Daily Stock Market Report (Mon 30 Dec 2024) - DUKE, CHSS, RPI, NARF
Good morning!
The markets are open today, but it's looking like another quiet one as the festive lull continues. We'll keep this post open for comments and will take a look at those companies that have issued news today.
Megan has also taken a look at UK tech success story Raspberry PI Holdings (LON:RPI), which has double-bagged since its June 2024 IPO and is now a member of the FTSE 250.
Elsewhere, our 12 stocks of Christmas series is continuing. These are stocks we're feeling positive about heading into 2025 - here's a list of the companies covered so far:
New podcast episode: in case you missed it, the latest episode of our new Companies & Markets Weekly podcast dropped on Friday. Reflecting on an eventful year, Lawrence and Megan discuss some of the big winners of 2024 and the outlook for UK shares, plus some of the companies that have attracted subscribers' interest during the year.
You can find the latest episode at the locations below:
10.30am: today's report is now complete. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Explanatory notes
A quick reminder that we don’t recommend any shares. We aim to review trading updates & results of the day and offer our opinions on them as possible candidates for further research if they interest you. Our opinions will sometimes turn out to be right, and sometimes wrong, because it's anybody's guess what direction market sentiment will take & nobody can predict the future with certainty. We are analysing the company fundamentals, not trying to predict market sentiment.
We stick to companies that have issued news on the day. We usually avoid the smallest, and most speculative companies, although if something is newsworthy and interesting, we'll try to comment on it. Please bear in mind the "list of companies reporting" is precisely that - it's not a to do list. We have a particular emphasis on under/over expectations updates, and we follow the "most viewed" list of readers, so if you're collectively interested in a company, we'll try to cover it. Add your own comments if you see something interesting, and feel free to discuss anything shares-related in the comments.
A key assumption is that readers DYOR (do your own research), and make your own investment decisions. Reader comments are welcomed - please be civil, rational, and include the company name/ticker, otherwise people won't necessarily know what company you are referring to, if they are using unthreaded viewing of comments.
What does our colour-coding mean? Will it guarantee instant, easy riches? Sadly not! Share prices move up or down for many reasons, and can often detach from the company fundamentals. So we're not making any predictions about what share prices will do.
Green (thumbs up) - means in our opinion, a company is well-financed (so low risk of dilution/insolvency), is trading well, and has a reasonably good outlook, with the shares reasonably priced. And/or it's such deep value that we see a good chance of a turnaround, and think that the share price might have overshot on the downside.
Amber - means we don't have a strong view either way, and can see some positives, and some negatives. Often companies like this are good, but expensive.
Red (thumbs down) - means we see significant, or serious problems, so anyone looking at the share needs to be aware of the high risk. Sometimes risky shares can produce high returns, if they survive/recover. So again, we're not saying the share price will necessarily under-perform, we're just flagging the high risk.
Others: PINK = takeover approach, BLACK = profit warning, GREY = possible de-listing. Links:
Daily Stock Market Report: records from 5/11/2024 (format: Google Sheet). Updated to 19/12/2024.
Companies reporting
| Name (mkt cap) | RNS | Summary | Our view |
Duke Capital (LON:DUKE) (£152m) | Trading & Operational update | Q3 FY25 exp. recurring cash revenue of £6.5m, up from £6.4m in the prior quarter. “Underpins” dividend. | AMBER/GREEN (Roland) |
World Chess (LON:CHSS) (£26m) | €6m loan facility | The chess marketing business has secured a new €6m loan to refinance existing debt and support chessarena.com. | RED (Roland) |
Helix Exploration (LON:HEX) (£22m) | Acquisition of helium processing plant. | This 2024 IPO has made a down payment on a helium production plant, a first step to potential revenue generation. | |
Narf Industries (LON:NARF) (£10m) | HY results | Contract delays caused a decline in revenue. CEO loan is supporting working capital requirements. | RED (Roland) |
Bonus section (no RNS today): Raspberry PI Holdings (LON:RPI)
Up 80% in December to 667p - Megan - GREEN
After a rather underwhelming first few months on the market, Raspberry Pi has enjoyed a mega-December. The shares are up more than 80% in the last month alone, which now puts them 138% higher than the June IPO price. The company’s market cap now exceeds £1.2bn, which is almost 4 times the company’s trailing 12 month sales.
