Friday Email: 26 June 2015
Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his weekly run-down and upcoming events in the investor calendar, like this one:
The FTSE 100 had a very strong start to the week but has given up a lot of the gains in the past two days as worries over Greece persist for what seems like a lifetime. On to dividends and we saw some pretty solid increases in the past week from companies.
Photo-Me who came in with a 30% increase to take their sequence to +60%, +25%, +20%, +25%, +30% over the past 5 years. They have promised 10% increases in each of the next three years and they also have stated that all net cash above £50m will be paid out as special dividends. The outlook continues to look strong in both the photo and laundery businesses. Telecom Plus increased by 14.3% and promised another 15% rise in next years dividend. Stagecoach continued their impressive record with a double digit increase of 10.5% and DS Smith's rose by 14%.
The week ahead looks very quiet, particularly towards the end of the week. Tuesday and Wednesday see some action with Imagination Technologies, Carpetright and the relative newcomer to DividendMax, Plastics Capital reporting. Also reporting are St Modwen Properties, Anite and Greene King. There a large number of companies both in the UK and internationally going ex-dividend this week. The apparent highlight being the big special from Direct Line. They have now paid four special dividends in the past three years since flotation with this one being over 8%. However, this one is different with the company attempting to mitigate the ex-dividend effect with a share consolidation of approximately 8%. You can turn it into what in effect would be a share buyback by the company by electing to receive your special dividend in shares. The market seems to like this procedure and the shares currently trade near their high for the year.
Other dividends of note (i.e over 3%) going ex in the coming week are Tate & Lyle (3.69%), Polar Capital Holdings (4.14%) Braemer Shipping Services (3.58%) and De La Rue (3.06%).
The Friday email is delivered to over 20,000 subscriber’s every week, and remains a widely read run-down of recent events and what investors can expect in the week ahead written by our chief analyst Mark Riding.
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Read next: 19 June 2015
The stock market has endured a tough week as the drama in Greece plays out. The FTSE 100 had fallen over 200 points since this time last week when it fell to 6628 yesterday before recovering as the Dow jones rose 180 points. It is now trading at over 6700. In my view its as much about the usual summer blues as the Greek crisis. The economic indicators are generally supportive and companies in the main are beating expectations, certainly from a dividend perspective. The huge mining sector has been dragging the main indices down for a long time now as China has slowed and commodities prices have slumped, but other sectors have been prospering and financial services have been recovering. Overall, I am quite positive.
