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The other key driver is the implementation of changes made in the wake of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). From the start of this year, independent financial advisers (IFAs) cannot earn a commission from product providers by selling their policies. The obvious way to make up for this is to charge customers a fee for advice, which is what the company did by introducing adviser charging on its wrap platform last year. Importantly, business generated through its IFA partners hasn't been affected by the commission ban because Standard Life has never paid a commission on product sales since floating in 2006. Standard Life has also been diversifying its revenue stream away from the UK. The numbers are still relatively small, but offering new products and streamlining the business operation have paid off. In Germany, for example, new savings products have been launched to help customers avoid the worst effects of market volatility, while new branches have been opened in Singapore and Dubai, adding to its already established operations in India and China. Even so, the group still lags behind the likes of Prudential (PRU) when it comes to exposure to fast-growing markets in the Far East.......

When is a life assurer not a life assurer? In the case of Standard Life (SL.) it could be sooner rather than later after finance director Jackie Hunt hinted that its 188-year-old status as a life assurer could be changed. The idea stems from the fact that net inflows of third-party assets managed by Standard Life Investments grew 160 per cent to £3bn in the first quarter, taking total assets managed to £90.4bn. And that's more than the group manages for its own policyholders. While such a change could have positive valuation implications for the shares, it also goes to highlight the impressive growth being achieved by the group in this area. The traditional life side is also performing strongly. In fact, in the first three months of this year, new business sales of long-term savings plans increased by 24 per cent to a record £6.3bn, with net inflows up 26 per cent and contributing £1.4bn of the £2.8bn group net inflows. There are a number of reasons behind this impressive result, not least the implementation of pension auto-enrolment for a number of existing corporate clients, as well as a number of new pension schemes starting up.

The move into the summer season is reflected among the companies’ reporting results this week, with a light diary in prospect. Software and accountancy group, Sage (SGE) is due to report its interims on Wednesday. Panmure Gordon has kept its “Hold” rating and 309p target price ahead of its interim results. According to the broker: “We think that Sage’s numbers should be in line – despite muted guidance - and any changes to estimates are likely to be minimal. Despite the fact that profit–taking seems a reasonable outcome on results day, we nonetheless retain our “Hold”. Indeed, due to these recurring revenues, Sage's pre-tax profit has grown every year since 2002. Furthermore, over the last ten years, the company's pre-tax profit has grown an aggregate 160%. Panmure Gordon expect the results to be in line and forecast revenue of £700.3m, and a pre-tax profit of £181.8m and a dividend of 3.6p per share, slightly ahead of consensus estimates.

Hello batts

Information services company Experian – best known for its credit checking service, is due to report its finals on Friday. On May 1st, the company announced at its AGM, that its chairman, Sir John Peace, is planning to step down from his role by the July 2014, a company he founded more than 40 years ago. Recently, Peace had been forced into an apology for comments he made playing down Standard Chartered’s violations of US sanctions laws, joining a long list of banker’s forced to apologise. Experian delivered positive results in the six months to September 30 2012, due to operations in Latin America and the US – its benchmark pre-tax profit rose 6% to $563m, on revenues up 6.2% to $2.3bn. Over the past year, its shares have risen 16.35% to 1,153p (as of May 1st). Experian's third-quarter interim statement, covering the three months to 31 December, showed impressive 11% growth in Latin America, with Colombia and Peru performing strongly. Revenues holding up troubled territories such as the UK and Ireland, rising 8%, beating the US at 7%. Management predict high single-digit organic growth for the full-year. Cantor Fitzgerald has upped its target price from 1100p to 1250p reiterating an add rating. ...................

LEG was in public ownership for many years, but was bought in 2008 by various Goldman Sachs private equity vehicles. After months of speculation, it was finally floated in Germany at €44 a share in February. The shares failed to go 'pop' on debut, disappointing traders, and have since fallen 5 per cent. Yet now they look decent value, with a well-covered forward dividend yield of 4.2 per cent - considerably higher than peers. Add in the prospect of growth, both in the cash payout and the value of the portfolio, and that looks an attractive return given the limited risk.

Since 2008 LEG has delivered rental growth of 2.3 per cent a year. That's a slightly lower number than peers such as GSW Immobilien and Deutsche Wohnen have achieved. With the post-industrial problems of the Ruhr Valley, North-Rhine Westphalia has less favourable demographics than, say, Berlin or Hamburg. Overlaying LEG's portfolio with official population growth forecasts, brokers at JPMorgan Cazenove calculate that the company is exposed to an average population decline of 2.9 per cent over the period to 2025. But the difference in rental growth between LEG and its peers is slight, while its balance sheet leaves more room for growth by acquisition. The company's loan-to-value ratio of 48 per cent may look high compared with UK commercial landlords, but in light of the resilience of the German housing sector and the company's robust debt profile - it pays just 3.3 per cent to service its debts despite an average length to maturity of 12 years - it can easily take on more borrowing. Management wants to buy 10,000 units over the next two years. Given the wide spread between LEG's cost of debt and the net rental yield on its portfolio (roughly 5 per cent), these acquisitions will boost earnings meaningfully.........