The funny thing is that Raspberry Pi’s share price surge hasn’t come off the back of any news, instead it seems to have been driven by the arrival of SW Investment Management on the shareholder register. On 12 December, the US based asset manager bought 6.9m shares to give it a 3.59% stake.
Now I am all for UK investors exhibiting some caution around IPOs before leaping in, but clearly there was a lot of pent up demand for Raspberry Pi which has now been unleashed by the arrival of a US investment manager on the shareholder register. What I am a little disappointed about is why it seemed to take the arrival of a US fund manager to persuade British investors of the potential. SW Investment Management is run by Stephen White who describes his role on his LinkedIn profile like this: “I manage a private limited partnership that buys a few stocks here and there.” He also admits to running Castle Union between 2012 and 2015 and describes this role as “managing partner of a business that basically failed.”
I can’t comment on the expertise of Mr White, but I do like what I see at Raspberry Pi, especially its healthy community of customers.
In July I wrote about Raspberry Pi in my weekend newsletter and sought the expertise of some of my more technically minded colleagues (I work with a lot of software developers at Stockopedia). They use Raspberry Pi products to automate the control of household lights, monitor boiler flow and receive notifications when their plants need watering. They also pointed to the fact that the company has a huge following online. In 2023, the company’s website received 50.6 million visitors and the most popular Raspberry Pi subreddit has 3.2 million members (for context, Nvidia’s most popular subreddit has 1.5 million subscribers). It’s also popular among the more scientific members of the tech community, with 203,000 academic papers containing the words ‘Raspberry Pi’ as of May 2024.
This level of support and documentation only adds to the popularity of the products, because it makes them easier to use. If you’re looking to power up your Lego robot, Raspberry Pi is the technology of choice because the community can show you how to do it. And this feeds a network effect which gives Raspberry Pi an advantage over its competitors.
Paul also analysed the company in great detail after its IPO. You can read his verdict here. (Spoiler alert, he thought the shares were overvalued at £800m).
I am a bit more optimistic about the company. I can see that it is extremely hard to value based on any traditional metrics. But it is a fast growing, profitable company, with a loyal customer base, dedicated management team, operating in the tech sector. And this is exactly the kind of company we should be celebrating when it lists in London, regardless of whether a US investment management firm likes the look of it as well. GREEN
Duke Capital (LON:DUKE)
Up 2.5% to 30.8p (£157m) - Trading and operational update - Roland - AMBER/GREEN
Today’s update from this unusual “hybrid capital solutions” provider appears to be in line with expectations. The company is guiding for third-quarter “recurring cash revenue” of £6.5m, up from £6.4m in Q2 FY25.
As Graham discussed earlier in December, the business is aiming to transition from managing its own capital to a fee-based business managing third-party capital. The company says the hunt for a funding partner is ongoing with “significant progress” having been made.
Meanwhile, capital raised in November’s £23.5m equity raise has left the company “well positioned” to support growth opportunities in its existing portfolio.
Roland’s view: CEO Neil Johnson says Duke’s third-quarter performance “underpins our stable dividend”, supporting a 9% yield. With thanks to house broker Cavendish, I can see that earnings forecasts for y/e March 2025 are unchanged at 3p per share following today’s update.
Duke’s valuation seems very reasonable to me, trading just below book value with a chunky dividend yield. I think this remains a potentially interesting niche business, albeit not without some risks relating to its growing use of debt, track record of dilution, and investee quality. I’m going to stay at AMBER/GREEN.
World Chess (LON:CHSS)
Down 7% to 3.5p (£24m) - World Chess secures €6m loan - Roland - RED
I seem to keep seeing media coverage suggesting chess is becoming a more commercialised and large-scale spectator sport. I’m not sure how far advanced this process might be, but Main Market-listed World Chess does not (yet) seem to be sharing in the spoils. This business operates chess tournaments and chessarena.com, the official online gaming platform of the International Chess Federation (FIDE).
Today’s update shows the company has secured a new €6m short-term loan from “an existing shareholder”. These funds are due for repayment by the end of 2025 and carry a surprisingly low 4% interest rate.
Funds will be used to repay an existing short-term loan and potentially to increase marketing spend for the company’s online chess platform chessarena.com.
Roland’s view: to me, this looks like money to keep the lights on. Checking back to the interim accounts, World Chess had net cash of just €57k at the end of June 2024, excluding c.€1.5m of lease liabilities.
