Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 17 June 2025) - SSTY, MGNS, W7L, OCN/HAN, MTRO, BPM, MTU, RWS, RCFX, ALT

Tue 6:04am by Graham Neary

41 comments 4885 reads

Good morning! Welcome to Tuesday's report.

Spreadsheet accompanying this report: link.

The Agenda is complete.

12.45pm: we are out of time for today, see you tomorrow!

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Ashtead (LON:AHT) (£18.8bn)	Full Year Results	Rev -1% (used equipment sales lower). Adj. EPS -4%. Guidance: rental revenue +0% to +4%.
Legal & General (LON:LGEN) (£14.8bn)	L&G Deep Dive: Asset Management	Webcast at 1pm. Also: “we have made a good start to 2025”, core operating EPS growth of 6-9%.
Informa (LON:INF) (£10.5bn)	AGM Trading Update	Five months: underlying revenues +9.3%. Visibility is ahead of last year. Growth guidance reaffirmed.
Morgan Sindall (LON:MGNS) (£1.8bn)	Trading update & Outlook for 2025	Group PBT is expected to be significantly ahead of previous expectations.	AMBER/GREEN (Roland) I rate this construction group as a best-in-sector operator and believe it could be a wider beneficiary of the recent UK government spending review. But the valuation is now above its normal range and previous forecasts have suggested some risk that earnings growth could slow next year. Perhaps out of an abundance of caution, I’ve moderated our view slightly today.
Metro Bank Holdings (LON:MTRO) (£893m)	Press reports of takeover approach (no RNS)	Sky News reported on Saturday that Metro Bank has received takeover interest from private equity firm Pollen Street Capital.	PINK (AMBER/GREEN) (Graham) There’s still no RNS since Sky News reported on this. I guess the lack of an RNS means that any offer received so far has been rejected by the Metro board? We’ve been moderately positive on MTRO while the price has multi-bagged from the depressed levels it reached when its solvency was questionable. It was successfully refinanced and continues to offer cheapness against tangible book value. As such, I see no reason to change my stance today. I'm in good company, with the highly knowledgeable financial investors at Pollen Street now apparently also finding it interesting around these levels.
Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON:OCN) (£522m)	Possible Combination	Proposed all-share combo with OCN’s largest (26%) shareholder. Would remain a listed investment co. OCN shareholders to receive HAN/HANA shares in accordance with the NAVs of each company at the end of June. Separately, OCN also offers to buy back shares for up to £123m, at a discount to NAV.	PINK (GREEN) (Graham) I was AMBER/GREEN on this in the…

Unlock with Email

Unlock with Google

Already have an account?
Login here

Silver Moon

Tue 9:58am

Over that last 12 months or so one of my most promising small gold miners Greatland Gold (LON:GGP) has been very busy and now things are all coming together. Friday will see its shares suspended, I note that some investors are buying now while they can, it's a good sign. Those PI's who applied for the Retail Offer will be effectively paying 15.8 pence /share, next week they will know how many new shares in the newly-formed company, Greatland Resources, they will hold in their portfolio.

Berksbee

Tue 10:24am

Am I missing something? Carr's (LON:CARR) have a tender out for shares @ 163p. They currently trade @ 147p. The years high is 162p. Why would anyone go for this? Offer closes today btw.

djlcollinge

Tue 10:30am

Morgan Sindall (LON:MGNS) Roland sensibly references low margins. However, this does not mean the company can't achieve stellar returns. The article https://www.stockopedia.com/co... from Mark Simpson is worth reading in this respect. Capital turnover may be brilliant in these companies despite low margins .

Tue 10:32am

Cant talk about Perplexity but I am a Global IT Director and sit on the Co Exec. Just attended my MS training workshop and, from an investment perspective, I am underwhelmed. Can I do certain tasks quicker (if I use it enough) yes. Will it be a game changer - no. The software was virtually given away (there's a clue). Will the vendor see an ROI - not for years IMO.

sparkler

Tue 10:39am

Err, so you can sell your shares for 10% more than you can in the market. Or am I missing something?

The Boon Fund

Tue 11:25am

I would have topped up Spectra Systems (LON:SPSY) recently when it went down to 200p, but I'm already maxed out in terms of my position size vs daily liquidity.

My view is that the recent RCS announcement is actually more significant/strategic, and most investors just dismiss RCS in general without digging into the details. This creates an easy information asymmetry buying opportunity.

