Member Info for ftseexplorer

Down 5% since that tip, it appears I reversed the trend having shared it - we should be just about due an update from CCC as we seem to have got into a pattern of city trading statements every couple of months.

My pleasure - it's good to help other investors I feel, as I use these boards to try and learn from others and judge sentiment in a share. I have been a long believer in telecoms stocks - I can see an end in sight to BTs begalithic investment and improving debt management but I felt deflated by the VODs last update which felt like mounting investment and slow debt management. Nevertheless, I have an average entry over the years of about £1.65 so I am tempted to buy a chunk at this price pre-divi and hold out for this year and hope that the price is c. £1.50 by year end.

Newbie, it's where a hedge fund or private individual buys a sizable chunk of shares with the intention of exerting pressure on the management to release potential value. They tend to either have an issue with management or the strategy.
Most is born out of short termism, whereby, they are looking for a quick bang on their buck - so depending on shareholder entry price it might help their cause too. Best current examples are Elliot Management and GSK, Cevian and Aviva.

It seems that activist investors are coming out of the woodwork all over the place. Having been a long term holder of VOD since 2004, even I, with the patience of a saint, would quite like one to tip up here now :-)

JOHNSON MATTHEY (JMAT) £31.28
FTSE 100 chemicals firm Johnson Matthey (JMAT) is a stock that has long held promise, an innovative industrial company at the cutting edge of science that has the scale to match its ambitions. But with hopes continually raised only for
progress to take longer than investors, perhaps more so than the company itself, had anticipated, the stock has traded sideways for the last five years and sits well inside the value bucket with a 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio of
14.5 times. The firm currently makes most of its money from catalytic converters in cars – it’s estimated one in three cars on the road worldwide has a Johnson Matthey catalytic converter. Two areas in particular mark the company out
as a potentially very exciting growth stock and the company has finally made sufficient progress that now is the time to buy before the catalysts that could drive a rerating of the shares are realised. One is the customised electric vehicle battery it
is developing – enhanced lithium nickel oxide, or eLNO. This is the area the market is most focused on with Johnson Matthey, as the firm reacts to what could over time be structurally declining demand for its catalytic converters as the world
transitions to electric vehicles. The company has previously told Shares it has been consistently getting ‘really good feedback’ on eLNO from its potential customers, typically the big car manufacturers but also others outside the auto industry. In its full year results to 31 March 2021, the company said it expects to sign its first automotive contract in 2023, for
commercial production in 2024. Meanwhile the firm is also developing fuel cells and is seeing rapid growth with the product, with sales up 20% in the past year. It supplies key fuel cell components for a range of automotive,
non-automotive and stationary applications, and has partnerships in place with a diverse range of manufacturers. Another area of promise for Johnson Matthey is hydrogen. The firm is developing green hydrogen, building on its fuel cell technology, as well as its expertise when it comes to platinum group metals. In a trading update in April 2020 Johnson
Matthey said it was making ‘fast progress’ and had received ‘positive feedback’ from testing with leading electrolyser manufacturers. It also announced new manufacturing capacity for products used in green hydrogen production, with the ability to scale to multigigawatt capacity ‘as the market continues its anticipated growth’. Based on Johnson Matthey’s market size estimates and a 15% market share across its relevant technologies, analysts at Morningstar think sales in its hydrogen and fuel cell businesses could reach around £850 million by 2030, up from £100 million in 2021. (YF)

COMPUTACENTER (CCC) £26.80
In an era of unprecedented technological change there are thousands of organisations needing help with adaption and adoption, and Computacenter (CCC) is there to help. This is a pan-European IT enterprise operator whose 16,000-odd staff annually ship more than 25 million products to something like 4.5 million end users, providing valuable advice, support and services before and after in 30 different languages. The company has been part of the FTSE 250 index for most of the last 10 years and has been an astonishingly reliable investment for shareholders on both capital growth and income fronts. Brokers calculate that between 2006 and 2019 Computacenter handed back something like £350 million to shareholders in regular and special dividends, albeit having taken a short dividend break during the teeth of the Covid-19 outbreak.This means that over the last decade the shares have provided investors with an average annual total return of 17.9%. That means that for every £1,000 invested in the shares in 2011, you would now have a little more than £4,400. By contrast, £1,000 put into a FTSE 100 tracker would today be worth approximately £1,752, according to our calculations based on Morningstar data.
Computacenter operates in three parts that help clients embrace technology to stay competitive, engage better with customers, improve access to information and services, bolster efficiency or simply trim costs. On the infrastructure side it supplies customers with the desktop PCs, tablets, smartphones and other devices on skinny profit margins.
Professional services is where Computacenter experts consult and advise clients on a multitude of best-in-class software and applications, and resell what’s right for them. We’re talking about proper blue-chip venders, such as Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Adobe, AWS, Cisco, Symantec and many more. Managed services go further still, providing an entire outsourced IT solution, which means clients don’t need to run their own large and expensive in-house IT teams. Computacenter effectively runs the IT show remotely on the client’s behalf, with 24/7 support, advice and problem solving available and local software
engineers on-call when needed. It is a model that has worked for years thanks to steady growth, consistent profits and
superb cash flows that feed into those reliable dividends. Investor returns resumed in October last year and the full year 2020 dividend of 50.7p per share was 37% up from its 2019 prepandemic payout. We believe this sort of performance will
continue into the medium, even longer term, and recent trading seems to back that view up, with guidance raised twice this year already. That makes the shares, on a 12-month rollingprice to earnings ratio of less than 20 look very attractive. (SF)