H1 2024 revenue of €1.2m converted into a net cash outflow for the half year of €2.2m. This was offset by €400k of loans, €222k of funding from directors and €1.5m raised through a share placing.
Broker forecasts on Stockopedia appear to forecast revenue of €2.6bn this year – I think this is an error and should be €2.6m, with an associated loss of €3.6m.
I don’t see any evidence this company has a viable business model or that this new funding will be sufficient to allow World Chess to reach break even. I’d steer clear of this stock and see no choice but to go RED.
Narf Industries (LON:NARF)
Down 7% to 0.6p (£9.4m) - Interim Results - Roland - RED
Narf Industries is a tech firm providing cybersecurity solutions to government entities. This business appears to be one of the crop of 2021 IPOs that were floated at excessive valuations and have since sunk without trace.
I would not normally look at a micro cap business like this, especially given the stock’s Sucker Stock rating and downbeat StockRank:
However, as it’s a quiet day I took a look this morning and was struck by this company’s seemingly rapid revenue growth…
…and the near-30% shareholding of CEO Steve Bassi:
Is there a quality software business in the making here?
After all, cybersecurity threats to national security are a growing issue in most countries and Narf’s growth appears to be being driven by contracts with key US government agencies:
Source: Narf Industries website (30/12/24)
Let’s take a look at some numbers.
Half-year results summary: Investors were warned in November to expect a poor set of half-year numbers. Most of the company’s revenue comes from US government funding for research and other activities. Delays to the approval of the latest US budget meant that expected contract awards were delayed.
The company says it has also been focused on developing and commercialising its SocialCyber platform, which has now secured a $1.3m contract with DARPA.
Excuses are like elbows – we all have them. Narf’s reasons may be valid, but from an equity perspective, today’s numbers – covering the six months to 30 September 2024 – don’t look good:
H1 revenue down 62% to $1.2m
Operating expenses down 5% to $2.4m
Operating loss: $1.8m (H1 23: op loss of $1.0m)
H1 cash outflow of $1.4m, partially offset by $864k of director funding
The balance sheet highlights a more serious concern. Net cash fell to just $135k at the end of the half year, from $654k at the end of March 2024.
The company says that CEO Bassi has expanded a working capital loan to the business from $2.5m to $3.0m to help support operations. The accounts show $864k was drawn down from director funding in H1.
Going concern risks: solvency risks are flagged up in the going concern statement, highlighting mitigating measures:
Mr Bassi has agreed not to demand repayment of his loan until Narf has sufficient cash resources to afford it
Various senior managers have accepted salary deferrals until revenues are sufficient to settle the outstanding amounts
Company cash flow forecasts to the end of 2025 are said to indicate Narf has sufficient cash resources to meet all foreseeable liabilities. But I would argue there are significant risks here from an equity perspective.
Narf’s share count has already tripled since its IPO. I would not rule out the risk of a further equity fundraising:
Outlook: no formal outlook comment is provided, but the company notes it may have a material $5m contract in the pipeline:
Notified by current government customer of selection for $5+ million multi-year contract award, negotiations pending, with award anticipated in Q1 2025.
In the absence of new guidance today, I assume the guidance provided by Narf in November remains valid:
FY25 revenue: “not less than $5m”
“Cash flow breakeven” at end of FY25
FY26 revenue: “not less than $8m”
Unfortunately, broker forecasts for revenue of $12m shown on Stockopedia appear to be stale – broker Canaccord Genuity placed its guidance under review in its November note and I can’t find anything more recent than this.
Roland’s view: this is a classic example of a company with a potentially exciting story to tell, but significant financial risk.
I’m not in a position to judge the relative merits of Narf’s research and software. But what I can see is that the company is potentially on thin ice, financially, dependent on the goodwill of its majority shareholder CEO and various key managers who are willing to work without salaries.
As a result, I see this as a highly speculative situation. Narf could go on to be a high-margin, recurring revenue multibagger. Or it could fail completely – or something in between.
For an outside equity investor, I think the dilution risk alone means this makes little sense as an investment unless you have some kind of edge.
I certainly don’t have an edge, so I’ll draw a line here. Given the solvency risks flagged up on the balance sheet, I have no choice but go RED on Narf Industries.