Fusion - the Spectra brand name of the substrate for polymer banknotes, is THE KEY growth initiative that management are prioritising.
This is the big opportunity. There are only two other global players in this space (De La Rue and CCL) so it is ripe for a new entrant.
They haven't been able to get any firm orders yet from any central banks for it. Procurement processes are of course long and slow in central banks for new banknote materials.
They state they are close to getting on the Supplier List for a Middle East central bank
CdM, who prints Brazil banknotes, have released their "House Banknote". This is a marketing thing, to showcase all their technical expertise in a sample banknote.
Apart from printing banknotes for Brazil, the CdM have aspirations to win contracts to print banknotes for other countries.
The fact that they decided to include Fusion in their House Banknote, which will be used to pitch for business from other central banks, is a first validation we've gotten from a banknote printer that Fusion is the real deal. Not just a pipedream. Otherwise CdM wouldn't dare stain their reputation by including it.

Part of the recent share price weakness is stale bulls here exiting after no announcements around Fusion so far this year. Spectra had dangled a promise that they were close to being on the Supplier List, or even getting a firm order, from a Middle East central bank for Fusion. This, of course, hasn't happened... yet, and maybe never?

I continue to hold as I think the current SP is already so well backed by existing contracts and earnings, plus steady growth in the core business. And a free optionality at the moment on any Fusion contracts or revenues.

Tue 11:27am

Thanks - the operative word is tender -in the dictionary it can mean buy or offer - why cant they use plain English!

dscollard

Tue 11:38am

MS Copilot is underwhelming spent a while with it but unconvinced atm though it is in the enterprise stack so you are likely stuck with it as a "feature"

Google Gemini is massively functional but I keep breaking it even on a Pro sub : it literally abandons hard tasks which may well be to protect compute capability/capacity.

In my experience , Perplexity is currently the best of breed especially for finance and given its model independence (allows use of Gemini Pro, Claude, GPT4 , Sonar, Grok etc)

Despite the above I do believe it is more than a game changer in some instances/applications/sectors: it is a whole new game . A transformational game so my bullishness comes from that.

It is fairly common to give away new stuff in the early part of a product maturity cycle (hotmail, gmail, dropbox etc) : with AI "free access" provides huge amounts of data from users which is used in improving and training the LLMs so the " free " bit comes with paybacks (and costs to the user in terms of accuracy/functionality during this early part of the cycle ).

In practical terms, everyone I know using AI with any real intent pays a sub - it's a no brainer in terms of efficiency and payback despite the glitches

timarr

Tue 11:51am

Businesses employing AI are getting good results in limited use cases as long as they clean their data. A seemingly trivial example is banking chatbots. A recent example I was reviewing is now returning 98.7% accuracy. Getting to that point takes about two years to remodel internal data and achieve consistency, including building a whole bunch of industry specific guardrails to ensure the AI doesn't breach regulations (e.g. unintentionally offering investment advice).

The net result of this relatively minor use case is that the use of human agents has dropped by 60% as customers are needing to talk to a real person less and less often. The key to this is that the AI agent has to come across as a real person - as soon as it drops the ball then customers revert to human contact.

The learnings from this are now being expanded into other areas within the bank, initially focusing on customer facing stuff (online, obviously). The quid pro quo for this is that the backroom staff need to be better skilled and adept at analysing the output to catch issues. But still, overall, the cost savings are significant.

The broader point here is that the general population's experience of AI isn't directly comparable to the way businesses will use it. Currently training and managing business specific AIs is difficult, expensive and time consuming but where it works it's very cost effective. And that's now, not in a few years time.

Tue 12:04pm

agreed and the most reliable results I get are scoped to my own data and use an optimised set of prompts which I reuse : some of the benefits of paying a sub

Tue 12:22pm

I think Ultimate Products (LON:ULTP) is a really good shout as a contrarian stock. Earnings forecast is poor but these only get upgraded once the horse has bolted. I prefer sales signposts. Good historic growth largely, positive sales forecast, manageable debt and some free cash. 5 year ROCE and decent earnings yield. The sales based value on EV also sound. They license decent brands like Beldray, Russell Hobbs and Salter which can be located in a variety of discount (B & M) and premium stores. A good walk down the high street. Further positive is support from black rock smaller companies and an experienced CEO. A potential multi bagger in my opinion as a consumer franchise stock. A risk yes but I'm not fussed about earnings forecasts with contrarian stocks

