SEGRO PLC (SGRO)

SEGRO PLC (SGRO)

Blog posts

Babcock Price Fall, Segro Placing, TR Property

I said in a previous blog post “that I tend to avoid FTSE-100 companies as their share prices are driven by professional analysts’ comments, by geo-political concerns, by general economic trends and by commodity prices. You can buy a FTSE-100 company and soon find it’s going downhill because one influential analyst has decided its prospects are not as they previously thought”. Indeed that is exactly what happened after I made a recent purchase of Babcock International (BAB). Soon after, Shore Capital Markets ...

Ocado Trading Update, Coronavius Apps, EMIS AGM, IDOX Pay, Segro Dividends

Ocado (OCDO) issued a trading update today, and it shows their joint retail venture with M&S is benefiting from the coronavirus epidemic. In the second quarter revenue was up 40% on the prior year. They have had to ramp up capacity significantly to meet this demand, and they have suspended delivery of mineral water so as to cope with the needs of additional households. The announcement gives the distinct impression that they need more warehouses (or CFCs as they call them). On ...

Recent Annual Reports and Trust Discounts

After the news over the weekend, it’s clearly going to be another very bad day on stock markets. One rare riser initially was Ten Entertainment Group (TEG) despite the...

Brexit Investment Strategies

Investors may have noticed that the pound is in free fall and heading towards US$1.20. That’s near the low after the initial Brexit vote. Pundits, not that they can be relied on for forex forecasts, suggest it could go lower now that we seem to be heading for a “no-deal” Brexit. With the pound falling, and potential damage to the UK economy from a hard Brexit, investors should surely have been avoiding companies reliant on UK sales, or UK consumers, or those ...

AssetCo, Patisserie, Stockpiling, Warehouses, Sheds, Brexit and Venezuela

A week ago, an award of damages of £21 million plus interest and costs was made against Grant Thornton for their breach of duty when acting as auditors of AssetCo Plc (ASTO) in 2009/10. See https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2019/150.html for the full judgement. I understand Grant Thornton may appeal. These are the key sentences in the judgement: It is common ground that in those years the senior management team at AssetCo behaved in a way that was fundamentally dishonest. During the audit process management made ...

Hedging Against Brexit

As we edge towards an abrupt Brexit as agreement with the EU has turned into a game of chicken, it’s worth considering some options. Or as my M.P. Bob Neill said about divorce on Twitter “the current system of divorce creates unnecessary antagonism in an already difficult situation” (he was talking about personal divorce in the UK as head of the Justice Committee but our EU divorce is looking very similar – acrimony is the word for it). Perhaps the Prime Minister ...

Share issues – And An Interesting Rule

Spring is in the air, and companies are clearly in a mood to raise cash. A lot of these have been share placings but the reasons given have been...

Rolls-Royce and Other AGMs

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Rolls-Royce Plc - held at 11.00 in Nottingham (at a conference centre on the University Park). Why move the venue from London where it has been held since 2004? Probably to attract a more sympathetic audience of ex-employees I suspect. Shareholders in Rolls-Royce don't need to be told that this company is going through a rough patch. Profits in the last two years have been miniscule, the dividends have been cut and even revenue ...

What’s Spooking the Commercial Property Market?

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times yesterday (12/2/2016) by Vanessa Houlder on the possibility that deduction of interest costs against profits will be disallowed by the Chancellor in his next budget. Is this is what has recently spooked the commercial property market? The British Land share price is down 25% since last November, Land Securities is down a similar percentage, and even well diversified property investment trusts such as TR Property are down 16%. Surely property companies should ...

AGM Reports

Porvair and Segro AGMs 2020

I “attended” the Annual General Meeting of Porvair Plc (PRV) this morning. This was of course not a conventional meeting with minimal numbers there in person. But there was a telephone conference call before the legal meeting to enable shareholders to ask questions, although there were less than half a dozen investors who chose to dial-in. The Chairman, John Nicholas, made some brief comments to begin with. He mainly just summarised the recently issued trading statement. But he did say all plants ...

Segro (SGRO)

Today I attended the 96th Annual General Meeting of Segro Plc at RSA house in central London. Segro is a REIT specialising in big box warehouses across Europe (Segro used to own office property but has now sold the last of its office space back in early 2016). An upbeat trading statement had been released yesterday, detailing that Segro had had an “excellent start to 2017, contracted £16.3 million of new rent, low 5.6% vacancy rate” although no great share price movement ...

Segro (SGRO) AGM Report 2016

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Segro (SGRO) at the RSA near to Charing Cross Station. Segro is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) which used to be called Slough Estates. It has moved from having a portfolio of office property to now being focussed on industrial and warehouse properties (including the "Big Box" warehouses now in demand by internet retailers to act as distribution centres). Now it just so happens that I was reading the Daily Telegraph over breakfast ...