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51 comments
How wrong I was! Footsie up 22% to 9905 over the year. Quite a barnstormer. FT250 was up a much more modest 10%.
The FT100 is on a trailing PE of 17.0, which is above average. The actual growth in earnings was around 6%, a pretty respectable number.
Meanwhile, the mid-caps are on a trailing PE of 13.7, a little below average. Earnings growth has been around 4.7%. Dividend yield is 3.6%. So perhaps we can see a total return next year of around 8.3%, which isn't bad.
Interesting article in the Telegraph about Tesla launching its own power supply company in the UK - Tesla Electric.
Would take on existing suppliers and have some advantages in that its Powerwalls and vehicles could be used to send power back to the grid. Presumably with some sort of exclusive deal.
No licence at present but according to the Telegraph it is confident enough to commence hiring.
I wonder if this is a positive for Volex (LON:VLX) that has close ties with Tesla?
Implications for Volex not clear from the article. Also talked about Tesla perhaps moving into heat pumps.
I wondered if this was a threat to the existing battery storage industry.
Tesla are big in the battery storage business in the UK already, that is without using all the ones that can move!
It's a mystery as to why the government has paid wind farms £1Bn this year to switch off at night when EV owners with vehicle-to-grid (VTG) technology can hook up to the grid and mop up the excess on an economy tarrif and benefit by either using it themselves or offering it back to the grid during the day. This could make a huge contribution and maybe provide ample base load capacity with the planned upgrades to wind power. Today ~40% of electricity is being sourced from wind and ~20% from gas which suggests gas could be replaced by VTG.
"Today ~40% of electricity is being sourced from wind and ~20% from gas which suggests gas could be replaced by VTG."
This was mentioned in the article. I didn't post a link as it was behind a paywall, it was however quite a long article.
Reading between the lines I took it as Tesla wanted to establish some sort of De facto standard for green energy and storage
This isn't my area of expertise so interesting to see comments here.
Most politicians of whatever colour strike me as economically inept. I am surprised the country does as well as it does, despite them, so the plan going forward is to focus on the companies and earnings prospects relative to valuation.
Despite the economic malaise and complete disinterest in the UK stock market, particularly in small caps and AIM there are many very good companies for sale at attractive prices.
I suspect that most members of this community have generated returns this year far in excess of what could be achieved by putting ones money in a bank, building society or similar. For me like most it has been a difficult year, but my return is about 12%. Not great but three times or thereabouts what one can obtain from the aforementioned alternatives. Given that my portfolio is exclusively in small caps, mostly AIM, devoid of bids and held within an ISA, so free of tax free, I have to be satisfied with the return.
Anyway on to shares. I bought a modest holding in ITV (LON:ITV) when Sky News reported that a bid was likely, which may still happen. However the company has been potential bid target for as long as I can remember and while there is undoubtedly significant value in ITV Studios, the problem as always is how to realise it? Rather than remain invested I decide to exit at cost and look for better opportunities.
I have reinvested the proceeds in Card Factory (LON:CARD) which I previously sold at around 116p on its descent post the interims, having bought around 98p. I watched the presentation of the interim results and read the Edison research note. I also viewed the interview with Richard Crow (aka Cockney Rebel) by Paul Hill. The company generates significant cash as a consequence of being fully integrated and is ambitious. It has made made two recent acquisitions (Ireland and the USA) without issuing equity and extended its exclusive relationship with Aldi to supplying 1200 stores, previously 550. The management team are well regarded and have reiterated that the company is on track to meet expectations, although this is subject to trading over the main Christmas period.
If Card Factory (LON:CARD) gets close to the forecast 14p or thereabouts. It will be trading on a PE of under 7 and a yield north of 5%. Given that outcome I would expect the shares to re-rate. Of course there is the possibility that it misses forecasts. Given this scenario and depending on the extent of the shortfall a revisit of 80p or lower is likely. On balance I believe the risk/reward scenario at the current price of under 100p is favourable. Fingers crossed!
I think Card Factory (LON:CARD) looks good, though I do not hold. It will be interesting to see how the xmas trading went. I don't know about other people, but I certainly had a lack of xmas cards delivered by post this year. I think people are refusing to pay the postage costs.
I've just looked through the cards my parents received (a lot more than I did) and they are pretty much all charity cards. Could be the older demographic but isn't a single one made by Card Factory (LON:CARD) Unless of course they don't include any mention of them making it at all.
