Friday tips round-up: Greene King, Cairn, Hampson

While Greene King's retail estate of 915 pubs remains the driver thanks to sizzling food sales, its brewing business and 2,400 tenanted pubs are also outpacing rivals. Greene King's skill at increasing sales while mitigating cost rises has kept the cash flowing, allowing it to lift the divdend for the year by 7.4% - good going in a tough market. The shares, off 30.6p at 487.4p, are trading on a forward multiple of about 9.5. Buy, says the Times.Greene King's net debt of £1.4bn makes the Independent a little queasy but fixed charges such as interest payments and rent are 2.6 times covered. The company's food offering is performing strongly and its expansion strategy is aggressive and ought to help it to continue to grab market share. Plus, the valuation, at about 10 times full year earnings, is undemanding with a forecast yield of 5 per cent. Hold, the newspaper says.Yesterday, the Indian Government finally gave Cairn Energy the go-ahead to sell 40% of its stake in Cairn India to Vedanta Resources almost a year after the deal was first announced. Once the deal is complete, Cairn will become a pure oil explorer once again, this time focused almost entirely on Greenland. If Cairn fails, it has little to fall back on. But HSBC notes that if Cairn strikes commercial quantities, it will be the biggest oil story for decades, says the Times.Times are tough for Hampson Industries. Revenues may have grown by 17 per cent at the aviation tooling and component-maker over the past year, hitting a comfortable £198m according to annual results published yesterday. But increasing debts and "operational issues" at the company's Detroit facility have dragged pre-tax profits down to just £10.8m, against the £25.2m seen last year. Avoid, says the Independent.Northgate is the largest hirer of light commercial vehicles to British retailers, wholesalers, distributors and construction and maintenance folk. In the 12 months to the end of April 2008 ? the height of the boom before the fall ? Northgate on average had 91% of its vans in a fleet of 68,600 vehicles in use every week. Two years later that rate had slipped and Northgate had brought its fleet down by about 8,000 vans. This year the numbers using Northgate white vans has barely shifted. But while total group revenues have fallen year on year to £537m, group pre-tax profits have leapt by 47 per cent to £53m. After an 80 per cent run-up in shares in the past 12 months, those investors not already aboard have missed the ride and, for now, there appears to be little, if any, upside left in the price, says the Times.Taylor Wimpey's share price enjoyed some steady gains yesterday after the house-builder became the latest company to highlight stability in the housing market. Looking ahead, the group said it continued to expect the market to remain "relatively stable" over the remainder of the year, "despite the ongoing economic uncertainty and restricted mortgage availability". But for now, it remains challenged by factors in the wider economy - the raft of public spending cuts are coming down the pipe, the still-high inflation and the prospect of higher interest rates later in the year. Hold, says the Independent.Please note: Digital Look provides a round-up of news, tips and information that is impacting share prices and the market. Digital Look cannot take any responsibility for information provided by third parties. This is for your general information only as not intended to be relied upon by users in making an investment decision or any other decision. Please obtain a copy of the relevant publication and carry out your own research before considering acting on any of this information.---RG