Daily Stock Market Report (Wed 12 Mar 2025) - FOUR, LGEN, IGP, GYM, HILS, CBOX, PPHC

12th Mar by Roland Head

63 comments 6597 reads

Good morning! Here's the agenda for today's report.

1.20pm: all done for today.

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Legal & General (LON:LGEN) (£14.4bn)	Full Year Results	Core op profit +6% (£1.6bn). Op ROE 34.8% (LY: 26.6%). Strong momentum. £500m buyback.	GREEN (Roland holds) Today’s numbers show positive progress with the group’s simplified strategy. Cash generation continues to support the near-9% dividend. On a FY25 P/E of 10, I think the shares remain decent value for income.
Balfour Beatty (LON:BBY) (£2.2bn)	Full Year Results	Underlying operating profit +7% (£252m). Divi increase and £125m buyback. Positive outlook.
Hill & Smith (LON:HILS) (£1.39bn)	Full Year Results	Profit ahead of exps. Revenue +5% (constant FX). ROIC up to 24.8%. Outlook: well positioned.	GREEN (Roland) While performance in the UK weakened last year, the US now provides the majority of earnings and appears to have a more positive outlook. I think HILS’ valuation looks reasonable for a business with proven quality characteristics and solid forecast earnings growth.
4imprint (LON:FOUR) (£1.35bn)	Final Results	PW. Orders slightly down in 2025, challenging environment. Brokers cut 2025 forecasts, e.g. PBT -6%.	BLACK (AMBER/GREEN) (Graham) I’m downgrading our stance on this by just one notch, despite this profit warning. 4imprint might still be considered a company of the highest quality and its earnings multiple is now modest at around 13x. So despite the profit warning, I think there are some reasons for cautious optimism from the current level.
Hochschild Mining (LON:HOC) (£987m)	Preliminary Results	Rev +37%. Adj. PBT $199m. Restores dividend. New dividend policy: 20-30% of FCF.
Forterra (LON:FORT) (£339m)	Full Year Results	Revenue flat. H2 weighting. Adj. PBT -29% (£22m). Net debt £85m, leverage 1.9x to reduce further.
MaxCyte (LON:MXCT) (£270m)	Q4 & FY 2024 Results	FY24 rev -6% to $38.6m, opex $82.7m. Cash $190m at 31 Dec. FY25 core rev exp +8 to 15%.
GYM (LON:GYM) (£242m)	Full Year Results	Rev +11%, LFL +7%, avg members +4%. Adj PBT £3.6m (FY23: £(5.5m)). YTD rev +8%.	AMBER/RED (Graham) I’m still AMBER/RED on this although today’s results do show a significant improvement against 2023. But the lack of real profits or barriers to entry leave me holding on to a moderately negative stance.
Public Policy Holding (LON:PPHC) (£162m)	Preliminary Results	In line. Rev +11% to $150m, inc 3% org growth.…

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JohnDoe2378

12th Mar

Markets very demoralising atm, every day prices lurching downwards.

Seems so many funds/sellers selling down. Keeping powder dry until any hint of change.

boringchess

Thanks for covering LGEN - have added to my shortlist for research with initial thought to perhaps take a medium sized position and increase it if we see a bit of a dip. Looks alright to me from not a lot of digging, not crazy value but given dividend and buy backs its probably a buy. Interesting reading all the comments here too.

ricardow

Yes, my family mantra is also “Never sell Shell”! Shell (LON:SHEL)

ken mitchell

At the risk of a lot of replies telling me to get lost, is it just the markets if our portfolios are doing badly or is the main reason poor investment decisions?

Markets are difficult at present, and if only focusing on AIM shares, have been diabolical for many years. Answer to that was and is to look well beyond AIM and/or just UK smaller Companies. And if going for AIM shares, for only part of the portfolio. Some AIM shares are winners.