JCPr

Tue 1:52pm

Carr's (LON:CARR) have sold most of their engineering division, which is where the money has come from for them to make the tender offer. I held a few in anticipation of the engineering sale but decided to sell out at below the tender price. The reason is that in these circumstances the number of shares you put into the tender offer is usually scaled back, so you're usually left with part of your holding and the price typically falls. I made an estimate of what I thought will happen and sold when I could get a higher price than that. I can always look at whether I want to buy back into the rump of the company at some time in the future.

rmillaree

Tue 2:08pm

Spectra Systems (LON:SPSY)

The profit forecasts were considerably increased, a few months ago, for the next 2 years, but the share price continued to decline.

I think its always more complicated where the "next year earnings" are expected to be lower than the "current year earnings." There is always the situation that people may have been concentrating on 2025 and the bumper profits - and the market may have got slightly carried away with the good news flow. Suddenly when you are approaching the point that the new year is coming into view and the company earnings are going materially backwards - i suspect many may give it a swerve for that reason even if the reasons are genuine - ie 2025 is a pretty exceptional year that was not expected to repeat. Must admit i was tempted in a few months back here so am a current holder - as you say even though 2026 earnings are expected to go into reverse thats nothing that hasnt been expected and as you say 2026 earninsg have been upgraded recently.

ISAallowance

Tue 2:53pm

I don't see how the proposed combination of Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON:OCN) and Hansa Investment (LON:HAN) is good for OCN holders. The RNS states that OCN holders will receive HAN shares in proportion to their respective NAVs, not their respective share prices. I have approx NAVs as 407.81p (HAN, from HL) and 2106p (OCN, from Graham's article). This would result in OCN holders receiving approx 5.16 HAN shares per OCN share. At current HAN and HANA mid-price of ~255p this means OCN holders get 1317p of HAN shares for their 1587p OCN share.

To put it another way, OCN holders will be forcibly buying HAN shares at NAV instead of at discounted market value, funded by selling their OCN shares at NAV rather than discounted market value. Since OCN is at a much lower discount, they get a raw deal. If OCN holders think that the HAN discount will reduce following the combination, surely they should be selling in the market now and buying HAN in the market now, "discount arbitrage". Or am I missing something?

Graham Neary

Tue 4:03pm

It's a good argument, ISAallowance. I think that from the point of view of OCN, the main argument is that they are getting the same investment management team as they currently have but at a lower fee rate, and with the benefits of scale - which should exist in the fund of funds sectors. But yes, I do agree that the fact that HAN shares are trading at a bigger discount than OCN shares is a reason that they might not want to go through with it.

jonno

Tue 5:12pm

Not surprisingly I agree. One small point Ultimate Products (LON:ULTP) own the Salter and Beldray brands. It sells Russell Hobbs, except electricals under license.

All the best

Crusty

Tue 5:55pm

This seems to me a stitch-up of small shareholders. The tender offer is for some unknown price plucked out of a wide range which won’t be known until it happens (smoke/mirrors comes to mind). Why not give shareholders the proceeds of the Wilson’s sale? No, they must cream a large slice off to make the underwhelming funds seem more attractive. They are at 38% discount for a reason, and it’s not capable management. I want out but am not happy even after today’s rise.

Keiron12

6:22am

Have you taken into account the reduction in OCN nav that will result when the cash consideration is paid out in the buy-back?

zho

7:34am

See https://www.pressreader.com/uk...

9:32am

No, I haven't. OCN NAV/share should rise as a result of the buy-back at a discount, which would be better for OCN holders in terms of number of HAN shares received.

I also haven't figured out how to account for the 30% of HAN NAV that is actually OCN, whether that affects things or not.

I've now sold all my OCN in the market this morning based on my back-of-the-envelope calcs, and won't be refining them any further. I may consider buying HAN if it remains on a 30-40% discount after the merger, depending on the holdings.

Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 17 June 2025) - SSTY, MGNS, W7L, OCN/HAN, MTRO, BPM, MTU, RWS, RCFX, ALT

Companies Reporting

Unlock the rest of this article with a 14 day trial

About the Author

Graham Neary

41 comments

Unlock the metrics for all these stocks and more...

Unlock the metrics for all these stocks and more...