Daily Stock Market Report (Mon 30 Dec 2024) - DUKE, CHSS, RPI, NARF

30th Dec '24 by Roland Head

50 comments 3793 reads

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),…

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30th Dec '24

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.

Rusty2

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.

76% of my cards were hand delivered. Yes postage is high, especially first class.

Ah right that's good to know, tho there goes my secret shopper data then.

Aysgarth

Switch to Brave Browser for YouTube, then no ads.

intuitive6191

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.

jonno

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.

Morris1602

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.

jonestheinvestor

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.

Tommy H

Tesla are big in the battery storage business in the UK already, that is without using all the ones that can move!

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."

Dragon

"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.

"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.

31st Dec '24

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.

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).

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.

jamesalastair

15th Jan

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.

I am with you 100% Planetx.

My wife and I give anything spare to educational and agricultural projects in Malawi where I have worked.

Daily Stock Market Report (Mon 30 Dec 2024) - DUKE, CHSS, RPI, NARF

Explanatory notes

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Roland Head

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