Good morning!

Today I'm going to cover 5 companies, as follows;

  • Brady (LON:BRY) - in line trading update
  • dotDigital (LON:DOTD) - in line trading update, plenty of cash, and good growth
  • Hotel Chocolat (LON:HOTC) - in line trading update - is that good enough to justify such a high PE rating?
  • Greggs (LON:GRG) - large cap bakery/fast food - Strong LFL proves that High Streets still viable.
  • Elegant Hotels (LON:EHG)- profit down a bit, as expected.


Also, Graham is going to report on;


His sections will be added to the end of this report (as opposed to him publishing a separate report).

Please note that Graham added sections to yesterday's report, in the evening, covering Ashmore (LON:ASHM) and Orosur Mining Inc (LON:OMI) .


Inflation

Is starting to rear its head again. Figures out this morning apparently show the CPI measure of inflation rising to 1.6%. This is likely to be the thin end of the wedge, because sterling's depreciation is only starting to feed through.

Therefore investors need to think carefully about this issue. How will higher inflation affect companies that you've invested in? Will they be able to pass on cost increases to the end customers? Pricing power is very important at the moment. To have pricing power, companies need to sell differentiated products/services, that people want to buy. Not generic products.

At the moment, I expect we'll probably see a spike up in inflation during 2017 to somewhere between 3-5%, at a guesstimate. That view is based on what happened in 2008, when sterling also devalued sharply, and inflation spiked up to about 5%, before coming back down again.


Changing my mind

Just to clarify, from yesterday's report. If the facts change, then I change my mind - as the famous saying goes. This point is worth reinforcing. I'm not expressing sentiment in these reports. I'm trying to form a rational, facts/figures-based view on various shares at this specific moment in time.

New information is being published all the…

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