Blogs

Latest Blogs

Unsatisfactory Avast AGM, and Designated Accounts

I “attended” the Avast (AVST) Annual General Meeting today. This was of course held on-line using Zoom with only one director in physical attendance (Warren Finegold) who chaired the meeting. Zoom seems to be becoming the de facto standard for on-line meetings. The Chairman of the company, John Schwarz, gave a brief presentation backed up by some slides. To summarise, it was another strong year of growth and profitability. A new CEO is now in place. EBITDA was up 8% with strong ...

Fund Charges – and Discounts

by Alan Reeder, ShareSoc member The thorny subject of Fund charges and discounts has been much discussed in the Press recently – along with the pros and cons of investing in Investment Trusts versus Funds. Amid all the discussions of where to invest, a factor often overlooked is the difference in Annual Management Charge (AMC) levied by the Fund Manager.  It is important to bear in mind that although this AMC can vary from one broking House to another – it is the ...

Slave to the Algorithm: Burford and the Importance of Maintaining Confidence in a Broken System

On 1 October 2019 I wrote an article about Burford in which I said that their application to obtain, from the LSE, details of how trades in their shares were placed and then apparently cancelled last August was a rare opportunity to discover whether market manipulation is endemic on the LSE. It is important to highlight that this case is not about Burford, which has become a divisive company. It is nothing to do with whether the claims made by Muddy ...

Property Shares Spooked by Land Securities and Pets at Home Accounts Attacked

Land Securities Group (LAND) published their annual results yesterday. I don’t hold the stock but what they said seems to have spooked the whole property sector. The company is a large holder of both retail and office property. For retail property, only 38% of rents due were collected within 10 days of the due date in March. For offices it was better at 89% but that is still down from the prior year at the same time. What possibly really scared people ...

Investing for Income – More Than Just Seeking a High Yield

Vanishing Dividends Every week brings news of a major company cutting or suspending its dividend: this week, it was BT. For investors who rely upon dividends for income, the search for a reliable, sustainable dividend becomes ever harder. There are no shortage of commentators who believe that most companies should be putting dividends on hold now. Certainly, the story of Easyjet paying out significant dividends on the same day as it requested a bail out from the government struck many as irresponsible. When ...