investing etc. 0009

Annual report season, InterContinental Hotels, Moneysupermarket.com, SThree, Me Group, Senior, Renew Holdings, 4Imprint, the fastest growing company in the UK - and it’s a B Corp!

It is a busy time of year because it is annual reporting season.

‘tis the season

London listed companies must publish annual reports within four months of their financial year ends, or six months if they are listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

Since many companies choose to end their financial years at the same time as the calendar year, the rules give them one of two deadlines: The end of April and the end of June. 

As you can see from a table I made for SharePad last year, the period from March to June was much busier than the rest of the year:

Well, joy, we’re in April, and things have heated up!

Rebuilding my investment infrastructure

Perhaps you can sense the growing urgency in my two most recent articles for SharePad, the software I use to decide which reports to read.

Though published in late March, Show me the MONY was written earlier in the month to accommodate a short holiday. 

Back then I could see the wave of annual reports coming, but it was only just breaking, which meant I could dwell on a trickle of interesting shares identified by my 5 strikes system: InterContinental Hotels, Moneysupermarket.com, SThree, Me Group, and Senior.

By the time my next SharePad article was published, I was in full triage mode. So much so I felt it necessary to tweak the 5 Strikes system to make it more efficient.

Rebuilding the national infrastructure

I have also taken a much closer look at one of the 5 Strikes graduates, Renew Holdings. 

Renew is an engineering contractor. When you see people dressed in high viz jackets and hard hats working on our roads, railways and water pipes, they are working for companies like Renew.

It had not occurred to me that a business like this might do something special or be especially profitable, but Renew makes the specialist claim and the numbers speak for themselves.

I took quite a shine to Renew, but I have yet to add it to the Decision Engine, the group of 40 shares that I score, rank and build portfolios from. That’s not because of anything I discovered, it is because of what I might not have discovered. 

Shiny new ideas are always more exciting than shares I have analysed a dozen times, so I guard against being swayed by novelty. 

However, should I drop a share from the Decision Engine on its own merits, Renew is in pole position to replace it.

Gratuitous photo from an evening out in London. There is an alternative to the Decision Engine, but I don’t think it will make you richer.

In the one trade I allow myself per month, I have trimmed the Share Sleuth portfolio’s holding in 4Imprint, a terrific business.

Although 4Imprint has been a member of Share Sleuth for less than four years, the sale generated a return greater than the original investment while leaving a holding more valuable than the original holding behind.

Britain’s fastest growing company

I don’t think about fast growing companies much because they are unpredictable, but when the FT published a list of Europe’s fastest growing companies, I glanced through it to see if any were British. 

Number 8 is. It’s Modern Milkman, which has grown from a standing start in 2018 to a £50 million revenue company in 2022.

Modern Milkman delivers milk in old fashioned milk bottles! But the groceries and household products it also delivers are in plastic free wrapping too.

Even better, it is a certified B Corp, which means it is run in the interests of everyone it impacts. I think B Corps would make good investments, if only more of them were listed, and as a customer I am drawn to them too.

I put our postcode into Modern Milkman’s website but alas, it doesn’t supply our area. 

Perhaps there is no need. Rachael, my wife, who is way ahead of me when it comes to consumer trends, has rolled our own Modern Milkman. 

Our Milk comes in bottles and our eggs come in cardboard cartons from Plumbs Dairy, which is a local family business. Our veg comes from Riverford Organic Farmers. Riverford is a B Corp, and it takes away the packaging so it can reuse it.

Thank you for reading

Thank you for reading, now there are 297 of us!

If your interest was piqued by 4Imprint, fellow substacker Alex Sweet has written a lengthy but never boring write up. 

I was also charmed by a profile of Specsavers co-founder Mary Perkins in the FT (if the link is stopped by the paywall try searching “Mary Perkins FT”). Eighty years old and still a director, she sends cards to employees and partners on their birthdays.

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