January 2020 the Oil Price was $68 and RDSB in the region of £22.50.
Today Oil Price $70 and RDSB £13.85.
If the company can hit debt reduction targets this quarter we should see a steady increase in share price to £15+

I particularly like this line of course from the Evening Standard article - apologies if it has been posted already.
"The sum of the M&G parts is still greater than the current share price gives it credit for. As more investors understand that, the higher the shares should go."
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/schroders-m-g-shares-covid-b934927.html

I wish this share would shake a leg - a lot going for it....great order book, increased global spending on defence generally.
Yet it treads water around £5. Clearly this does not tick many "ESG" boxes and the govt. have closed off any likelihood of this being taken over by a foreign entity so do we just look forward to solid dividend and no capital growth?! I'm interested in people's thoughts....

I am a long term holder with an average entry price of c. £1.65 - it takes time to move a tanker..let's hope this article is right.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4423778-vodafone-stock-two-major-growth-drivers-ahead

Medium to long term I can only see that the trend will be up for BT.
This week however I think there are still a few things that carry risk so I will be holding off topping up until we see final results and the effect of the highly likely scenario of the SNP picking up a sizeable majority in the elections.....it could slightly destabilise the market optimism if they get a sniff of another "Brexit" style scenario - this time with Scotland leaving the union.

Trading sounds to be positive but without numbers it's hard to hone in on the detail - GB currency has strengthened c8% against USD since the Pivot deal completed...should help buying equipment from US for UK but negative when converting back from US sales.
I would have liked to watch the Capital Markets event from yesterday afternoon just to understand the scale of the US opportunity but not open to Private Investors.

Rogue River, Couldn't agree more - this weakness is our opportunity to pick up some more....the one thing I've learnt from the stock market over the years is it over reacts like an uncertain child. 'It' is not naturally the "entrepreneurial" risk taker at heart because 'it' is millions of people, some in the bull camp some in the bear camp and most in between.
I think the market is uneasy that with the aero-engineering side of the business still not recovered and likely to face headwinds in 2021-22, the idea of an acquisition is very bold.
For me, I have every confidence in the management to make the right decision - bring it on.

Here is one of the links

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/melrose-sells-nortek-in-bumper-3-6-billion-deal-triggering-bumper-returns-for-shareholders-b930384.html

I interpreted the drop as being attributable to comments in some areas FT/Evening Standard that Melrose is on the prowl for a hefty acquisition £2.5b+. Could they take on RR I wonder?! That is purely my mind working over time but I have no doubt the management would do a better job.

I would have thought they are doing it through 3rd parties, as their trades will be scrutinised nth degree - Dodge & Cox took a 5.05% stake on 24th February through a combination of ordinary and ADR shares....maybe linked?

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/GSK/final-results-argix3gz24yl4wg.html
This link takes you to final results Feb 2020 in which the OTC & Drug division split rationale is mentioned.

Q1 results should be out in the next few weeks which will give the city a steer on whether last year was a flash in the pan or more sustainable longer term.
Following the public sector wins it would appear on the face of it that CCC have done quite well - March contract estimates are >£150m alone (I assume that the 2 x £1b contract split between 19/21 suppliers get equal split).
The US remains the great unknown at this stage.
It's a tad frustrating that Softcat get such a higher rating from the city based on their profit margins being more than double CCC. How do they achieve 7% margin versus 2.8% for CCC - and a PE of 47 versus CCC of 18! They can't charge more so their overheads must be significantly lower.

Robina, we've all been there when we bought impulsively and feel we paid more than we wanted to. You are right, CCC is nothing like AWS - it's a reseller of other people's hardware and offers add on serviced BUT I believe that most buy and hold portfolio's need a CCC in there. It is consistent, with exceptional cash generation. The divi at these levels is nothing to write home about true but if the management don't see acquisition opportunities then they tend to return the cash to shareholders, latterly as special dividend. There is a new flair to the management approach right now by which I mean they look to be targeting expansion of territory - currently US, having Europe already, so I wouldn't rule out other regions in time. Remains a long term hold for me.

I'm wanting GSK to do well as much as anyone but the Daily Mail statement is taken from Hal Barron, head of R&D at Glaxo, and not from the regulator or clinical regulatory body - which might have added some weight. I'd imagine Hal is under some pressure as it is really disappointing what GSK have come up with despite huge investment. 85% is not all that special in relation to what's already out there so I felt the statement was overly positive or you could say desperate.
regardless of Covid outcome for GSK I do think the shares are attractive at this price.