Category: Finance & markets

Domino’s Pizza Group: The Dog that Caught the Bus

Out with the old targets, in with the new… It can be uncomfortable when a fast-growing company approaches its long-term targets – if it wants to maintain its rating, it had better find some new ones sharpish. Domino’s UK, for example, has just under 1,000 stores and is rapidly approaching its old target of 1,200,…

M&B’s tone points to tricky 2017; a tough year might hit some harder than others…

The factors driving capacity: cheap cash and new ways of raising it… Low interest rates have allowed casual dining concepts to flourish. Crowdfunding has also provided an avenue of funding for operators. This has resulted in growth for growth’s sake and the saturation of the restaurant market. Several operators have built substantial estates in as…

60 Seconds on Rising Interest Rates, Inflation, etc.

Inflation is coming – who stands to lose out? Interest rates have been kept at 0.5% since January 2009 (even falling as low as 0.25%), distorting the markets Crowdfunding has also played its part wrt excess funding; AltFi research shows that of the 751 companies that have crowdfunded on the UK’s largest platforms, some 88…

Profit Warnings: They’re just not all made the same…

Crawshaw & Premier Foods warned on trading in Sept & Oct respectively: Negative profit (or sales) warnings are never good Nor are they neutral but, even if they are all negative, some are more negative than others Existential, business-model threatening warnings: See Monetise, Jessops, Blockbuster, Woollies etc. as existentially-challenged companies More recently, Crawshaw (high PER…

Tread carefully; recent FTSE rally inflates already hard-to-justify valuations

A stock picker’s market? Stock prices — when did 25x EPS & a 2% yield become ‘cheap’? Recent and regular profit warnings hint at a degree of fragility re. stretched valuations. Restaurant Group, Whitbread, Next, and Sports Direct have all seen their share prices come undone after being rated in the high-teens to mid-twenties on…