Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 25 Feb 2025) - Selling Pressure, CMCX, WG., OTB, STAF, JSE, MCB, TTG

25th Feb by Graham Neary

64 comments 5949 reads

Good morning!

1pm: I'm afraid we've run out of time for now!

Spreadsheet that accompanies this report: updated to 14/2/2025.

Companies Reporting

Name (Mkt Cap)	RNS	Summary	Our view (Author)
Smith & Nephew (LON:SN.)	Final Results	U/L Rev +5.3%, EPS +1.7%. 2025 targeting +5% rev. growth & improved profit margin
Croda International (LON:CRDA) ((£4.5b)	Final Results	2024 sales -4% (no Covid-19 sales), adj. PBT -16% (£260m). Outlook: adj. PBT £265-295m.
Unite (LON:UTG) (£4.2b)	Final Results	2024 adj. earnings +16% (£214m). Net tangible assets 972p vs 859p share price. Outlook: encouraging.
Lion Finance (LON:BGEO) (£2.4b)	Final Results	Changed name to Lion Finance. Loan book +65.9% year-on-year. Total dividend +12.5%.
CMC Markets (LON:CMCX) (£592m)	Directorate Change	SP -7% (-12% initially) CFO agrees with the Board to step down with immediate effect. He is thanked. Will support an orderly handover.	GREEN (Graham) [no section below] It’s a little unsettling as it’s abrupt and it sounds like he was pushed out, which raises the question as to why. Despite being with the company for c. 20 years, he was only CFO for 18 months. Personally I am not too concerned. My assumption is that it’s a CFO appointment that just didn’t work out entirely as they hoped it would. CMCX shares are down by 45% from their high and now pass six bullish stock screens.
On Beach group (LON:OTB) (£381m)	AGM TU	Confident in delivering FY25 adj. PBT in line with consensus exps. Transaction value +10% y/y.	GREEN (Graham) Forward PER is less than 12x for a successful online business that has at times in the past been valued at more than £500m. Quality metrics should hopefully improve as profits grow, due to asset light business model. Very interesting candidate for further research.
Victorian Plumbing (LON:VIC) (£302m)	AGM TU	Confident profits will be in line with exps. Rev +5% y/y.
dotDigital (LON:DOTD) (£267m)	Interim Results	Rev +10%. Adj. EBITDA +11%. Momentum continued into H2. On track to meet exps for FY25.
John Wood (LON:WG.) (£257m)	Possible Offer	In cash, but no indicative price given.	PINK (takeover) / RED (high risk) (Mark) Selling themselves to a financially secure bidder solves a lot of the short-term issues, so accepting an offer makes sense. However, the bidder must know this, and their offer, if it comes, will surely reflect…

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Paul Walton

25th Feb

So do I. MTI Wireless Edge (LON:MWE) is one that should be moving up but now we know why

Revs8

If production is in US then avoids UK/European tariffs. Note that part of 49% is in Canada with possible tariffs.

ChrisW

Hi Ken,

I take a slightly different view on buy backs, many of which do waste money.

Consider this, if a company has money to "invest" it can spend money on plant/equipment/developing software/ buying another company etc

In each case it will have to account and record the capital expenditure so that investors can see, over a period of time, whether that expenditure has reaped the required return.

I think it would be good to see the amount spent on share buybacks recorded as "capex" and each year the amount spent could be adjusted to see if it had made the required return.

Company management, and their remuneration, would then be judged on their success or not!

Might concentrate their minds a bit.

Chris

peterthegreat

I think the company is a good recovery play but I am not buying because of my concerns over the potential tariffs which could be applied to its products sold in the US where Stryker is a formidable competitor in some of S&N's product areas.

timarr

While I understand the sentiment, I would be against banning private investors from investing in foreign stocks in ISA's/SIPPs. What about ETFs that hold foreign stocks, or investment trusts & funds?

If they're UK listed then they should be allowed. Those were the original PEP / ISA rules and they're trivial to implement. Might provide a nice boost to the beleagured investment trust sector.

While restoration of dividend tax relief is a nice idea it's not going to happen, especially given how debt laden we already are - so we need to look at what's possible rather than what's ideal.

