Miserly Investor

With the FTSE climbing to close at 6,625 last week I am finding it much harder to find those tempting purchases at the moment. I notice however that G4S (LON:GFS) has fallen back around 20% over the last couple of weeks which has pushed it into high yield territory, something which I don’t recall happening very often for this particular company. So that has got…

Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA, LON:RDSB) usually needs little introduction. It is one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, originally formed in 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport and Trading, although the two companies only formally unified into a single holding company in 2005. Shell is now the largest company on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of…

There’s nothing more beguiling than a cheap looking share. And in times such as these, where we have seen prices of shares on our watch list rise well above where we hoped to achieve a favourable entry point, the allure of such apparent bargains becomes more powerful. That is human nature I suppose. If I went into the supermarket tomorrow to find that my favourite…

I like to think of income investors as the Zen masters of investing. When the City is deafening us with noise and distraction, the income investor sits there with a quiet mind, only to wake briefly from their meditative state on results day to ask the question: “okay, so how much did my dividend go up by this time?“. They know all of the short…

Some of those quality blue chips that occasionally offer themselves up at decent yields have been looking fully valued of late. With the FTSE closing at 6,154 last week, its highest level since May 2008, it sometimes feels like some of my best ideas are running away from me. Take Reckitt Benckiser (LON: RB.) for example, a company which I admire as it has proved…

Hi there mpat89, The operating margin of 7.1% for 2012 noted in the article is the underlying figure before exceptional items. Note that the figures in Stockopedia's stock report for operating profit is the reported figure after exceptional items (mainly the loss on the Olympics contract, restructuring costs and amortisation of intangibles), so this will obviously paint a worse picture of both the operating margin…

I published this article yesterday by the way, so the fact that G4S (LON:GFS) was the highest riser in the FTSE100 today is largely coincidence!

DLG12, I assume it is being dragged down with the mining sector where a significant amount of its sales of conveyor belts come from. See last week's FT article entitled "Fenner is about more than conveyor belts" for example.

Hi Boros, At present I would usually identify the historic goodwill write off by going to the goodwill/intangibles note in the annual report which will split the net amount on the balance sheet between cost and accumulated impairment. I wonder if Stockopedia could do the same for goodwill/intangibles as they do for property, plant and equipment in their balance sheets, where they show the split…

Actually, the above has reminded me of the interesting piece that Buffett wrote on goodwill in his 1983 letter - see the Appendix entitled: "Goodwill and its Amortization: The Rules and The Realities"http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1983.htmlIn it he says the following: We believe managers and investors alike should view intangible assets from two perspectives: (1) In analysis of operating results – that is, in evaluating the underlying economics…