Card Factory (LON:CARD) have charity cards as well, they don't have Card Factory on them, apart from on the box. Studio 41 is one of brands that is part of Card Factory. A few cards, do have Card Factory on the back but not Christmas cards.
Ah right that's good to know, tho there goes my secret shopper data then.
76% of my cards were hand delivered. Yes postage is high, especially first class.
RPI Choo choo (Am I being too frivolous?) I am a huge fanboy.
I had said before the IPO that I planned to buy shares as a daft wee laddie bet. I had actually put it out of my mind, and wasn't aware of its flotation until a week or so after Stock raised it to my attention. The price had already gone up, so I was sceptical.
But I figured that I was either going to put my money where my mouth is, or not. I decided the former. I got in at 426p. Yes, I was aware of the substantial valuation. The shares proceeded to drift down.
There was some question about inventory levels, and a note of caution about what this would mean over the next year. There was some fund manager (alas, I can't remember her name or the fund itself) who said she was fairly sanguine about this, and didn't expect explosions out of the gate. It turned out that she was on the money.
Here's the deal about RPI. It is, basically, the king of the SBCs (Single Board Computer). Every so often someone on Youtube posts a video "Is this the latest Raspberry Pi killer?" The answer is invariably "No", even though they may say "Yes".
Or you get things like "It's cheaper than a Raspberry Pi", or "It's more powerful than a Raspberry Pi". *Sigh* Yes, that may be true, but it's likely cheaper because it less powerful, or more powerful because it is more expensive. I really do get frustrated and a little angry when people come out with all this.
Hardware support is usually inferior on alternative systems, or the vendor doesn't upgrade the software distribution because they've lost interest in it.
And the documentation for the Pi is vastly better.
Or then you get things like "Oh, the Pi is rubbish, it doesn't have proper electrical protection on its pins". My answer to that is "I don't care!" The Pi guys made the right product for the right people. It works. No problem.
Another example. I got interested in an Ox64 board, which was a Pi competitor. It fit on a breadboard, which I thought was a neat idea, and it ran a version of Linux (although it might have been a Unix clone). Set-up was a pain, although I was expecting that.
"Oh, Ox64 has wifi and bluetooth" they cooed. about the Ox64. Yes, fine, but there was no software support for it, so it might not have existed. And there were no instructions on how to write programs on it.
And so on and soforth. I could go on a bit further, but you get the idea.
So my advice is generally: don't faff around, just get a Pi and you can sure of the whole thing working.
The sweet spot for me is the Raspberry Pi 2 Zero W at around 15 quid, but other people's mileage may vary.
I'm surprised you gave it a Green BTW, giving it's pretty steep valuation.
The problem with Raspberry Pi is appeal of the products themselves. Most people buy / have bought Raspberry Pis to tinker with electronics, emulate old computers, or to run small scale server applications. They're great for this, they take very little power, and they're generally cheap. However, I don't see them becoming a serious contender in the corporate market, there's no unique selling point I can see that would give them the edge over anything else available. I am aware that they claim that 70% of their sales are to "industry", I find that somewhat hard to believe given they have some limited use cases in manufacturing and product testing. I do wonder if they count sales through some of their electronics focused partners as industry, might just be the cynic in me.
This leaves them squarely in the hobbyist market, in which mini pcs are now approaching a similar price. The mini pcs run more familiar operating systems on a more widely supported chipset, are more capable of running multiple applications and being expanded / configured with more memory. New chipsets, like the Intel Alder Lake, are starting to get a foothold in the low power consumption market. On the other side of the market, for electronics, the ESP32 and ESP8266 are more than capable of doing much of what the Pi can do with less power consumption (you can even run them on batteries generally) and far more cheaply.
Don't get me wrong I like tinkering with Raspberry Pis, they're definitely not rubbish, but they're also not mainstream. That's leaves me marvelling at the multiple of sales, it's no ARM in my opinion.
They are popular in the audio market, people use them to stream music. Some professional manufacturers based their streamers on them.
Can you buy a mini pc for under £100?
They are being used in drones also, now.
"Raspberry Pi Compute Modules are widely used in industrial automation systems for monitoring and controlling manufacturing processes, assembly lines, and machinery. They can interface with sensors, actuators, and industrial communication protocols to enable efficient process automation."
