Daily Stock Market Report (Thur 24 April 2025) - SOM, REL, SUPR, RWS, BRCK, JUP, GBG, DIAL, PEN, CKT, VNET, EAH, SFR, SAG, ASC, XPP

Thu 6:02am by Graham Neary

44 comments 5786 reads

Good morning! Let's see what Thursday has in store for us.

The Agenda is complete.

We are finished for today, thank you!

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Unilever (LON:ULVR) (£120bn)	Trading Statement	2025 outlook reconfirmed with 3-5% underlying sales growth, modest improvement in margin.
Relx (LON:REL) (£72.8bn)	AGM Trading Update	Full year outlook unchanged. Positive momentum, strong underlying revenue growth especially in the Risk business. Adjusted operating profit growth is expected to exceed revenue growth in all four operating divisions.	GREEN (Megan - I hold) [No section below] The word ‘continues’ appears no fewer than 15 times in this morning’s short update from Relx. That’s a good thing because it means that the trends which make this an attractive high quality growth stock remain on track. It’s the risk business (34% of sales) where the most growth is on offer. Relx has won new clients in the period as demand for financial crime and fraud solutions increases. It’s still an expensive stock (Trump tariff problems barely caused a scratch to the share price), but this isn’t a stock to wait for an attractive entry point. For investors after long-term high quality growth, I can’t see many better candidates in the UK.
Anglo American (LON:AAL) (£28bn)	Production Report Q1 2025	Copper and iron ore in line with guidance. Platinum expected to demerge from 31st May.
Weir (LON:WEIR) (£5.7bn)	Trading Update	Full year guidance reiterated. Q1 original equipment and aftermarket orders both +5%.
St James's Place (LON:STJ) (£4.9bn)	Q1 New Business Inflows and FUM	Net inflows £1.7bn. FUM £188.6bn (Dec 2024: £190.2bn). Good levels of activity so far in April.
Hikma Pharmaceuticals (LON:HIK) (£4.2bn)	Trading Statement	Reiterates guidance for 2025. Revenue to grow 4-6%, core operating profit $730-770m.
Inchcape (LON:INCH) (£2.7bn)	Trading Update	Q1 in line. Guidance for FY 2025 unchanged, excluding potential tariff impacts.
Balfour Beatty (LON:BBY) (£2.2bn)	Texas Interstate Contract	$889m (£670m) contract to reconstruct a Dallas interstate road and construct nine crossings.
AJ Bell (LON:AJB) (£1.7bn)	Trading Statement	Platform: Strong customer growth, +32k (+6%) in the quarter. D2C trading activity up in April.
Domino's Pizza (LON:DOM) (£1.09bn)	Q1 Trading Statement	FY25 adj. EBITDA to be in line (£140.8-149.7m). Q1 LfL sales +0.5%, total system sales +2.1%.
Supermarket Income REIT (LON:SUPR) (£963m)	Joint Venture with Blue Owl Capital	Eight of SUPR’s existing assets transferred into JV.…

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Graham Neary

Thu 10:16am

I've amended that, sharw. Thanks!

mighunter

Thu 10:46am

The Filtronic (LON:FTC) news this morning was also announced via Reach rather than RNS suggesting the impact is not currently material.

JohnDoe2378

Thu 11:16am

Science (LON:SAG) positive update but not a flicker in sp movement. Investors cynical with this Ricardo fiasco? Plus no cash amount specified

Trident

Thu 11:27am

Tracsis (LON:TRCS)

The CEO mentioned a buy back of shares in addition to their small annual dividend. Given the relative illiquidity of their shares, and the sharp effect this has on its share price up & down on small sales/purchases, and the historically low price for these shares, I suspect it as somewhat of a price improvement mechanism. Arguably a good idea at these prices?

arome1981

Thu 11:50am

Thanks for your update on RWS Mark. I wondered what your thoughts are to the idea that management have been trying to increase the ROE by reducing the equity base. They have incentive payouts linked to ROE and a number of decisions made over the last two years that affect the equity value; revaluation of their UK premises, expensing IT investment costs and reducing their capitalisation, increased amortisation and asset write downs. Naturally they made all be appropriate but they are being incentivised to do so.

bensummers

Thu 12:53pm

what does RWS exactly offer anyway - glorified translation services? If so it is probably being killed by ai? translation and research services are easily done by ai... ?

Thu 1:19pm

Hi Ben, yes, glorified translation but most technical, business critical, translation will not get done by generic AI.

rwh3ue

Thu 1:36pm

RWS Holdings (LON:RWS) I hold

Ben, if you really want to know what RWS do, you could do worse than visit the company web site which says:

"We are a world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services.

