The Week Ahead: 9-13 December (AHT, ADBE)

6th Dec '24 by Megan Boxall

49 comments 2740 reads

Good afternoon and welcome to the Week Ahead.

Thank you for all your comments on last week’s post, we appreciate the feedback and the interesting conversation about stocks and sectors. Keep them coming.

The week in review

It’s been a stronger week for global markets, especially in Japan where the Nikkei has closed up 1.5%, although fears about financial instability in South Korea caused the market to shrug off some of its early week gains. South Korea has been rocked by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s snap decision to impose martial law and then revoke it again only a few hours later.

France has also been rocked by political turbulence this week. Bond yields rose amid fears of the now ex-Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s proposed austerity measures. But a no-confidence vote on Thursday which toppled the government provided some support to the price of both bonds and stocks.

The FTSE and the S&P have also enjoyed a decent week and look set to close higher on Friday. AD_4nXeXV_vgyW5I91PGN49CY5XXImafnVJLoASqUrkJHX3b-vLF-qQiNOUWfwGc5sKH5HO7FR9qL7n0HCB4txfn9k1NYLvlfD5iTjxPqBeA5sf7jfUGArqShJ6ae2EUgQKrsX2l7baa?key=72o58qC-7VSYnec6ctYZdpNP

At Stockopedia we’ve covered the results or news of 31 companies, you can catch up on all of our news analysis via this link. A special shout out to Mark Simpson who set himself the ambitious target of covering the news of nine companies on Thursday and managed to achieve it.

A couple of company highlights from the week for me:

A nice set of financial results from On Beach group (LON:OTB) which Roland covered on Tuesday. Adding to the strength of these numbers is the fact that management has decided to spend £25m of its surplus cash on buying back its shares. Roland has calculated that could provide an 8% hike to earnings.
Direct Line Insurance (LON:DLG) and Aviva (LON:AV.) Have come to an acquisition agreement far quicker than I was expecting. As recently as 27 November, management at Direct Line said the 250p per share offer from Aviva materially undervalued the company. This week they have agreed that 275p looks reasonable. Considering investors will be getting shares in the new enlarged business and some cash, I think this looks like quite a sensible deal. Graham agrees.

This week saw the final FTSE reshuffle of the year.…

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fred9566

9th Dec '24

Will there be a Santa Rally this year ?

Daniel Bird

Thanks for the great write up. I’m fairly new round here after re-subscribing to Stockopedia after a break of a few years. It’s good to see there’s still such a lot of quality discussion on these forums, which I find just as valuable as the stock reports and screeners.

If you have time in the run-up to Christmas to take a more in-depth look as specific sectors, I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on listed insurers (and financials more generally). There are lots of these stocks on the London market and many of them seem to score quite well on the Stock Ranks, particularly for value. But I’ve always found it hard to determine fair value for insurance shares because their accounts are super complicated and full of industry specific jargon. Any thoughts on this sector would be gratefully received!

mortimer

ev cars have 10yr warranty on battery's then value =0 what would you be willing to pay for a car with 5yrs left

spmarriott

Agreed. For example Serabi Gold (LON:SRB) is rated a perfect 100 by Stock Ranks, is up 40% in 6 months and 136% in a year, yet to my knowledge has never been covered by anyone on the Stockopedia team. Please could this be added to the coverage list, Megan?

Pimlico on Thames

Maybe I should get one of these while I wait for the electric driving experience to catch up?

At least I'd only need a USB charger

Rusty2

Depends on the EV, £10k if the range was over 200 miles. Problem with even that is they say you should charge up to 80% and recharge at 20%, so range still not great if you stick to that.

If doing long trips, it will make the time too long, recently l did 2 around 270 miles, took around 6 hours driving.

Even if no warranty, does not mean they won't charge. My car's warranty was only 1 year. Maybe in 5 years time they can swap the batteries more cheaply.

Plenty of articles on Serabi Gold (LON:SRB) just not on the SCVR.