Yes you can buy a mini pc for under £100, but that's not really the point.
To get professional grade audio you really need a separate DAC, either as a pi hat or via usb. If you're just dealing with basic audio then most modern phones / tablets / av amps can do as good a job as a basic pi. WiiMs are generally more suited for audio, are generally cleaner for handling inputs and outputs, and the basic model is available for under £100. There is some very good music software for the Pi, such as Volumio and piCorePlayer. I've used piCorePlayer myself in the past, with a touchscreen and a music server it's difficult to beat; however, the outlay is significantly over £100.
ESP32 / Arduino can be better for drones, due to power usage, but I guess that depends on your use case.
Compute modules are primarily for industrial use, as you mention. This is why I question the 70% sales are to industrial applications, I don't believe for a second that compute modules are anywhere near 70% of the raspberry pi sales. Compute modules generally form the basis of the re-engineered Pis sold for industrial purposes, inside an industrial case for installation in cabinets / din rails, etc. These are great low power devices, but they're certainly not your everyday pi and are significantly more expensive. The basic pi is a consumer device, it needs shielding an cooling for industrial use.
Yes you can add a Dac, cost around £20-£25. You can add a PSU, cost from around £30. Then you will a streamer that is as good many expensive streamers, according to some users. The Wiim is quite a new product and yes that would suit many users. The DAC inside many streamers is pretty basic. I have a similar board, as the Raspberry PI, it is far better than my streamer DAC. Many Wiim users are using external DACs.
I agree the Pi is difficult to beat, however there's no commercial product offering this a plug and play system that has made a breakthrough in the market. Volumio, for instance, sell nice looking hardware based on the Pi (at least I think it's based on a Pi, slightly difficult to tell) - but they're pretty expensive and Raspberry Pi will get a fraction of that revenue even if they do ever break through in the market. That generally limits it to the hobbyist / tech market that is prepared to go and create their own system and build it themselves, at least at any reasonable cost.
In terms of the end product it may be better for the price, although probably not as neat and tidy, but it won't make anyone invested in Raspberry Pi much money. Again, I'm not arguing about capability and haven't at any point, I'm arguing about the business case for investment in this business.
"This leaves them squarely in the hobbyist market"
I'm sorry, but that's wrong. One of the complaints during the chip shortage was that Raspberry was focusing on their commercial customers and limited supply to hobbyists. You would be surprised where in the commercial world you find Single Board Computers (SBC) including RPi's. An ESP32 is a microcontroller an RPi is a computer, it runs a full-blown operating system whereas an ESP32 runs firmware, basically a program that runs in loop (yes you make it mutli task with dual cores). You can actually install cut down Microsoft Windows on a RPi an ESP32 or 8266 does not even run Linux. I doubt commercial customers would be buying an RPi at £40-£100 if they could do it with an ESP for a fiver.
I should point out that I have a number SBC's in my home running as servers and about 30 odd ESP's as IOT devices automating lights, sensors and switches.
I did possibly exaggerate, although you are quoting just a portion of my whole post - I did also say "I find that somewhat hard to believe given they have some limited use cases in manufacturing and product testing".
However, I'd like to know exactly how many of these Pis are used commercially. I'd also say that I believe most commercial customers will not be using a consumer grade Pi, they'd be using something that has been built to cope with the conditions required - such as a Revolution Pi, these are significantly more expensive than your common or garden Pi but generally much cheaper than the equivalent embedded ruggedised computers that would historically have been used.
I've run Pis as servers, and also ESPs for IOT. I've also run ESPs as servers, they're actually quite capable of that too, although I agree they're not computers in the sense that a raspberry pi is. You can run Linux on an ESP32, at least it's feasible to do so, but I'm not sure why you would - for the same reason you wouldn't generally run Windows on a Pi.
I'm not arguing that Pis are incapable, I just don't see them getting the huge market share that would make an investment in Raspberry Pi Holdings worthwhile (particularly at the current multiple, which would suggest a huge increase in sales).
Raspberry PI Holdings (LON:RPI)
I think the strange performance of this stock since float is worthy of further analysis. Meagan describes a very British, dare I say Heath Robinson, sort of intelligent amateur following. The kind of intellectual resource the UK seems to have in abundance but fails to commercialise. I just finished the Lionel Barber biography of Masayoshi Son (Gambling Man). A very badly written book but it describes the kind of guy who could see the value in ARM when the British professional community could not. A (close to suicidal) risk taker, whose current 'vision' is Artificial Generative Intelligence. Could some of those spare time boffins be using Raspberry to crank up AGI over the next 5 years? Perhaps , like the current PM, I should consult OFWAT?
