Wednesday 28 January 2015

Apple tiser! and 74.5m reasons for optimism!

Wow so despite the extremes of optimism and pessimism on good sales in the far east but job cuts in suppliers and negative currency effects, Apple appears to have smashed it out of the park with the "the biggest quarterly profit in history" (http://www.bbc.co.uk: Apple posts the biggest quarterly profit in history), following a record 74.5m iPhones being sold!

This prompted after hours trading to push the shares up to $115.3, +$6.16 (+5.64%).
Still off the all time high of $119 but could it signal that there is yet life after Steve Jobs.
The company may have a lots some of its soul but perhaps there is still enough conceptual design and lifestyle appeal to the brand under his successor, as CEO, Tim Cook.

The shares have undergone a a 7 way split so $115.3 is relative to a pre split price of $807.

Related Links:

Monday 26 January 2015

New year, new broker!

Well my broker changed this weekend, with Selftrade being swallowed up by Equiniti.
I've run with it for the moment for the sake of continuity and convenience, but it will also give me a chance to look at their systems and client support.
It took a little time to find that they were created out of Lloyds back in 2007, hence the strong Company Registrar side of their services.

It also reminds that, at the time I first moved my dealing to Commerzbank (now Selftrade after various takeovers), they were in fact a joint venture with Lloyds being one of the partners, things running full circle it seems.

I also think I would have traded something with Equiniti before, in order to tidy up a relative's holdings, probably Friends Provident, which also looks to be coming back to my portfolio with the buy out of Friends Life, by Aviva.

I seem to remember the screen colours being green or blue rather than the unfortunate red that emblazons the screen now.

I do suspect that I will look to change at some stage this year though, which I dislike doing given the lead time, the potential costs, and the potential for other disruptions.

That being said, my last couple of years with Selftrade weren't happy ones, with an increasing number of non-customer friendly actions and numerous threats to freeze accounts.
This included one occasion after I deleted "old" dd permissions on my bank account, for a previous incarnation, Commerzbank (a previous owner), and an earlier now closed trading account, but retained the permissions for the current Selftrade incarnation.
This unfortunately triggered Selftrade to issue various threats and requirements for me to go through security and send in personal documents all over again.
It seemed incomprehensible to the so called smart alec's on customer services, that the dd was year's old and out of date, to a now closed account, and not even to the same named company as it was now.
The one link between old and new being my personal reference details.

They probably hadn't even been with the organisation through those changes and continued with a series of threats to freeze my assets if I didn't comply and conform to their security processes "again", this despite confirmation from my bank that the current DD's were in place.

So, I think it a failing, after complex history of changes, buy out's, and name changes, that there was no facility to clean up personal, but out of date information. 
Particularly when customer services lacked the education of their own company's history to manage that information and provide a "customer service".

Once resolved, I also got no apology (which also seems all to common these days), only a terse email response that following review my details were in fact in order and unaffected by my actions.

Its always an eye opener to find out how rude, aggressive, and non-customer friendly, customer services actually is, and this seemed to increase under the most recent Selftrade version of the company.

The chopping and changing of charges, becoming a bank, dissolving the bank, and the messy new multiple screens and log on's also didn't help my deteriorating impression of Selftrade.

So apart from the traffic light red headings what does Equiniti look like?
Well its early days still (my first day in fact), but having all my holdings on one screen is actually an improvement, and the lack of scrolling windows and pages, embedded in a larger screen window (as per Selftrade), is much cleaner. As is the one screen session to log in, navigate and open.

My permissions are noted, namely the W-8BEN form, and a clear expiry date, and my warrants permissions have expired it seems.
This also reminds me that, despite it being their prescribed process to do so, Selftrade failed to inform me when my W-8BEN required renewal (I think its every 2/3 years), which resulted in yet another conflict with Customer Services. They also did not record the expiry date in your account details so, if you hadn't made note, instead trusting their process, you could easily fall foul as I did.
I eventually got some help from someone who had in fact been with the company right back to its buy out of Skipton Dealwise, a broker set up originally under Skipton BS.

So I'm easing my way into Equiniti, the transfer has been undertaken in the time communicated and there are some positives in the screen presentation.
I may not be convinced just yet, but its a reasonable first impression.

Fingers crossed.

Wednesday 14 January 2015

More reasons to shop at Morrisons?

Morrison 181.40p, -3.4p (-1.84%)

So there goes Dalton Philips, albeit slowly, I am picturing him going out through the awful revolving door that fronts my local Morrison store. 
Intended to keep heat in perhaps but it does a better job of keeping customers out as it stutters to a standstill from people trying to squeeze in (or out), add a few trolleys (from outside as well as instore), and hey presto, its chaos.
And this might be after queuing to get through one of the worst self checkout terminals of all the supermarkets I have tried.