This is important in what remains a highly regulated sector. The German rented sector resembles its UK equivalent before Margaret Thatcher's reforms. Tenants have complete security of tenure - landlords have no right to evict them as long as they pay the rent - and rents for sitting tenants cannot be raised by more than a percentage set according to a bureaucratic procedure by the local authority. The extent of these regulations for many years cast a pall over the German residential real-estate investment trusts. It still means rents are unlikely to rocket, however strong the market fundamentals. Yet wage growth should allow councils to let rents rise without provoking too much opposition. The city of Münster this month adjusted its so-called Mietspiegel ('rental mirror') so that rents can increase by 6.5 per cent over a two-year period. Perhaps local bureaucrats recognise that housing costs need to rise in real terms if more homes are to be built. It's estimated that LEG's portfolio is currently worth anywhere between 48 and 59 per cent less than replacement cost. Volume housebuilding makes no economic sense in such an environment, which is good news for landlords.

As Europe's healthiest large economy, Germany is an obvious destination for investors who want to escape Britain's gloomy prospects. But the sector Germany is most famous for, high-tech engineering, is a play on global growth rather than the Teutonic consumer. That's why it makes sense to turn to LEG Immobilien (de: LEG), one of the country's largest residential landlords. Most Germans rent rather than own their home. That means a company such as LEG, which owns about 91,000 homes in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, receives its revenues from a very broad spread of German consumers. These could easily afford to spend more on housing - for two reasons. First, housing costs are low after an extended property slump. While most other western countries were enjoying a housing and consumer boom in the decade running up to 2007, Germany was absorbing the enormous costs of its reunification in 1990. One of these was a housebuilding frenzy that flooded the property market with supply. Even now that rents have started growing again, they account for well under 30 per cent of disposable income in most cities, which is low by European standards. Second, German wages - which fell in real terms for much of the last decade - have since 2010 been growing by more than consumer prices. With unemployment at its lowest rate for over two decades, further real wage growth is highly likely. Rents can therefore grow by at least the inflation rate without compromising affordability.

Weak consumer demand in the UK, and in European markets where JD is seeking to expand, represent a headwind. However, management is approaching overseas expansion cautiously and the core UK business has shown resilience and growth. Blacks will still incur losses this financial year, but it will be significantly lower as the benefits from restructuring start to come through. Trading on just seven times 2014 earnings and with net cash and a nice dividend yield to boot, the shares ooze contrarian value

Now, though, a new management team has been installed, stocks are being better managed, store investment has begun and a cost reduction programme is under way. Losses are expected to fall back substantially as the business benefits from these actions. So, while the initial results were more disappointing than anticipated, the group now has a firm foothold in a growing UK outdoor lifestyle market and is set to turn Blacks, which generated £121m of sales last year, into a core retail operation. The group has also faced challenges with its sports fashion business, which slipped from a £3.3m profit to a £2m loss in the recently completed financial year. But the division only accounts for 13 per cent of sales and it is now undergoing a makeover, and a new management team and acquisitions over the past two years should drive stronger long-term growth. What's more, the core sports business, which accounts for just over two-thirds of sales, is performing well. Sales here rose 10 per cent last year to £854m, with like-for-like growth of 2.5 per cent, leading to a 5 per cent rise in operating profit to £78m.,,,,,,

The key reason for the negative sentiment is that, following the Blacks acquisition, operating margins have tumbled to 4.9 per cent. However the five-year average margin stands at 7.6 per cent, which is actually above the 7.4 per cent boasted by Sports Direct, based on S&P CapitalIQ data. Most importantly, we believe JD's margins are now set to rebound, powering a revival in profits over the coming years, which should also produce a substantial re-rating of the shares. There's a decent dividend to enjoy while waiting for the recovery story to unfold, too, which looks very secure based on forecast cover of 3.7 times this year and a hearty net cash position. In acquiring Blacks, JD Sports inherited a badly managed business which has required a great deal of time and investment to get back on track. It faced a number of obstacles: an excessively large store portfolio paying high rents, a bulky central cost base and a limited and unbalanced stock position. As a result, Blacks took a sizeable bite out of JD Sports' full-year earnings. Group operating profit before exceptional items slid 20 per cent to £61.3m, mainly due to an eye-watering £14.9m full-year loss at Blacks.