You can run a small AI model like llama on an RPI, but it's limited by the GPU and lack of VRAM. You can attach a full sized GPU from a desktop PC to an RPI, which means you could run larger models for faster results.
The story of ARM is quite interesting. There's a story that they powered off the machine but the still-spinning fans provided enough juice for the chips. At that point they realised they had something special on their hands, due to its low power consumption.
Somewhere in the late 80's early 90's Intel was ascending and other chip manufacturers were descending. So there didn't seem to be much of a future for ARM. That changed with the advent of smart phones, where low power consumption was crucial.
RISC OS is an operating system designed to run on ARM computers. It was designed in 1987 to run on Archimedes computers. You can run it on Raspberry Pi, surprisingly enough. I think the port is reasonable.
I'm not sure of the state of the Wi-fi. There seems to be a meessage on Feb 2024 that "we're excited to be able to confirm Wi-Fi to RISC OS 5 now underway." The keyword here, methinks, is "underway".
I think part of the problem is that the wifi is part of the Broadcom chip which is proprietary IP. So you can't just write a driver for it, you have to reverse-engineer it, which is not so easy. Raspberry Pi is able to do it, though, because they would have signed an NDA with Broadcom to write the driver. That driver will be a "binary blob", an opaque binary in its own right, so you can't just put it into another OS and expect it work.
At least that's my understanding, anyway.
Raspberry PI Holdings (LON:RPI) - I'm a bit surprised no-one has commented on the shareholder list - over 83% with major holders - including 49% with the RPI Foundation plus another 4% with the EBT. How will this affect the shares over the longer term...?
Sorry
But I can’t find the link to the New podcast episode: in case you missed it, the latest episode of our new Companies & Markets Weekly podcast dropped on Friday.
Hi Daniel, the links to the podcasts are in a list just below my introduction to the new episode.
Roland
Roland, as I'm partially deaf and have tinnitus as well, is there any possibility of a transcript facility for the podcasts? I have been struggling to listen more recently but feel I miss most amidst the strain of concentration. If the answer is no, then I fully understand as the extra work involved is not insubstantial.
Hi bottomoftheheap,
Thank you for your comment. I'm not sure if a transcript is possible at the moment, but I will pass on your feedback to the team.
Roland
Youtube provides subtitles for the podcasts. I think you can also get it transcribed into text document as well.
The Spotify link says page not found.
Youtube does work but has a load of adverts at the start.
The transcript is very good ( very few spelling mistakes) on Apple Podcasts).
Switch to Brave Browser for YouTube, then no ads.
You couldnt make it up !
Sunday times reports fhat suppliers to the government are being allowed to increase their prices from April to counteract the extra costs they have incurred due to the governments budget changes on NI .
Its a mental merry go circus world of smoke and mirrors full of total clowns .
How to increase inflation!
The Government has also written to regulators asking them for ideas of how to generate growth. Time to get out of the UK .... I forecast such economic incompetence here in the UK, I moved15% of my fund to Argentina 18 months ago. We need a Javier Milei.
James
Totally agree .
I have another strategy that simply involves giving my money away .
Id rather give it away to causes I can believe in and support .
I just financed the purchase of 10 hectares of land on Sumba Island to protect some 300 year old Santigi trees and build some infrastructure to support local displaced families to look after the trees .
Plus 6 hectares in Java to protect the nesting ground of rare Javanese eagles.
Much better to give it away in your lifetime and try to make a small difference somewhere on the planet .
I have nothing but utter and total contempt for this government and this is a way of “controlling the controllables” albeit a somewhat extreme solution .
Money and wealth management is an illusion in many ways and Im so frustrated by this country and its stupid stupid stupid government .
I am with you 100% Planetx.
My wife and I give anything spare to educational and agricultural projects in Malawi where I have worked.
I'm not sure what they expect regulators to know about generating growth; they're regulators. Other than the obvious of cut taxes and reduce red tape. In other words, deregulate. Can't see any regulators suggesting that they're an impediment and that their workforce needs to be reduced, though.