There are a lot of shares doing well and even a surprisingly high number of Investment Trusts too. A share I missed was Rolls-Royce Holdings (LON:RR.) . It’s up 98% over 1 year and has multibagged by going up nearly 8 fold over 3 years. I hold Marks and Spencer (LON:MKS) . It’s up 40% this year and 120% over 3 years. Marks has quadrupled from the 90p low only 3 years ago and my own stake has more than tripled. And I’ve taken out the original stake and more on top to run the rest for better than free.

Another I hold is TP Icap (LON:TCAP) bought at 108p. It’s up 140% on my buy price and the dividend at that price is now 17%. Amedeo Air Four Plus (LON:AA4) which I bought at 34p and 40p is up 78% this year and pays 22% a year dividend at those buy prices. Another Investment Trust I’ve held since 2020 Aew UK Reit (LON:AEWU) is up 26% this year and 50% since purchase, and pays me 13% a year from the quarterly dividends.

What about Games Workshop (LON:GAW) . It’s up 45% over 1 year and 100% over 3 years and has multi multi bagged from £4.60 a few years ago to over £140 now. . I bought at £4.60 but sold for a tiny profit. Big mistake ….but reinforcing that this post is not to show off, but to point out just a few of the many winning opportunities available.

Investment Trusts are seeing frequent bids too. Obviously I hold losers as well (who doesn’t?) but the winners and the annual dividend income swamp those losers. Many competent investors will do far better than me.

Surely there are many other readers of these threads who also hold and are continuing to find winning investments despite these difficult markets, and who have winning portfolios, and could give similar or better examples?

How about cashing in on some of the shares covered here by Graham, Roland and Megan that get positive write ups from them along with green rating? . (Isn’t that their purpose; to help us find quality investments?) Or some of the shares issuing “better than expected” updates etc etc.

Now for the brickbats!

Westway001

"I hold Marks and Spencer (LON:MKS) . It’s up 40% this year and 120% over 3 years."

According to the Stocko chart, M&S is down 10% this year?

zipstuck

Well the CEO is confident enough to buy £50K in shares which would indicate that that the pipeline is healthy and positive for 26. If the cash is put to good use then then the future is encouraging. Would not be surprised to see another positive trading in April. NB the 2 sales of secure vault new product since launch in December.

tic_tac_toe

it is up 40% if Ken meant last 12month period, 351p, versus ~250p 12months ago at march 2024

Rusty2

Megan, Graham was pretty negative on Intercede (LON:IGP), he did downgrade it from Green toAmber, l think if Paul had not rated it so highly, it would have been rated lower.
His view: "Paul has been a huge supporter of this one, but personally I’m struggling to see how it is worth c. £100m, at least based on the financial forecasts for the next 18 months. The justification for the current market cap must lie in FY27 and beyond. I’m afraid I don’t “get it” and therefore I’m downgrading this all the way to AMBER."

Ken, it is a difficult market, yes if you are mainly in defence and gold, then you probably have done alright. Yes you can follow the writers on here but their selections have not done well this year. The 12 Christmas stocks are down around 12%. Graham's selections are also down about the same, last year it was up 40% but now down to +12%, on my figures.
IG Design (LON:IGR) had 2 positive write ups but has lost 70% of its value.

Ed's top trending momentum shares, are not performing much better, the small cap folio is actually doing better than the mid caps and the USA ones.

As for buying ahead of expectations, look at Synectics (LON:SNX) that beat the forecasts and upgraded next years profits, shares promptly went down 25%.

Marks and Spencer (LON:MKS) did well last but struggling this year.

One of the best performing stocks, this year, is Audioboom (LON:BOOM) l will have to check, l think that is not well regarded by Stockopedia staff.

Pimlico on Thames

Sitting impatiently on my hands waiting for the correction to abate. No doubt I'll go too early, but it must be close to the point to fill yer boots on many quality stocks.

doctor dave

Maybe Stocko will do a questionnaire asking us what we most want to see covered? The emphasis has of course recently changed and unfortunately a number of quality contributors seem to have left. The (conservative) company reviews by Graham, Mark, Megan and Roland remain excellent.

