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A more intractable problem is that the shares are illiquid. PPHE, then Park Plaza, was formed in 2007 by combining two family businesses that still own about 65 per cent of the equity. The free float is consequently too small to interest most institutional investors. The upside of this is that the company's bosses are motivated to raise the share price. They have recently moved the quote to London's main market, bought back shares and started paying dividends in a bid to catch investors' attention.

*Edison Investment Research estimates (profits & earnings not comparable with historic figures)

PPHE HOTEL (PPH) ORD PRICE: 206p MARKET VALUE: £84.1m TOUCH: 200-206p 12M HIGH / LOW: 298p 161p DIVIDEND YIELD: 2.9% PE RATIO: 7 NET ASSET VALUE: 393p NET DEBT: 193% Year to 31 Dec Turnover (€m) Pre-tax profit (€m) Earnings per share (¢) Dividend per share (p) 2008 93 7.9 19 nil 2009 80 -7.2 -18 nil 2010 140 60.5 152 nil 2011 202 10.6 37 6 2012* 226 15.0 36 6 % change +12 – – nil

The result is a business with strong asset backing, but £310m-worth of debt. Even so, subtract all that debt and PPHE still has assets of £161m. Herein lies the opportunity: £161m is almost double the stock market value of the equity. Moreover, the hotels are held on the balance sheet at cost - €611m in total. A recent revaluation by Savills and Collies suggested their open-market value would be €722m. Add the surplus into the mix and underlying net asset value is clear of 600p. The shares don't look expensive on the earnings side, either - on a multiple of seven times 2011's profits.

The company owns most of the 38 Park Plaza and art'otel hotels outright or with majority stakes and leases eight on long-term contracts. It also earns management fees for running the Arenaturist resorts, while holding a 20 per cent equity stake in the Zagreb-listed owner. Yet PPHE is more a developer than an operator, leveraging its asset-rich balance sheet to grow. Its largest asset, a striking Park Plaza building that stands at the foot of London's Westminster Bridge, opened in 2010. It plans to roll out three Park Plazas in Croatia this year and three more hotels across Europe in 2013. The company also has a couple of projects in Thailand.

Buying shares in a hotels company during a recession sounds like financial suicide. Yet shares in PPHE Hotel are going so cheap that it looks worth the risk - particularly as the company's operating performance has been surprisingly strong. PPHE changed its name from Park Plaza Hotels in February to distinguish itself from the Park Plaza brand and to give more attention to its other two marques - art'otel, to which it holds the worldwide brand rights, and Arenaturist, a small Croatian resort business.

Broker JPMorgan Cazenove believes that Cairn Energy has a core net asset value of 367p. That's above the share price, but not so far above it as to provide a decent margin of safety that will protect it if Cairn India's share price continues to falter. Cairn needs to rediscover its magical touch - this time in the North Sea and, especially, Greenland -

CAIRN ENERGY (CNE) ORD PRICE: 291p MARKET VALUE: £1.75bn TOUCH: 290-291p 12-MONTH HIGH: 506p LOW: 284p DIVIDEND YIELD: nil PE RATIO: na NET ASSET VALUE: see text NET CASH: $1.1bn Year to 31 Dec Turnover ($bn) Pre-tax profit ($m) Earnings per share (¢) Dividend per share (¢) 2009 0.23 -73 1.4 nil 2010 nil -304 -55.0 nil 2011 nil -1189 -215 nil 2012* nil -110 -6.0 nil 2013* nil -89 -6.0 nil

At least Cairn has a guaranteed revenue stream through the 22 per cent stake in Cairn India that it holds following the Vedanta deal. A positive beat was provided in April when Cairn India announced another oil discovery in its onshore block in the Krishna-Godavari Basin in Andhra Pradesh. Although Cairn India has a 49 per cent stake in the block, estimated to hold 550m barrels of oil equivalent, its share price has still dropped 27 per cent in sterling terms over the past three months. This poses another problem for Cairn Energy, given that City analysts believe that around 70 per cent of Cairn's core value derives from its remaining stake in its former Indian subsidiary.