Through content transformation and multilingual data analysis, our combination of AI-enabled technology and human expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they are understood anywhere, in any language.

We work with 84 of the top 100 global brands, 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and 18 of the top 20 patent filers worldwide."

As arome1981 says, a lot of the high margin work is done by graduates with industry qualifications because a small mistake can be very damaging. RWS uses AI itself where it is appropriate.

AI sounds great but I recently "Googled" a restaurant I planned to visit and was given an AI description. It told me that there was parking (there isn't) and that they catered for wheelchair users (the location at the bottom of a very narrow and steep hill) would not invite wheelchair users to visit nor was the assertion that dogs were welcome true (it isn't )

rmillaree

Thu 1:38pm

surely AI will do 95% of the donkey work and the manual checking will perhaps replace manual checking of what humans replaced. I supecvt rates may be under presure here unless ...perhaps they may be protected if they are already using top notch automation tools anyway ?

cpmal1

Thu 1:41pm

RWS Holdings (LON:RWS) With Equity of £900m and Goodwill (571m)and Intangibles (317) making up £888m at year end Sept 2024 , am I correct in assuming there could be a good deal more negative impact from 'amortisation' in the future ?

tic_tac_toe

Thu 2:04pm

yes several examples of where AI gets it wrong are being found. one here on reddit where Google AI recommends super unleaded ful into a diesel vehicle I know better, but imagine how much this could screw over a non-car person (or someone borrowing a car) : r/CarTalkUK

shows need for caution, esp in important legal publications and so forth where accuracy matters

yiannos1

Thu 2:42pm

Made Tech (LON:MTEC)

Held this from 13p-14p when shared here at the time the great investment opportunity.

At 31p I took my money off the table (shared here again) and kept all the profits in. I have been impressed by the new proven CFO and i believe that they will be winning more multi million contracts in the future as the government becomes more digitalised and all departments more efficient.

EV/FCF at 14X and FCF yield at 8X.

with cash and no debt

For this kind of business is very cheap.

I am adding to my position with a 35p target at some point in 2025.

All the best

Mark Simpson

Thu 2:44pm

Yes, good point, thanks. Incentives drive behaviour. It makes it doubly strange that the market seems to view this as a terrible deterioration of the business, when the underlying FCF is largely unaffected by such things.

FREng

Thu 4:30pm

Pennant International (LON:PEN) . The market hss taken a more positive view of the results than Mark has. I hold, encouraged by three factors:

1 the Aucilium integration of PEN’s existing products provides a better way to manage and maintain complex assets such as warships than exists elsewhere.
2. PEN has a blue chip client list that rivals but does not duplicate the client list of Intercede (LON:IGP)

3 The CEO of IGP is a NED at PEN.

boringchess

Thu 4:45pm

You persuaded me to take a look, will put it on my shortlist for a deep dive

Thu 4:51pm

Not an expert on Severfield (LON:SFR) but it feels like very big win for them that the insurance is covering the (not totally clear or finalised) costs for remediation work?

I had a bit of a look at it recently because at almost 19p it seemed almost too cheap but didn't do it in the end (no time for looking at it enough, but bit concerned they may have reputational damage as a real cause of the lack of orders after the bridge problems?)

Thu 4:52pm

Pennant International (LON:PEN)

I believe Mark is correct here. Perhaps he should have been all RED. What’s to sell next year? Nothing left.

Another pointless listing. Their only hope is to raise their revenues above £20m in order to survive, a figure that I doubt they can achieve.

Some balance sheet figures are not registered properly as they should have been for a software company. Auditors should be more careful here.

Hope they can raise their revenues and survive.

Thu 5:31pm

-:)

Thu 5:36pm

yes I'd speculate that rates will be severely under pressure. You let AI do the translation and then just do proof-reading - much easier. The problem is that this also makes it much easier for competition to enter plus companies may not be happy paying as much or may not use you at all. Remember AI is getting a lot better every few months.

10:28pm

I have been having a look and thinking to take a small position next week and keep an eye to maybe grow the position on any dips

Looks very cheap for this type of biz

Can't bring myself to buy a big position in a small cap in this climate though (because of Trump i am keeping more cash than usual)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Daily Stock Market Report (Thur 24 April 2025) - SOM, REL, SUPR, RWS, BRCK, JUP, GBG, DIAL, PEN, CKT, VNET, EAH, SFR, SAG, ASC, XPP

Companies Reporting

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Graham Neary

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