That’s a very fair reply Rusty2, and this year, not helped by the current falls, has been difficult so far. But the falls you mention for Graham, Ed and the Christmas stocks are surely to be judged on longer term performance? Time and again over the years when using my favoured buy the big dips tactic, I’ve bought shares and Investment Trusts at what I thought were at or near the lows, that went even lower still, before most recovered strongly. It’s longer term performance that counts. There will always be bad spells. And these are always eventually followed by bull markets.

I’m not in gold or defence, but have a lot of my portfolio, both shares and Investment Trusts that are doing well this year, so it’s not just those 2 areas you mentioned that have provided winners.

e.g along with yiannos I posted a strong buy case for Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LON:GKP) and it’s up 25% this year, on top of previous gains since we both posted. I also posted the very risky short term punt for Ferrexpo (LON:FXPO) around 45p when it became clear Trump was going to win. Yiannos rubbished that idea and that probably frightened most away, Ferrexpo (LON:FXPO) quickly trebled and I got out fast and posted that I had. Gains like that far more than cover the losers. Investment Trusts I hold snd again posted on here (as have other posters) have fallen to bids. Latest for me is Warehouse Reit (LON:WHR) up 23% in 2 months.

Of course I’ve got shares and Trusts that have fallen this year, the worst being Fund Managers Liontrust Asset Management (LON:LIO) down 32% on my buy price, and Premier Miton (LON:PMI) down 28%. These do well in bull markets and I got the timing very wrong for the sector recovery. Harbour Energy (LON:HBR) is another big loser, down 26% on my buy price.

Does this reply support a key point in my previous post? I.e have a diversified portfolio with a wide range of investments rather than a too narrow one. If my portfolio only included my oil, mining and fund manager shares, current performance this year would be terrible, and I might well have joined in with the moaning about falling markets and complaining nearly everything is down. It isn’t IF we widen our horizons.

Finally on whether to buy the shares recommended by the quality analysts here. I don’t do that. I use their excelkent comment as a starting point, and wouldn’t think of investing in any of the them , including the Naps, until at least having thoroughly checked their recent updates.

You’re right Westway. I was posting the 1 year performance but twice then wrote “this year.”

Douglas1971

I know how you feel too. So much so o ditched Intercede (LON:IGP) and Beeks Financial Cloud (LON:BKS) the first early match and the latter earlier. Perhaps purchased too late but fed up watching the SP go nowhere but down!

Jon F

13th Mar

Thanks for the links. This, in my opinion, looks wholly unrelated to Beeks Financial Cloud (LON:BKS) since their service is publicly announced and available to anyone wishing to pay for it. In all likelihood, the Beeks offering would make this referenced service surplus to Nasdaq's requirements.

Just my take on the situation. Can be wrong...

The Phoenix

Thanks RD always appreciate your macro updates and pearls.

yiannos1

This comment is under review

I can’t be bothered to get in to one of your spats beyond this:-

1. You’re wrong about Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LON:GKP) . I held and posted on it it well before the pipeline closure, including the year they paid 86p in dividends.

2. And you’re wrong about Ferrexpo too. Of course Ferrexpo (LON:FXPO) was a short term very risky gamble as I made very clear in my post at the time. It was a gamble that paid off handsomely with the share nearly tripling in no time. People can have small stakes if they wish.

I knew the answer beforehand!

That was a good/honest/fun idea that would have helped and benefited the Stocko community and give money to charity.

All the best

MatthewBrazier

20th Mar

I wrote in more depth on this point https://mattbrazier.substack.c...

Daily Stock Market Report (Wed 12 Mar 2025) - FOUR, LGEN, IGP, GYM, HILS, CBOX, PPHC

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Roland Head

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