Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 29 April 2025) - JET2, W7L, BP., HSW, ABF

Tue 6:01am by Graham Neary

41 comments 4660 reads

Good morning all, let's see what we've got in store for us today!

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) (£163bn)	Q1 Results	Rev +10%, adj EPS +21% to $2.49. FY25 guidance unchanged, five positive Phase III readouts.
HSBC Holdings (LON:HSBA) (£147bn)	Q1 Results	Adj PBT +11% to $9.8bn, RoTE 17.9%. Q1 divi of $0.10, $3bn buyback. Volatile macro outlook.
BP (LON:BP.) (£57.8bn)	Q1 Results	Und. RC profit $1.4bn (4Q24: $1.2bn). Divi 8 cents, $0.75bn buyback. Outlook mixed.	AMBER/RED (Roland) Today’s Q1 numbers appear to have missed expectations and flag up a sharp rise in debt. The company is accelerating asset sales and believes it remains on track to hit 2027 financial targets. However, oil prices are now below the level on which February’s guidance was based. BP’s higher leverage and sector underperformance also makes me cautious, given the uncertain external conditions. There could be value on offer here. But I think BP’s Value Trap styling is a timely warning that the stock may deserve a lower rating than peers.
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (LON:CCEP) (£30.2bn)	Trading Update	Q1 in line, rev +5%, volumes +7.8%. FY25 guidance unchanged.
Associated British Foods (LON:ABF) (£16.2bn)	Interim Results	Rev -2%, adj PBT -10% to £818m. £101m impairment in Sugar. FY outlook unchanged.	AMBER (Roland) [no section below] Today’s half-year results confirm that performance in the group’s Primark and Grocery business is on track to meet full-year expectations. However, the Sugar business is now expected to report an operating loss of up to £40m due to low sugar prices and some structural and regulatory issues. Restructuring efforts are underway. Frustratingly there’s no clear guidance on the impact to group profit expectations this year. However, based on previous guidance, I estimate a c.5% reduction in group earnings, which would be consistent with today’s share price fall. ABF was a Super Stock prior to today and I think the shares are probably reasonably priced on a long-term view. However, I think a neutral stance is more appropriate following today’s update.
Beazley (LON:BEZ) (£5.6bn)	Trading Statement	Written premiums +2%, renewal rates -4%. Guidance unchanged for FY combined ratio in “mid-80s”.
Howden Joinery (LON:HWDN) (£4.1bn)	Trading Update	Adj rev +3%, LFL +1.8%. Double-digit intl growth. Balancing margin and volume. FY in line.
Entain (LON:ENT) (£4.0bn)	Q1 Trading Update	Q1 rev +11%,…

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Monty Carlo

Tue 8:56am

I get Matt Levine's articles emailed to me daily (very highly recommended, John Authers being another), but if you search on Google and perhaps venture past page 1 you will find what you are looking for without having to subscribe.

wildshot

Tue 9:04am

Lots of new today and the only one I hold is Telecom Plus (LON:TEP) , a pleasant long term hold.

I would like to make a request to the writers of this page please. Often, during the day I only get access to read this page on my phone rather than computer. With the summary results can the formatting be changed please so that each cell is formatted to position top left. At the moment when I scroll on my phone I see text in the right box "Summary" with lots of writing. I have to scroll down further until the left box shows the name of the company I'm reading about. I like the name of the company visible on the left box (top) before I read the summary narrative, so I know if it's a company I'm interested in.

Hope this is possible. Thanks.

Tue 9:14am

The relationship between outfits like Argentex and their corporate clients is pretty opaque, and there are mentions of structured FX solutions here and there as well so the products they are flogging may be pretty opaque as well.

You can see why a corporate treasurer may not want to make bank transfers every evening to collateralise his FX hedges. That would be a legitimate reason for their offerings.

However, I suspect there may be more to it than this and the very large corporates may have the odd employee who is every bit as sophisticated as the Argentex salesman, or more so. I wouldn't be surprised if the large corporates have the upper hand and were gaming the relationship to their advantage.

I recall that the likes of National Grid (LON:NG.) had sophisticated debt issuance teams who are capable of playing off private vs public issuance and judging where on the curve & in which currency to issue, so I suspect there are companies that take their FX exposure just as seriously.

Abel

Tue 9:25am

I guess a sensible strategy could be grounding Boeing and acquiring more Airbus in case tariffs costs are higher to keep running the Boeing aircraft’s. Also the new Airbus are more fuel efficient so it could potentially increase capex but the running costs could be lower in the longer term

rwh3ue

Tue 10:03am

Warpaint London (LON:W7L) I hold

Graham I think you left a word out (don't) when saying this

"Therefore, I can say that I have a great deal of confidence in these forecasts."

bohenie

Tue 10:30am

Be interested to hear thoughts on Howden Joinery (LON:HWDN) - They only allow those with a Traders Account which seems archaic to me but for whatever reason (I have to go to Wickes or B&Q )must work for them - but what is their secret ?

Monty9

Tue 10:32am

Thank you for a very clear explanation of the situation. I hold and have learnt a very valuable/expensive lesson; the existence of zero, zero contracts. However, there remains one thing I don't understand. Given that, despite the liquidity crunch, there were substantial assets over liabilities in the business, say c. £40M, why did the board not let the company be put into administration/receivership? Given the legal protection from creditors the process provides, as a worst case scenario, even if the costs amounted to £10M the shareholders should have eventually received 25p to 30p per share, against the 2.49p per share offered by IFX. It is also a much more transparent process. In fact I expect the business would still have been disposed of as a going concern, but, because of the protections in the process, at a far better price.

rmillaree

Tue 11:00am

Argentex (LON:AGFX)

as soon as the hit hits the fan the directors obligations normally turn to protecting creditors - its common that shareholders are at the back of the queue and directors will probably be unders severe pressure to make creditorss weet if they might be in problems if there is shortfall ref their directoral duties.