Batteries need to be cheaper, lighter, last longer and have more range. EVs have too much power and not enough distance. It is like every car having a 3 litre engine. My petrol car does around 500 miles on one tank and takes 5 minutes to fill up, my diesel used to do over 600 miles on a tank.

BnB

Batteries need to be cheaper, lighter, last longer and have more range

But this is happening very rapidly. A good number of recently released EVs claim a range of at least 400 miles, including the Macan I test drove. Making the battery bigger doesn’t do anything for the weight issue, although improvements in efficiency will. But most car buyers aren’t sensitive to weight in the same way as the small number of Lotus and Porsche enthusiasts. Meanwhile my wife wants to switch to electric when her current supermini needs replacing and says that 200 miles range would be ample. It means only one stop at Gloucester services en route to her sisters in Devon, where she already takes a break on what is a long journey from Yorkshire. The rest of the time 50 miles range would be ample!

johnsmith68

Good morning Megan, thanks for this new outlook article which I find really helpful. Regarding your request for feedback on anything we might like for you to look at, I wonder if you might consider an article on the relative merits of the UK listed Pharma stocks in light of the forthcoming changes in the US? GSK (LON:GSK) has been suffering since the US election and I'm trying to decide if the election is an existential threat to them or a historic buying opportunity.

Are you sure 200 mile range is enough for only 1 stop?

Motorway driving uses more, not only the speed but little recharging from braking. If having to recharge from 80% to 20%,:then range is only about 120 miles.

For a journey she does twice a year, a recharge from 0% to 100% isn’t going to do any significant harm. Gloucester Services is 133 miles from our home and only 100 from either of her sisters. New Renault 4 and 5 EVs offer 250 range (ie 200 real world), Volvo x30 claims 300! 133 isn’t going to be an issue and, if it ever threatens to be, she can stop 20 miles earlier and split the drive more evenly.

However, we drive 420 miles to our place in NW Scotland more regularly and there is no EV that will do that journey in a one-er. Split somewhere near Glasgow, over a coffee or an overnight break, however poses few problems for a larger EV with a nominal 400 miles. Although I’m still on the fence about switching while my faithful ICE estate keeps going.

I see. Do the longer range EVs take longer to charge up?

Stopping once would be ok for 30 minutes but nowhere l stay has any charging facilities, so then would have to find somewhere to recharge it when l arrive.

200 mile range EV, is too expensive at the moment but maybe in 2-3 years, it will be within range?

If it is 3 miles a kW, then hardly any saving on petrol/diesel, if paying 30p a kw. Some places charge 70p l hear.

But you’ll be topping up at home for 95% of the time, no? So public charging rates are irrelevant for owners with off-street parking. And you can charge a Macan from 10% to 80% in 21 mins - having paid the Porsche tax on purchase, of course. I would buy an EV (not necessarily a Macan - but it was quiet and comfortable) today if my old estate became unreliable. But then I’m an enthusiast for tech, if not keen to jump in before the gremlins are sorted.

No because l will be doing longer journeys and be away from home. Last trip was 900 miles, so after about 160 miles, l will charging up.

Cancun

Many apologies to all ... I haven't used the contact Stockopedia feature before ... have spent a while hunting but cant find the requisite button... could Megan , or someone, possibly point me in the right direction please ?

many thanks indeed

Green circle, bottom right hand corner, on here, click on that.

If using a mobile you may need to go a different route.

Many thanks indeed Rusty... it wasn't there ( I think because I inadvertently activated it this morning )... but after a quick turn off / turn on, it reappeared ... :).... Many thanks once again...

Threepeat

Still happy with my classic car and as long as they still sell petrol and the ULEZ zone exits i shall be

13th Dec '24

Megan, will you be doing a review of Adobe (NSQ:ADBE) results?

Looks like Yiu was right.

The Week Ahead: 9-13 December (AHT, ADBE)

The week in review

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Megan Boxall

49 comments

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