Fun fact: Patrick Boyle on Youtube did a video on Argentina. He explained about various flavours of Peronism. Regulation was rife. There was a regulation that horses had to wear hats in the summer, for example.
Hi Mark
Funnily enough, I just watched it an hour ago. I love Patrick's dry Irish humour and he is the real deal: a hedge fund manager and a visiting professor at LSE where he teaches a course on derivatives trading.
The various flavours of Peronism amused me and the requirement for a horse to wear a hat in sunny weather ... just a brilliantly observed absurdity which sums up the craziness of Peronism.
I fear we are heading in the same direction and if I were young, I would head for Argentina or Uruguay in search of a large commercial farm, because agriculture is surely finished here.
Before Labour was elected I was sceptical that they would exercise budgetary discipline. Now that they've been in power for a few months, their commitment to filling the "black hole" looks increasingly unlikely.
Here's what I expect to happen in 2025: interest rates staying at these levels due to inflation, reduced hiring due to extra employer taxes, and profit warnings. This will lead to consumer belt-tightening (I'm 50/50 on that one) and recession.
This points to the stock market being lower at the end of 2025 than it is now.
Let's see how close I am in a year's time, shall we?
I'll leave you with a departing thought from Milton Friedman. "Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only - how much government is spending - because that's the true tax. There's no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying for it (either in the form of direct taxes, or indirectly in the form of inflation or borrowing)."
CHSS Ah yes, that mongrel. Spread is 13% according to Stocko. StockRank of 2. Good grief. Market cap of £26m but revenues of only €2.4m. It has estimates for 2024 revenue of €2.7b, which must surely be a mistake in the database.
Needless to say: avoid. I just needed a good chuckle this morning.
What is even more scary is World Chess (LON:CHSS) are expected to make a loss of 3.5B!!
gmtrader. World Chess (LON:CHSS) Once again Stockpedia presents forecasts which are in no way comparable with the historical figures. Complainers will likely be told that it is Refinitiv's fault. This is not an isolated incident and the situation is lamentable!
Support often don't even respond now. Too busy blogging probably.
My own "12 days of xmas" stock ...
Cake Box Holdings (LON:CBOX) 192p is a cake shop franchise business. Floated in 2018, it has grown in leaps and bounds. Returns on capital are excelled, at 32%. It has net cash, a PE of 14 and a dividend yield of 5.2%. I think it's the riskiest company I've suggested in my xmas list due its small size. Turnover last year was £38m, and the market cap is only £77m.
In their half-year report issued on 12 November they said that they had opened seven new stores. They have also introduced efficiencies in their product processes. I'm told that their cakes are very good.
Just a reminder that my "12 stocks" isn't "for" 2025, but reflects a broader longer-term view of quality companies.
I hold shares in CBOX.
Local Cake Box Holdings (LON:CBOX) store invariably and I mean always devoid of customers, and staff come to that. You are ‘told’ that they are ‘very good’, but do you buy any? On my ‘stand well clear’ list.
E d & Team
Just a brief(ish) note to thank you all for your excellent work this year. I am one of your many subscribers who rarely comments (mainly due to the belief that my comments will not improve other subscribers knowledge). I have been here for many years and my memory indicates that I was attracted by the output of Paul. Having listened to many of Paul's podcasts earlier this year, I felt that it was inevitable that sooner or later there would be a parting and I was concerned at how that would impact the website.
My fears were unfounded, the output by the team has improved and so has the overall quality of reader posts (there are also noticeably a lot less posts, which is not a bad thing). All that being said the report and readers comments are both (although interesting) subjective. You have demonstrated over many years that following the data is the way to go. The results from your NAPS have been outstanding and I would be in a better financial position if I had just followed them. The webinars that you and the team have produced have been very educational and informative and little by little my investing performance is improving.
Thanks again, have a prosperous new year.
Ted
Only a small request, can we have the day added to the report title. My brain works better looking for Mondays report rather than working out 30 Dec was a Monday.
Morning GloucesterBob.
I have added the day in as usual - apologies for the omission!
Roland
On a similar subject, I asked ages ago to put a request on the wish list for the Home page to show the day and date instead of just "Today" as my PC frequently shows a cached copy of the page unless I type ShiftCtrlR. Several times I've fallen into a trap of reading and commenting on yesterday's news. Please somebody, pass this comment to the person who cares, the green button didn't work.