And 5 years in charge, wow, time flies.
Its a shame that it has taken so long, and when you add on the additional time of his predecessor, Marc Bolland (doing so well at Marks & Spencers), who jumped ship in the honeymoon period of his strategy, and having spent the funds on stores and acquisitions, and embarked upon a borrow, to buyback share strategy its been a long drawn out series of disappointments to get to this stage.

I guess I am feeling a little frustrated and disappointed about my venture into supermarkets given the apparently simple metrics of product quality, availability, pricing, and sourcing, along with the added value of customer experience in terms of location, access, good parking, and store environment.
It seems both Morrison's and Tesco have failed to do this in recent years being distracted by expansion, and looking through the windows of others.
More recently, these super logistics companies, have started cutting back their product ranges so I now have to frequent more than one of them or look to source online from the manufacturers of my preferred products.
Which, I imagine, is not what they would like and runs the risk of a wholesale change in my shopping loyalties. 
Tesco take note, that your clubcard database for me is useless if all my products are bought elsewhere.

My view on supermarkets, as an investment, was not necessarily about continued aggressive growth through their own efforts, as they are really only cannibalising each others market share but by maintaining that in an inflating economy ie. the pie from which they all take becomes bigger each year as the economy grows/inflates.
I also coined a phrase a few years back regarding another of my investments as it appeared to ride the crest of a wave with increasing profits, and that was to suggest that the real measure of success won't be visible for a few years and that it would only come when we are able to look back and ask if the profits were spent wisely, in the case of Tesco, and Morrison's (and my other investment), the answer appears to be a lengthening list of noes.

The unfortunate thing is that success does breed apathy in terms of loosening the controls and measures that brought success in the first place, and then, as time moves on, successions kick in, and new blood, which never seems to feel part of the journey (remember the word is succession), is typically more free in spending the cash or filling out the existing structure/administrative cost base.

Anyway, I have always found it a little odd that my in store Morrison's experience always seemed more expensive than Tesco, and even Sainsbury's and along with the (in the past), shorter opening hours, find it easy to understand why it has struggled to dupe shoppers into entering. But that's just my experience at my local stores where the restaurant seems to be the success.

The share price rose yesterday on the news, and looks to be falling with the wider index today following deflation and growth risks, but the concern for Morrison's now is where to turn next. 
Philips is stepping down in March but without the enthusiasm and energy of a committed CEO, and a clear strategy and performance to measure, Morrison is rudderless.

Related links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk: Morrisons ousts Dalton Philips after Christmas sales drop

Related posts:
Morrison's Preliminary Results: "Different and Better than Ever"?

Sunday 11 January 2015

December 2014: Portfolio Update.

So that was 2015, now consigned to history and with it the disappointment of my first loss in the 5 years since I put a base on this portfolio and the discipline of measuring its performance against the FTSE100.
Strangely it has managed to just pip the FTSE100 at the last, and end the year -2.3%, as opposed to the FTSE100 finishing - 2.71% down.

So thats a full 12 months since my portfolio's high and a full 12 months put down to consolidation.
Although, there has been some changes notably, the all too late selling of Tesco and Morrisons; new additions in Barrat Developments and Banco Santander, and top ups to BP, Aviva, and R-R.
There was also the addition of Verizon as a result of Vodafone's dealmaking.

At 9 individual trades, thats slightly more than my typical 7/8 per annum, but includes an aborted attempt to put in place a regular purchase plan on Barrat, which ended up as 2 trades for what would have been 1 normal trading tranche.

So December proved to be a roller coaster with the early part of the month seeming to signal the start of an end of year rally, then with the bottom falling out of things, I think I was down more than 6% for the year before a late rally brought my portfolio back to finish the year year -2.3% (-0.66% in December).
The FTSE100 suffered a little worse to end the year -2.71%, after a -2.33% fall in December.

My portfolio benefitting from a few dividends from BAE, Microsoft, William Hill, and BP.

As briefly alluded to, I also added to my existing holdings in BP and Aviva which I hope will yield additional dividends and gains in the year ahead and beyond that.

I have to express my disappointment in the Supermarket sector's performance as my thoughts were that, as it provided one of our most basic staples, that my investments would actually be forever holdings but its seems that poor management and strategy can outweigh and undermine even those basic strengths.


