Company News

Rensburg AIM VCT to Wind Up

Four years ago ShareSoc ran a campaign to shake up the Rensburg AIM VCT which historically had given a dire investment performance and had very high management fees. These things were changed but it still has the same Chairman, Richard Battersby, and other directors. We did question at the time what the future of the company might be because the company tended to return any cash from investment realisations to shareholders thus effectively gradually winding down the size of the company. The ...

Affected by the Oil/Gas Price slump? Weir, Petrofac and IDOX

I don't think any investor will be unaware that the price of oil has fallen off a cliff in the last few weeks. It was good to hear at the IDOX AGM this morning (26/2/2015) that the impact on their business was relatively minor - they supply engineering management information software plus public sector software and the former does have about 11% of sales in the oil/gas sector. The share price barely moved after a positive announcement in the morning that ...

DFS Furniture IPO – Should you invest?

DFS Furniture have announced an IPO which will be available to retail investors - as long as you are happy to "take" the price the institutions are willing to pay. Anyone considering investing in the shares might like to note the comments below, but you are of course advised to read the full prospectus and/or take professional advice on the matter if necessary. This writer is well qualified to write on this subject because I used to hold DFS shares the last ...

Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies Trust AGM Report Summary

I attended the AGM of the Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies Trust (SST) yesterday (19/2/2015). This is an investment trust that is focussed on China, South-East Asia and India - yes there is not much Scottish about it apart from the fact that it is registered in Edinburgh and managed by First State Investment Management who are headquartered there (but whose parent is actually the Commonwealth Bank of Australia). Normally they hold their AGMs in Edinburgh but this year it was in First ...

Guide to Venture Capital Trusts and Foresight VCTs

The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) have just published a guide to Venture Capital Trusts entitled "Going for Growth".  It provides a good overview of this specialist sector of the market. It can be found here: http://www.theaic.co.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/files/AICVCTConsumerguide.pdf It includes a number of examples of successful investments made by VCT managers including that made by Foresight in Procam. However, the dangers of VCT investment were highlighted recently by the events at Foresight 2 VCT who recently held their Annual General Meeting. In their ...

Naibu and Majestic Wine – AIM companies losing directors.

The latest announcement (on the 18th February) from Chinese company Naibu (NBU) is that the non-executive directors have been unable to obtain any information about the company's trading position from the two executive directors (Lin Huoyan or Lin Congdeng). The former finance director, Zhen Li, resigned at the end of last year and the shares were subsequently suspended at the request of the non-executive directors on the 9th January pending clarification of its financial position. It seems the two executive directors have ...

Rolls-Royce Results and a New Director

Rolls-Royce Plc published their full year results today (13/2/2015). How does this champion of British industry and one of the FTSE mega caps (market cap £17bn) now look? Like all such large companies one could spend hours analysing the accounts because the initial "headline" data provided by the company in the announcement tends to err on the positive side. So the "highlights" are given as "Record order book of £73.7bn (that's slightly up at 3% on the prior year), underlying revenue and ...

Beating the index – Fundsmith results and newsletter

Terry Smith has recently issued his annual newsletter to investors in his Fundsmith Equity Fund. Those who invested primarily in UK focussed index trackers last year (FTSE-AllShare down 2.5%) will be possibly annoyed to discover that Mr Smith managed to achieve a total return of 23.3% last year. He had the advantage of being invested in global equities perhaps which generally did better than UK stocks, but he still managed to outperform his benchmark which is the MSCI World Index. How did ...

ScS Group listing – a pre-pack phoenix relists

Upholstery and flooring retailer ScS Group Plc (SCS) joined the main market of the LSE on the 28th January.  At the placing price of 175p the market cap was £70m.  Now you may recall that this company used to be listed a few years ago, but went into administration in July 2008. It's useful to look back at what happened then and at some aspects of the current business in case you are considering an investment in the company. In 2008 the ...

HSS Hire and other IPOs

I am sometimes accused by my wife and colleagues of being a "wet blanket". In other words immune to the excitement of new ventures or ideas. But when it comes to IPOs that's probably the right frame of mind to have. I shall proceed to throw some cold water over the IPO of HSS Hire which is listing in early February if all goes according to plan - the prospectus for which is now available. Academics Elroy Dimson and Paul Marsh have recently ...