In April, Cairn acquired Agora Oil & Gas AS, a private Norwegian exploration company, for $450m in cash and shares. Agora has a busy programme this year, with drilling scheduled for nine exploration and appraisal wells in the UK and Norway. If successful, these may divert attention from Cairn's problems in Greenland. The Agora deal, however, is not off to a good start. Poor test results have already resulted in the suspension of the Tybalt appraisal well, in which Agora holds a 40 per cent stake

Cairn has yet to flesh out details about further exploration in Greenland, although the results of further seismic analysis are due soon. Its bosses will be far more circumspect after the failure of last year's multimillion dollar campaign. So future proposals are likely to be of a modest scale, especially as Cairn can hardly tap shareholders for new money and cash resources have been cut to $1.08bn - a hefty sum, but only marginally more than last year's outlay in Greenland.

summary True, Burberry's product design wins all the plaudits, and management has made operational improvements that have helped it grow profits. But it is nevertheless hard to believe that the group wouldn't be affected if the global economy deteriorated further in the coming years. That seems possible given that both Europe and China have their own set of problems and the US recovery, built on the foundations of tax cuts and government spending, looks fragile. Alongside an increasingly bearish chartist setup, But as always do your own research...........

Burberry's premium rating also leaves its share price precariously poised when nervousness rules. Although Burberry's forecast PE ratio of 20 is not astronomical in the context of the global luxury goods sector, it is high enough to make the share price vulnerable if Burberry does not consistently beat forecasts. And it isn't doing this - underlying growth rates are being flattered by opening new selling space. Although retail revenue climbed 31 per cent last year, like-for-like sales grew a more modest 14 per cent, while the benefit from transferring lower-value wholesale revenue to higher-value retail will hit a wall at some point.

While Burberry has a powerful brand, its share price seems to be hostage to external fortunes. Bouts of price weakness have coincided with fears about the eurozone, or poor economic data from China. Burberry now owns 63 stores in the middle kingdom after acquiring its partner there last year, making it the group's largest single territory, accounting for around 12 per cent of revenues; by comparison, the Americas account for just 8 per cent.

Since then, though, the price has failed to make progress. Technical analysts point to a resistance level around 1,600p that the share price once again failed to breach earlier this year, setting up - as chartists call it - a double top. In a bull market, the theory goes, that's not a problem. But Burberry's strong up-trend ended a year ago, since when it has marked time. Even last week's decent results prompted a sharp drop after a cautious outlook from chief executive Angela Ahrendts. Importantly, that initially took the price below its 200-day moving average, another technical sell signal.

That level of growth has become par for Burberry's course - in five years its revenues have doubled, despite an expensive withdrawal from Spain in 2010. As it turns out, those problems were more than offset by the increasing popularity of the brand in fast-growing markets such as China and Brazil, where the newly affluent are keen to flaunt their spending power. That translated into an eightfold increase in the share price between the 2008 lows of the credit crunch and last summer when the shares peaked around 1,600p.

You might not think the UK economy was in a slump if you visited the country's upmarket shopping spots. Well-heeled Bond Street shoppers continue to snaffle shoes and handbags - good news for luxury goods retailer Burberry. It grew sales by 24 per cent last year, and plans to add 14 per cent more space this year in key global cities.

summary S&U is highly cash generative and that's partly being used to pay down debt - net debt fell to £18.2m last month from £20.2m a year earlier. But it's also supporting a hefty dividend and the shares offer a chunky prospective yield of nearly 6 per cent. The shares trade on just eight times Arden Partner's forecast earnings, which is cheap compared with rival Provident Financial's shares - rated on 11 times forecast earnings. Such a modest rating seems to ignore the exceptional growth potential at the motor finance unit. But as always dyor........

Investors should also keep an eye on regulatory developments. In a sector where some of society's least well off are charged some of the highest rates of interest, it's inevitable that politicians and regulators will occasionally turn their attention to this part of the market. As recently as last month, an amendment was put forward to the Financial Services Bill to cap the amount that companies can charge for emergency credit - that was defeated in parliament, but it demonstrates the ongoing level of scrutiny that this sector attracts

Credit quality looks good, too. True, weak economic conditions have meant a slight rise in provisions at the home credit unit during the first quarter compared with the low levels seen a year earlier. But management thinks that a continued improvement in book debt quality should reverse this over the rest of the year. While impairment levels at the motor finance business have actually fallen from last year. Still, the group does face challenges. To begin with, S&U's foray into second mortgages didn't go well, although that operation is being steadily run off. Last year, the net book debt here was £0.46m and the unit's trading loss had been cut from £126,000 to £60,000. Moreover, S&U's founding family - the Coombs - currently own around half of the group's equity, which can make the shares difficult to deal.