When JD Sports Fashion (JD.) acquired Blacks Leisure from the administrators in 2012, shareholders knew there were some painful losses to come as the flagging outdoor apparel business was overhauled. Now, though, that onerous restructuring process is largely complete and the balance sheet remains strong, which suggests this could be a good opportunity to snap up JD Sports while the shares remain incredibly lowly rated based on a key contrarian valuation metric - the enterprise-value-to-sales ratio (EV/S). The EV/S ratio, which is used as a primary way to identify value by investment gurus such as Ken Fisher and James O'Shaughnessy, is considered a powerful indicator of contrarian value because it can highlight companies where sales are strong but share prices are weak due to the earnings-obsessed market putting an undue focus on a temporary slip in profitability. JD Sports looks like a prime example of such a contrarian value play. Its EV (market cap, minus cash, plus debt) represents a meagre 0.25 times last year's turnover. Based on this metric, it is the fourth lowest valued out of 21 FTSE All-Share consumer-discretionary retail stocks. Its rating compares with a median sector average of 0.85 times sales and 1.3 times for the only other UK-listed sports retailer, Sports Direct.

Based on the Bloomberg consensus EPS estimates for the next 12 months, IG shares, priced at 14.4 times forecasts, are some way above the three-year average of 12.7 times. However, we believe this looks cheap if volatility levels remain high. And it is worth remembering that IG shares routinely traded at over 20 times forecast earnings before the credit crunch. The group is expanding into new areas, and there remains the glittering prospect of further relaxation of regulations in the US, which could open up an enormous market for online betting. Meanwhile, management has kept a tight hold on costs, and there is a useful cash pile fed by high cash generation. This also helps to fund a decent dividend payout, which, when added to the growth potential, increases the attraction.

The beauty of IG's business model is that the company doesn't carry the risk associated with the bets placed by clients. Net exposure to the market is hedged out, leaving the company to simply pocket the spread between the buying price and the selling price plus any other charges. Clients are required to deposit a margin to cover any losses on an open position and, if the margin is used up, the position is closed out. This protects the client from running up further losses and eliminates IG's exposure to bad debt. IG also continues to grab a larger share of the market and now has a 44 per cent share of the UK spread betting market and over a third of the Australian contracts for difference (CFD) market, although the focus remains on driving up its share of active traders and therefore its share of total revenue. Steps have also been taken to enhance the trading platform by introducing a mobile application in all the countries in which it operates. And this is already starting to pay off, with a growing number of client trades and account openings coming through mobile phones................

IG's revenue in the third quarter to March rose by 18 per cent to £88.6m, albeit against a weak quarter the year before. Crucially, two key performance metrics – client numbers and revenue per client – have provided further encouragement. Client numbers in Europe and the rest of the world outside the UK and Australia rose by 14 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, in the third quarter. And while customer numbers were marginally lower in the UK and Australia, this was more than offset by double-digit growth in revenue per client. Even the troubled Japanese operation is showing signs of recovery. Trading here was hit badly after the regulatory authorities reduced leverage limits, the last restriction coming in during August 2011. Since then, IG has concentrated on recruiting higher-value clients, so while the number of active clients fell 4 per cent in the third quarter, revenue per client was up 16 per cent. The UK remains the group's biggest market, accounting for 52 per cent of 2012 trading revenue and 57 per cent of cash profit.

Back in December last year, spread better IG Group's (IGG) chief executive, Tim Howkins, pointed out that if the low levels of volatility seen in the first half were repeated in the second half, then revenue for the full year would be down in the region of 7 per cent. It was always going to be a big ask to match the hectic trading environment seen for much of the previous year, hence the forecast fall in profits for this year. However, volatility levels in the second half have actually shown a distinct increase, with the banking crisis in Cyprus and the sharp fall in gold and silver alone stimulating greater levels of customer activity. And there are plenty of other uncertainties, from the US fiscal cliff to the downgrading of UK debt, to suggest the volatility that largely determines trading conditions for IG may persist. So after the longest sustained period of low volatility for over five years, activity levels are starting to look up and now could prove a great time to buy into the company's enticing growth story.

The popular online fashion retailer ASOS (ASC) is due to report interims this week. Previously, the company reported a rise of 28% to £75.5m in the three months to February 28th, with international sales rising 45% to £110.9m. In the past six months, ASOS’s shares have almost doubled, trading on a forward P/E of more than 60 times. The consensus of analysts’ forecasts of pre-tax profit for the year to August 31st is about £50m-£51m.

Insurance group, RSA (RSA) is hoping for better news when it reports this week. Its shares nose-dived in February, collapsing from a 19-month high above 136p, to currently trading around 110p level, after the release of shocking results for last year. The insurer also cut its final dividend by a third. Following the colossal 20% drop in earnings per share (EPS) last year, to 9.5p, City forecasters expect growth to snap 26% higher to 12p in 2013. EPS is then predicted to crawl 1% higher to 13.1p..........

Significant shareholders and percentage shareholdings Mr R Quested - 285,560,000 - 29.49% ORA (Guensey) Limited - 268,732,000 - 27.75% Mrs N Powell - 46,190,000 - 4.77% These numbers are correct as of 15 April 2013 Directors shareholding Brian Marshall - 330,000 - 0.03% James Ede-Golightly - 6,250,000 - 0.65% Gordon Hall - 2,500,000 - 0.26%