Dart (LON:DTG), the airline and logistics business that’s proved to be such a triumph for patient value hunters over the past year, has long been one of the best performing shares on Stockopedia’s Screen of Screens. But despite being a constant presence for over eight months, Dart has only been qualifying recently by a wafer-thin margin and actually came close to losing its place earlier this month. For investors holding its shares, this probably won’t set off too many alarm bells, but it does raise some interesting questions about the Screen of Screens and when it might be time to rethink the investment case for a company that loses its place. 

To qualify for the Screen of Screens, a stock must be meeting the criteria for at least three of the 60+ long-only Guru Screens tracked by Stockopedia. Filtering the market for those companies that are regularly achieving a place on several different strategies is a useful proxy for shares with good fundamentals across a wide range of investing criteria. Over one year, the Screen of Screens has produced an impressive return of 36%, outperforming the FTSE 100 by 19.3% – a performance that’s achieved JUST by finding those companies that are qualifying for the highest numbers of investing strategies. 

In the case of Dart, its share price began taxiing for take-off last autumn and by the time we started tracking qualification histories in November it had already qualified for a place on the Screen of Screens. A 12-month price rise of 209% to 235p has vindicated the huge amounts of head scratching by numerous value bloggers, many of whom felt the company had long been under-valued (and in some cases still do). Part of the enigma with Dart’s valuation has been in weighing its hugely profitable Jet2 package holidays business against the many cost risks that airlines face. Commentators like Paul Scott and Richard Beddard have examined these issues at length. 

In his Adventurous Investor column in the FT in February, David Stevenson wrote about how the Screen of Screens is a useful way of finding stocks like Dart before they get away. Ironically, while David was ruing what he perceived to be a missed opportunity (Dart had already doubled in price), the fact was…

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