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Dotcom bubbles – Mark 2 – ASOS

It’s noticeable that the price of on-line retailer ASOS has fallen back slightly of late. It seemed a good idea to look at what the current share price is assuming in terms of forward projections on growth in earnings. Now you can debate whether the near-term growth is 20% per annum or 30%.  Analysts’ projections seem to assume about 30% for future growth, whereas the interim results only showed growth of 22% (although sales were up 34%). The following tables show the ...

FTSE100 pay still not under control

Remuneration consultants MM&K have reported that the total remuneration of FTSE100 chief executives has risen by 5% over the past year, to £4.4 million. That compares with not much more than 1% for all employees in the country. But MM&K do suggest that future earnings might be slightly moderated with “future awards” and bonuses down and salaries only up by 2.5 per cent.Comment: a lot of investors would like to see the overall remuneration cut not by 1%, or by 5%, ...

Victoria AGM Report Summary – Chickens home to roost

After last year’s battles for control of this company, yesterday’s Annual General Meeting was a tepid affair (see past ShareSoc press releases and AGM Forum  reports for more information on the past fights). Apart from the depressed state of the retail carpet sector, the wholly unnecessary exceptional costs incurred in that battle, and the subsequent restructuring of the business (which was long overdue in my opinion) resulted in an overall loss of £2.7m for the year ending March 2013. Revenue fell from ...

Share Options and Perverse Incentives (Nokia and Elop)

Outrage about the amount Stephen Elop is getting (Euros 18.8m) for selling the mobile phone part of Nokia to Microsoft extends from the Finnish Prime Minister to the editor of the Financial Times. It is not helped by the fact that Mr Elop left Microsoft to join Nokia as CEO, and is now returning to them. Mr Elop did not manage to really revive the mobile side of Nokia while he was there, although some might say he established a base ...

Diageo votes at AGM – more opposition

This morning Diageo announced their voting results from the poll at their AGM on the previous day. Isn’t it annoying when the poll is not declared at the meeting so shareholders cannot question the board on the results? But that aside, they got 11.8% against the Remuneration Report, up from 7.5% last year. This rather reflects the complaints in the meeting itself about the general level of remuneration in such large FTSE-100 companies. It seems likely that last year’s figures were somewhat ...