoons to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is apparently a dead duck. That's perhaps not altogether surprising. But the worse news was that the pricing of a sale of the same planes to Saudi Arabia under the Salam contract has still not yet been agreed. The announcement says the parties are "actively engaged" but a "definitive ...

B&B Finance Director fined

Christopher Willford, the Finance Director of Bradford & Bingley in 2008, has been fined £30,000 by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for "failing to provide the board with up-to-date information about B&B's financial position" ahead of the right issue in May of that year. The FCA state that Mr Willford "failed to identify and investigate potentially material risks, or alert the board, at a crucial time for the firm. Bad mortgage debts, arrears and repossessions had all risen while the net interest ...

Hibu, a most peculiar EGM, and RBS

In a previous blog post on the 28th Nov I discussed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the "unacceptable face of banking". It mentioned the case of HIBU, where RBS was one of the lenders, which had just been put into administration thereby apparently thwarting the calling of a General Meeting (EGM) by shareholders and the appointment of new directors. This was similar to the case of Torex retail some years before. In fact the HIBU EGM did actually take place but ...