I doubt its ever easy to do a cheap liquidation and that would potentially be very expensive on costs - with volume of stuff going through

i would agree shareholeders have been royally shafted and its sad that they couldnt nip the issue in the bud better and find a better out for shareholders - being frank teh risk assessmnet of te audit committe and the two auditors should be brought into question imho. I think it was mentioned volume was in the billions - so i wouldnt like to think how messy that end up trying to fulfil contracts and the like and winding down. Perhaps there was some negative working capital consequences of paring sales back if thats what needed to be done - similar to finance lenders where issues often arise if they try and run of the book rather than increase it.

probably without a better offer on the table the expert advise ws that we under no circumstances want to take this pile of crapola on (adminsitrators/ip's) as going concern - so lets take the best firm offer before they get cold feet and its nice fees for them - directors may get to keep their jobs too perhaps - some of them ?

Graham Neary

Tue 11:05am

thank you!

GTrader

Tue 11:20am

Focus equals success. Get 10k+ traders to sell their kitchens for them at good prices. Traders become experts in Howden kitchens through long term familiarity and multiple purchases. Sell 1 kitchen to 1 end customer or sell 1 kitchen per month to 1 trader? Also allows for smaller non-retail/stock branches. Staff are lazer focused or serving the trader and know everything about all their products to the point of helping with designs. Absolute class act!!!

Gmjs

Tue 11:53am

They do a number of small things very well from the depot level up to the board level, IMO. Good depots, good manufacturing facilities and distribution and sensible capital allocation, balance sheet management, accounting and reporting.

Depot managers have reasonable autonomy in extending credit and discounts to small builders- so if you're winning business consistently you can get your cabinets etc. cheaper and then pay once the end customer settles the invoice. Also, their depot network has very good coverage nationally and they are generally well-stocked. Depot managers are well incentivised on depot level performance- you can do £150k+ in total comp in a good year, I've heard. This seems to have some interesting knock on effects- if I recall correctly, shrinkage in a typical year is comfortably under 1% which is peculiarly low, for example.

Tue 11:54am

You've got clearing houses and collateralised positions with clearing members behind the scenes here.

Just because Argentex (LON:AGFX) was facilitating corporates to take exposure without posting margin/collateral doesn't mean AGFX's brokers were affording AGFX the same luxury.

I very much doubt administration would have helped anything, or salvaged anything.

I don't know if AGFX was a clearing member - I doubt it, they were probably accessing the market via brokers & IBs. These counterparties would have closed out their trades and seized/liquidated the collateral on the "b "of "bang". Administrator or no administrator.

That's the business dead there & then. Not only would you have been dealing with all the broker claims on AGFX, but you would also have been dealing with all the broken contracts between AGFX and its client base.

I seem to recall I was still negotiating valuations related to the Lehmans blow-up over 5 years after the collapse. I'm not sure the Lehmans UK administration has finally wrapped up yet! Cleaning these things up takes forever. And a day.

Barbara

Tue 12:55pm

Would disagree with your comments on Howdens. My husband has an account with them but finds them absolutely useless. When it came to us fitting a new kitchen for our own home we went to Wren. Much better quality and the retail price was significantly cheaper than Howdens trade price.

mammyoko

Tue 1:01pm

NCC (LON:NCC) - is this another case of the bods at Montagu trying to look busy? They've just had to admit that they wouldn't be making a bid for Advanced Medical Solutions (LON:AMS) after a strange announcement that they were considering making an offer there. Even though the price fell about 20% from when they first suggested they might be interested.. I struggled at the time to see what purpose a PE house could have in making an announcement that they were considering making a bid (I realise they haven't here) which only serves to disturb the price against them. Other than to appear busy.

Anyway, I would be particularly wary of any vague statements such as this that involve Montagu as they may not have a serious interest here either.

Revs8

Tue 1:02pm

I’ve looked at the prices of autumn and winter trips and they are much higher than previous years. Indicates a healthy order intake.

Tue 1:34pm

cheers Monty Carlo that makes more sense than my mumbo jumbo for sure

Plinkut

Tue 1:52pm

Howden Joinery (LON:HWDN) - Bill Bailey likes them:

Tue 2:13pm

Thanks for all the response - Don't quite get how good ol Bill Bailey manages to get an account with them but never mind. Will monitor from the sidelines and watch out for any more negatives (Barbara ) mindful that there will never be 100% positive feedback.

boringchess

Tue 2:15pm

Usually when there is one there is more to come, be interesting to see who else gets crushed by Trump vol in the coming months - I doubt its just these guys taking stupid risk to make a quick quid.

Sorry for everyone that lost out on this one.

I looked at this briefly earlier in the year as I think some people were discussing it here (maybe it was one of Paul's stock picks for the year too?)

Decided not to do because I have a general fear of financial firms doing opaque things that I don't fully understand, which I now take a step further and closing off positions I had that I had some doubts over not fully understanding or believing their books (closed a small Osb (LON:OSB) position I was holding this week)

sharw

Tue 2:42pm

MPAC (LON:MPAC)

There is now a 23 minute Q&A with Mpac Group CEO, Adam Holland & Finance Director Will Wilkins which you can view by clicking here. Much talk of how transformational the acquisitions in 24 are and also discussion on the effects of tariffs and any recession.

Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 29 April 2025) - JET2, W7L, BP., HSW, ABF

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Graham Neary

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