Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 21 Jan 2025) - SYS1, YU., SQZ, AGFX, QQ., ABDN

21st Jan by Graham Neary

63 comments 7148 reads

Good morning!

It looks like we have a large collection of updates that do not include any profit warnings - only "in line" and "ahead of" updates.

It's a rare "good news only" day - let's enjoy it while it lasts!

1pm: wrapping this up for now, cheers.

Spreadsheet accompanying this report (updated to 17/1/2025)

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Cranswick (LON:CWK) (£2.6bn)	Q3 TU	FY25 trading remains in line with market expectations.
Abrdn (LON:ABDN) (£2.6bn)	Q4 AUMA & TU	Net inflow of £1.2bn in Q4, AUMA up to £511bn. FY24 adj op profit in line with market exps.	GREEN (Graham) An in line update. Much improved flows. Cheap valuation.
Qinetiq (LON:QQ.) (£2.4bn)	Q3 TU	FY expectations unchanged. FY revenue exps “high single digit organic” growth at stable margins.	AMBER (Roland) Order shortfall in a key UK mkt but guidance is unchanged.
Premier Foods (LON:PFD) (£1.6bn)	TU	Q3 sales up 3.1%. FY adj profit at upper end of expectations.
4imprint (LON:FOUR) (£1.4bn)	TU	2024 rev +3% to $1.37bn. PBT “not less than” $153m, above the upper end of forecast range.
Alpha International (LON:ALPH) (£944m)	TU	FY24 rev +23% to £135m, total income +18% to £221m. Adj PBT in line with exps.
Alphawave IP (LON:AWE) (£935m)	TU	FY24 adj EBITDA to “exceed $50m” with revenue at lower end of guidance ($310m-$330m).
Elementis (LON:ELM) (£862m)	TU	Strong Q4. FY adj op profit now expected to be $126-128m, ahead of expectations.
Marshalls (LON:MSLH) (£641m)	Full Year TU	Revenue -8% to £619m. Net debt reduced. FY adj PBT to be within range of exps.
Kier (LON:KIE) (£627m)	TU	Trading in line with expectations. H2 weighting expected, order book +2% to £11bn at 31 Dec 24.
Serica Energy (LON:SQZ) (£599m)	TU	2024 rev -21% to $726m. Net debt $71m. “Significant” increase in production in 2025.	AMBER/GREEN (Roland - I hold) A positive outlook for 2025, albeit slightly weaker than expected.
WAG Payment Solutions (LON:WPS) (£586m)	TU	FY24 revenue +13.8% to €256m. Results in line with guidance.
Essentra (LON:ESNT) (£351m)	TU	FY24 rev +0.3%. Trading mixed. Adj op profit expected to be in line with current exps.
XP Power (LON:XPP) (£313m)	TU	2024 adj. op profit within the range…

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ken mitchell

21st Jan

Probably a minority view but I see this as a rare good decision from Rachel Reeves. Most car buyers going for CPC deals, including me, had no idea they were being misled and were happy with the deals they got, especially so when the car dealers were helping by adding big deposits for free. Anyone then paying off the CPC deal immediately, as I did, got a great deal.

The winners in these big claims situations are too often the sharks who take a big chunk of the payout from the too many people who don’t realise it is easy to deal with it themselves to get the lot.

Tim Boucher

"Interactive Investor, but imo that’s now the jewel in their crown"

I agree Ken - ii has to be one of the cheapest/cheaper platforms to hold investments with, in terms of flat mthly fee (not % based commission), low dealing charge, free mthly investing etc., but also (and probably most importantly given the rise of passive investing) gives access to all the main tracker/passive investing funds out there.

way

Fully agree. I'd suspect most people if they were told the exact breakdown of costs would have still bought the car at that price. It's not like it was an additional cost added once they had signed up.

eParo

SDI (LON:SDI) was added to the Stocko QVM portfolio last week:

"SDI (LON:SDI) - a once high flyer that has struggled recently. For a long time, many viewed it as the heir to Judges Scientific - as an acquisitive rollup company in the healthcare space. But it's not been as successful in choosing self-managing companies to acquire. The big question is whether they can turn things around?

Well, that's not a question for me to answer. Just like the NAPS, the QVM Portfolio is going to load up on high-ranked stocks, and let the weighing machine of the market do its work. SDI has a really horrible chart, and the only smooth trend is downward. I don't like the technicals but it trades far below its long term P/E, and maybe the bearishness is overdone. Mark seemed to think so recently in the DSMR with an Amber/Green rating."

https://www.stockopedia.com/co...

Cavendish reiterated a 135p target on 5th December:

Interims – On track for FY25 forecasts with a stronger 2H

"The half-year results provide some encouraging signs despite overall numbers being down. This was due to the tough start to the year in biomedical and life science markets. There has been an improvement in trading in these markets recently and with a stronger order book it is expected momentum will continue through 2H.

We are encouraged to see internal actions bearing early fruit with a 240bps increase in the gross margin and greater collaboration between units to give better efficiencies. Management signal they are on track for current market expectations, with no change to our profit outlook for FY25E, we introduce FY26 forecasts that point to stronger organic growth and YoY EPS growth of 9%.

Our unchanged 135p target price offers significant upside to current levels, which highlights a low FY26E P/E of 8.7x and a FCF yield of 13.2%."

Mkt cap of £54m and 12mth rolling forecast p/e 7.9 leaves peg at 0.5. Price has come down from 62p to 53p since the last update. Latest director buy was end of September worth £57,780.