As for whether this will move the dial - hard to know, but over £750 billion is held in ISAs, 450 billion in Stocks and Shares ISAs - which is more than the combined market cap of the FTSE250. The FTSE 100 is only worth £2 trillion, rather less than that of Apple (NSQ:AAPL).

To put it in perspective, AIM's total market cap is just £100 million. It's a rounding error on ISA investments.

murrb

But these are both also very expensive on a P/E ratio relative to many other decent small cap stocks. They can't go up indefinitely without consolidating.

bsharman

Further to my earlier message about investment in the UK stock market, have just seen this video of Lord Lee's speech in the House of Lords.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Umd3W...

Dojosan

Looks like a worked sell of a block of shares.

Lochinver

Agreed murrb. The moment these businesses put out updates which show a slowdown or worse they will get a big pull back.
But that hasn’t been seen here, either in recent market updates or in future forecasts.

Bouden54

Bit depressing that pretty much everyone gets up to leave when he starts speaking - clearly of very limited interest to the political class so can't see this becoming much of a priority unfortunately.

intuitive6191

The House of Lords looks a happening sort of place. Those that didn't leave looked like they had dozed off. One guy looked like he had croaked. Hopefully there is doctor on hand during these intense debates.

A pity really as Lord Lee had given his speech some thought.

As regards greater public investment - have we not been here before? During the tech boom everyone was wanting a trading account. People who you never thought would be interested in stocks started talking about Marconi and Autonomy et al.

Of course it ended badly for many - which might be one factor in the UK's enthusiasm to hold cash.

Still, if you can capture the nations enthusiasm you might be able to reignite a stockmarket revolution. Probably wont start in the House of Lords though.

The Phoenix

I've always thought the house of lords must be one of the best money for old rope/feet up numbers on the planet.

jonno

UK small caps: the selling elastic continues to stretch at some point, heaven knows when it will snap!

Harry Hindsight

Mr Google says - Members of the House of Lords, who are not paid a salary, may claim a daily allowance of £332 (or may elect to claim a reduced daily allowance of £166) per sitting day – but only if they attend a sitting of the House and/or committee proceedings.

Twice a week should cover the ol exes, sit on something, meet some mates for lunch, dinner etc and off home - with the warm glow of inebriation of doing the country some good (sic).

All of this stuff will be swept away with AI eventually, and eventually is very very close.

And we are interested in Staffline (LON:STAF) why?

Fed up losing money over last four years. Know this is still the SCVR in mindset and maybe I will come back home soon with the US imploding but well as someone who has shares in Heiq (LON:HEIQ^K24) - (yes I have no idea what the ticker means) and THG (LON:THG) the scars are deep but keep hold because (1) would cost more to sell it, (2) learning - a lesson in buying the dream and not the facts.

Lessons cost money. Not learning from them will cost you more money.

Ok - owning up Im the small modular nukes guy - lol. It has to be fun otherwise just buy a house and rent it in a company wrapper.

Take out gambling per se - across the board - horses, stocks, national lottery, football, er whatever don't know - all these clowns will be interested in is can they tax it.

Now they want my pension fund to invest in wind far*s. Exit left.

Douglas1971

Peter the great, thanks for the information. Very much appreciated.

26th Feb

I was a little harsh - as those who stayed in the chamber did so because they wanted to hear the debate. Well done for making the effort.. The question is why so few attend? The opening speech was only 9 minutes long and certainly deserved more of an audience.

Same question really for the House of Commons. Quite often you will see a debate with maybe 20 to 30 MPs present.

As Bouden54 suggests, private investing looks to be very low on the agenda.

Rusty2

Beware some prices are incorrect on here: Everplay (LON:EVPL) is 264p on here, it is not it is only 218p.

GavSmith01

27th Feb

AIM’s market cap is most definitely not £100m! You might be missing a few orders of magnitude there.

Daily Stock Market Report (Tue 25 Feb 2025) - Selling pressure, CMCX, WG., OTB, STAF, JSE, MCB, TTG

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Graham Neary

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