Company News

West Bromwich Building Society in profit

The West Bromwich Building Society recently issued their accounts for their financial year ending in March 2014. They actually managed to make a small profit after years of losses. Does that mean that the PIBS holders will start to receive their dividends again? In essence no. According to Peter Morgan who led a campaign on the issue, it might yet be another 5 years before these bondholders receive any interest whatsoever. To remind readers about this problem, in 2009, the Society ran ...
Post Date: July 5, 2014 Read more

Zoopla and Rightmove – are they a cosy duopoly?

Zoopla Property Group listed on the stock market on the 18th June. It's an opportune time to review that company and its main competitor, Rightmove, because you can read the IPO prospectus of the former on the web. A prospectus always discloses more information than you will normally get although Rightmove is also quite open with information. These two companies are the gorillas in the on-line property advertising market with Rightmove being larger in size but Zoopla apparently growing more rapidly.  In ...
Post Date: June 28, 2014 Read more

Pay at RBS – over 99% in favour

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) held its Annual General Meeting yesterday (the 25th June). Most of the media did not even bother to report it. There were some shareholders present who spoke against the remuneration at the company, but when it came to a vote  the proxy counts were 99.81% in favour of the Remuneration Report and 99.66% in favour of the Remuneration Policy. PIRC had also opposed the Remuneration Policy before the meeting. A summary of what they said is ...
Post Date: June 26, 2014 Read more

Kentz, Victoria, AstraZeneca, and SSE

A number of companies on which ShareSoc has commented recently were in the news today (23/6/2014) or over the preceding weekend. Let's cover each in turn: Kentz Kentz received a cash offer for the company of 935p from SNC-Lavalin this morning. That's a premium of 33% to the recent share price. With such a premium and the stated support for the offer from the directors, it looks likely to succeed.  This will avoid the directors of Kentz having to deal with the ...
Post Date: June 23, 2014 Read more

ASOS fire halts operations

A major fire at ASOS's Barnsley distribution centre late on Friday night (20/6/2014) has caused it to suspend operations. At the time of writing (the Sunday morning following)  their retail web site was still not available to shoppers with a message saying the company had "pressed pause on the ASOS web site".  It also suggested they expected to be back in operation in the next day or so. It is believed that the fire might have been the result of arson. ...
Post Date: June 22, 2014 Read more

Berkeley Group and Housebuilders

Berkeley Group issued their preliminary results this morning (18/6/2014). For those holding housebuilders shares (like this writer), they are worth commenting on perhaps as investors in such companies seem to be getting twitchy. With Mr Carney hinting that interest rates may rise sooner than expected, house price inflation powering ahead while general inflation remains low, and politicians criticising the Government "Help to Buy" scheme, one can understand why the share prices of many builders have fallen back from their peak. For example ...
Post Date: June 18, 2014 Read more

ASOS – when everyone wants out

This morning (5/6/2014) ASOS issued a trading statement before the market opened. It wasn't all bad in that total retail sales at constant currencies rose by 33% in the last quarter - and there are not many businesses that are growing at that rate. However,  EBIT margin guidance was reduced from circa 6.5% to 4.5% for the current financial year due to increased promotional activity and the relatively higher proportion of European sales. US and ROW sales growth was perhaps seen ...
Post Date: June 5, 2014 Read more

AstraZeneca and Pfizer merger definitely off

Pfizer have conceded defeat in their proposed offer for AstraZeneca (AZN). Ian Read, the Chief Executive of Pfizer, said it was a "missed opportunity" for both the UK and for AZN shareholders. He also said we could have had the worlds largest pharmaceutical company domiciled in the UK which would have been good for science and manufacturing in this country. He surely has a point there. In addition he complained about the Takeover Panel rules as contributing to thwarting the deal, but ...
Post Date: May 27, 2014 Read more

SSE Results – not all they seem at first glance

SSE, the energy company formerly called Scottish & Southern Energy, published their  annual results yesterday (for the year to March 31st).  The first page of the "preliminary announcement" looked positive. It talked about Adjusted Earnings per Share up 4.1%, Adjusted Profit before Tax up 9.6% and the Full Year Dividend increased by 3.0%, among other things. But this writer was immediately suspicious because there was no mention of revenue trends in these "headline" figures - something of importance and usually included. Revenue ...
Post Date: May 22, 2014 Read more

Surprises on Remuneration at the Kentz AGM, and opposition also at Hiscox

Surprises on Remuneration at the Kentz AGM,  and opposition also at Hiscox Last week (on Friday the 16th May), both the Remuneration Policy and Remuneration Report resolutions were voted down by shareholders at the Kentz Annual General Meeting. This is one of the few companies where such resolutions have been lost in the current AGM round and the first where the Remuneration Policy vote has been defeated. That vote was only introduced in the last year by new Government legislation, but oddly ...
Post Date: May 18, 2014 Read more