Recent acquisition InspecVision deemed to be immediately earnings enhancing and brings AI and machine learning capabilities with a strong IP which SDI hopes to leverage.

I have followed the QVM portfolio and added recently.

Aislabie

I entirely agree, this whole thing is a confected horror story whipped up by the media. People signed up to pay an amount of pounds per month and they got their car. They were not interested in how the money was split and had no reason to want to chase around finding if there was some cheaper deal (and there probably wasn’t).

This complaint should have been thrown out by the courts on a caveat emptor basis.

rmillaree

Basically the specific issue here is that sales people made up apr rates of say 13% that they could then syphon excess off on top of say 5%.

I think at any basic levek you would not be expeting that the saleperson is the one dictating the apr rate charged when you are presented a finance documeny - on that level there should be no sympathy with those shysters who acted in such manner. How they could ever make a case that the apr was not anything other than a con when that fact existed i know not.

Seems strange that RR woudl protect those shysters from the peope who have been conned.

Yes they may have paid the extra anyway but its about not directly misleading people with regard to material element of the price paid.

Hey ho if one cant se the obvious conflict of interest here i give up.

yiannos1

I agree 100000% with you and this is one of the many downfalls of the UK economy and by that I mean the likes of Martin Lewis.

I have signed a deal to buy a car and I know what’s my monthly payment and I have agreed to it- that’s it.

A highly trusted source tells me he is trying to find a similar storyline in the housing market!

All the best

Viz

At what point do people ever take personal responsibility for their actions and just do some basic due diligence?

Although that said, sometimes I feel like kicking myself as I never seem to get a payout for PPI or similar because I questioned what I was being charged on everything...

Spender71

Deleted comment

ISAallowance

"I think at any basic levek you would not be expeting that the saleperson
is the one dictating the apr rate charged when you are presented a
finance document"

I don't think this latest intervention refers to the discretionary commission arrangements where the commission was dependent on the APR that the salesman could get away with. I don't think there's any argument that they were immoral and that there will be redress.

I think this latest intervention is only aimed at the court case escalation of this to all cases where the fact the salesman was receiving commission was not disclosed. There is no suggestion that the salesman could set the APR rate in these additional cases, and these cases are far more numerous than the original discretionary commission cases.

IMO if the FCA wants all commission to be disclosed, then it should make that clear, and redress should only be available after that date. Retrospectively applying current standards to past conduct that was legal at the time is a recipe for disaster.

feel free to correct me if i am wrong but the following link suggests the 3 cases that went to the high court recently might all perhaps have been DCA cases

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/st....

ref DCA

A discretionary commission arrangement (DCA) is when the finance provider pays the car dealer commission – or a fee – based on the interest rate paid in the car finance agreement. The car dealer can set or adjust this interest rate. Often, the higher the interest rate, the more commission the car dealer will receive.

Do you have any links to confirm that this action does not relate to DCA cases ?

My understanding was that the high court actions were indeed related to DCA cases, but that the judgement surprised everyone by also drawing in non-DCA cases.

There's a useful summary at the link below:

https://kpmg.com/xx/en/our-ins...

JSLDUK

Shoe Zone (LON:SHOE) £10m Profit with market cap £46m looks cheap what’s the catch?

intuitive6191

"At what point do people ever take personal responsibility for their actions and just do some basic due diligence?"

A bygone era. Disappeared along with telephones on cords, physical car keys etc. Why bother when there is huge safety net of claiming culture to pay up.

The Treasury statement actually says..

"The Treasury will seek to persuade the Court that any remedy should be proportionate to the loss actually suffered by the consumer and avoid conferring a windfall upon her"

Sounds reasonable - but not a huge row back.

I would be interested to see how Reeves pulls this one off. Kier Starmer (former Director of Public Prosecutions) is very cautious about the Government interfering with the Law. Intriguing.

Orval

Look at the 2025 estimates.

NeilS

Abrdn (LON:ABDN) a company of this size and scale should have an enormous bench of talent to promote to run it instead of bringing in outsiders. I think that tells you all you need to know about the quality of the business.

Cancun

Alternatively, given the greater than 70% share price fall in the preceding few years, the Board decided to hire a top quality, external candidate who didn't suffer from ' Group Think '.

The Phoenix

I've worked in big UK financial services companies, would say 1% of top management have real talent, these businesses fall foul time and again to new big dogs coming in promising the world they then go on a big sales push prime example in my time buying in final salary pension schemes at the same time as they are shutting their own.

Sales quadrupled over two years but they lost hundreds of millions on the deals then the person who put the idea forward then jumps ship but on his cv he now has "look I quadrupled sales in two years when i was at x" but he/she leaves off "er yes but the result was it was all unprofitable business and we lost hundreds of millions"

There is also some internal fallout between the 2 largest shareholders who own the company. Lack of control over quality and freight costs and SHEIN et al cannibalising their market made me sell at £1.50 having rode the wave from below 50p and taking some decent dividends. Is that 4 profit warnings now in a year? I couldn't invest unless these issues were looked at and resolved - lack of online presence and the refits do not seem to be working as well as they wanted - although I do commend them at looking at efficiencies, the scale of which just aren't large enough to make a big enough impact.

WimborneMiser

22nd Jan

Not sure, but the figure was $503 at the last announcement in Dec, so no idea what’s going on

Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 21 Jan 2025) - SYS1, YU., SQZ, AGFX, QQ., ABDN

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Graham Neary

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