Merchant Adventurer's Index
Forecast
1 month
YTD
48 mth
Price
% holding
Div. yield
% gain
% gain
% gain
R-R
870.00p
23.28%
2.78%
3.26%
-30.48%
32.53%
National Grid
918.10p
14.92%
4.74%
-1.28%
16.51%
66.02%
Aviva
484.50p
12.97%
4.06%
-4.63%
7.09%
33.92%
BP
411.00p
9.46%
6.27%
0.78%
-6.49%
-2.87%
Apple **
$110.38
8.18%
1.53%
-6.84%
45.88%
94.52%
Vodafone
222.65p
2.25%
5.05%
-4.83%
-11.75%
-11.75%
Verizon **
3001.41p
1.45%
4.02%
-7.18%
8.14%
8.14%
IG Group
719.00p
4.78%
4.03%
6.13%
16.72%
50.67%
William Hill
362.50p
3.05%
3.57%
8.21%
-9.80%
96.82%
Imperial Tobacco
2836.00p
2.94%
4.97%
-4.19%
21.30%
25.54%
BAT
3500.00p
2.45%
4.43%
-7.76%
8.09%
4.35%
General Electric **
$25.27
1.95%
2.95%
-4.24%
-4.49%
65.77%
Microsoft **
$46.45
2.26%
2.19%
-2.48%
31.47%
66.47%
BAE Systems
472.00p
1.74%
4.39%
-1.89%
8.51%
43.03%
Centrica
279.00p
1.29%
6.37%
-1.97%
-19.76%
-15.86%
SSE
1622.00p
1.65%
5.49%
-1.10%
18.39%
32.41%
BG Group
865.00p
0.93%
2.37%
-3.91%
-33.33%
-33.26%
Barrat Dev.
471.00p
1.55%
3.02%
2.32%
31.76%
31.76%
Banco Santander
544.50p
2.35%
6.46%
-5.71%
-0.22%
-0.22%
Cash
0.54%
0.00%
100.00%
3.91%
1 Month
YTD
48 mth
Virtual Portfolio gain (incl. Dividends)
- 1 month gain  2104.11 -  2090.17
-0.66%
- YTD gain        1644.62 - 2090.17
-2.30%
- 48 month gain 1264.20 - 2090.17
65.33%
- 60 month gain 1000.00 - 2090.17
109.02%
FTSE gain (excl. Dividends)
- 1 month gain   6722.62 - 6566.09
-2.33%
- YTD gain        5897.81 - 6566.09
-2.71%
- 48 month gain 5971.01 - 6566.09
9.97%
- 60 month gain 5412.88 - 6566.09
21.30%
Transactions:
01/12/2014 Div BAE @ 8.2p per share
05/12/2014 Div William Hill @ 4.89p per share
10/12/2014 Buy BP @ 407.39p per share
15/12/2014 Div Microsoft @ 16.50p per share
15/12/2014 Buy BP @ 387.71p per share
16/12/2014 Buy Aviva @ 464.00p per share
19/12/2014 Div BP @ 5.8p per share
Notes: 
*     US Dividends are adjusted for exchange rate and 15% withholding tax
**   Sterling : Dollar exchange rate = £1: $1.5586 as at 31/12/14
***  Banco Dividends are adjusted for exchange rate and 21% withholding tax
**** Sterling : Euro exchange rate = £1: $1.28769 as at 31/12/14




Click to enlarge, close to return.

The chart serves to illustrate the bobbing along pattern of consolidation, that follows the fact that my portfolio failed to break the all time high set at the end of December 2013, so lets hope that 2015 will bring better fortune.

And whilst, January is already bringing its ups and downs, I am comforted by the fact that my portfolio is still within touching distance of new highs.
Dividends from R-R and National Grid are due and will hopefully help to offset the financial machinations and change of strategy affecting Banco Santander.

So with that summarised it just leaves my wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2015!


Previous Posts:
November 2014: Portfolio Update.
October 2014: Portfolio Update.
September 2014: Portfolio Update
August 2014: Portfolio Update
July 2014: Portfolio Update.
June 2014: Portfolio Update.
May 2014: Portfolio Update.
April 2014: Portfolio Update.
March 2014: Portfolio Update.
2013 Dividends profiled.
February 2014: Portfolio Update
January 2014: Portfolio Update
December 2013: Portfolio Update.

Friday 9 January 2015

Banc raid!

Banco Santander S.A. @ 480.75p, -41.25p (-6.2%)

Well, despite taking 12 months to purchase, it looks like I may have jumped in to buying too soon with particular whiplash coming from the change in strategy at Banco Santander which has hit my recent addition to the tune of 12% and the forward looking disappointment of a reduced dividend as new management looks to address the capital strength of the bank in one swoop rather than a steady incline. 
Rumours now rife that it might be the first step towards an acquisition.

Given the banks steadfast grip to its payout strategy through the last 6 years, and in the face of Spanish and EU concerns it is hugely disappointing to say the least.
More significantly, if I can no longer expect the yield then the growth forecasts need to be good or it will have to go straight out the door it just came in!

Related links:
www.dailymail.co.uk: Santander looking to raise £6bn in cash call amid rumours over a new large acquisition