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Consistent sales growth puts spotlight on Premier Foods’ recovery story
Thursday 23 Jan 2020Despite tough domestic grocery market conditions, Mr. Kipling-to-Bisto maker Premier Foods ( PFD ) has now delivered 10 consecutive quarters of sales growth in the UK. The shares have had a good run since November 2019 but the company is still saddled with a reputation as a corporate ‘zombie’ due...
Palladium price doubles in seven months
Thursday 23 Jan 2020More expensive than gold, the price of a precious metal called palladium has rocketed in the past few months. This week the metal topped $2,500 an ounce and is changing hands for double what it cost just seven months ago. A critical component in catalytic converters, palladium demand is going up...
Sirius Minerals chairman issues stark warning to shareholders
Thursday 23 Jan 2020Shareholders in potash miner Sirius Minerals ( SXX ) need to vote on a 5.5p cash per share takeover offer from mining giant Anglo American ( AAL ) . At least 75% of shareholders need to approve the offer for it to proceed. Sirius chairman Russell Scrimshaw says takeover failure could see the...
Selling by insiders raises new questions for NMC Health
Thursday 16 Jan 2020United Arab Emirates-based private healthcare provider NMC Health ( NMC ) faces mounting pressure amid short selling and as major shareholders ditch hundreds of millions of pounds worth of stock. The business first came under fire from short seller Muddy Waters on 17 December when it published a...
Can the Christmas retail losers’ problems be fixed?
Thursday 16 Jan 2020The kindest description you could give the post-Christmas trading updates from the retail sector would be ‘mixed’. Some companies excelled, such as Next ( NXT ) maintaining its recent sales growth momentum, but others had a much harder time. Next’s strong online sales and the robust sales growth at...
The value of takeovers on the AIM market increased by a third in 2019
Thursday 16 Jan 2020Accountant UHY Hacker Young reports that the value of takeovers of AIM-quoted companies jumped by 32% last year with appetite for fast-growing fintech, technology and financial services targets driving the increase. It found that a large number of AIM takeovers in 2019 were driven by overseas...
Debate emerges over rate cut after weak GDP data
Thursday 16 Jan 2020A debate has emerged over whether or not the Bank of England should cut interest rates after the economy grew by just 0.1% in the three months to November. While this figure was slightly better than forecast, the economy shrank 0.3% month-on-month in November, below the flat rate predicted. Bank of...
Liontrust roars ahead on sustainable fund flows
Thursday 16 Jan 2020Shares in Liontrust Asset Management ( LIO ) jumped over 9% to a new all-time high of £12.20 last week after it revealed that net fund inflows had almost doubled in the nine months to 31 December compared with the same period a year ago. Assets under management at the end of 2019 were £19.1bn...
Grocers’ ‘golden quarter’ falls flat
Thursday 09 Jan 2020Early indications are that Christmas trading for the supermarkets wasn’t disastrous but neither was it stellar. ‘I don’t think people will be popping champagne corks’ was one observer’s verdict. Sainsbury’s (SBRY ) reported a 0.4% like-for-like increase in grocery sales for the 15 weeks to 4...
Sirius Minerals shareholders may not like takeover price
Thursday 09 Jan 2020Shareholders in Sirius Minerals ( SXX ) will have to weigh a potential offer of 5.5p per share after mining giant Anglo American ( AAL ) tabled a takeover proposal for the company. The proposal represents a 34% premium to the previous day’s closing price of 4.1p, and values Sirius at £386m. That is...