Market News

McColl’s Retail (LON:MCLS)
Share price: 280p (-3%)No. of shares: 115 millionMarket cap: £323 millionQ4 and Full Year Trading Update
This is a chain of newspaper and convenience stores which has been listed since 2014.
I’ve tended to be a bit sceptical of it, because it screams “no economic moat” to me.
The PE multiple afforded to it by investors has generally been on the lower end of the scale, and that remains the case today. But to be honest, this PE ratio still looks possibly on the generous side to me:

This year, it has been integrating 298 stores acquired from the Co-op, which bring the total estate to over 1,600 now, most of these being convenience stores rather than newsagents.
Because of that acquisition, the headline growth numbers aren’t too important here. What matters is like-for-like sales, which are up 0.1% for the full-year, i.e. effectively unchanged.
Q4 LFLs were down 0.4% due to category mix and unfavourable weather. Weather had been a positive factor earlier in the year, so maybe the full-year result is neutral weather-wise?
Either way, it adds up to an in line with expectations update for the full year.

Happy Monday,This is the placeholder, to enable early comments from readers.Kind regards,Graham

McColl’s Retail (LON:MCLS)
Share price: 280p (-3%)No. of shares: 115 millionMarket cap: £323 millionQ4 and Full Year Trading Update
This is a chain of newspaper and convenience stores which has been listed since 2014.
I’ve tended to be a bit sceptical of it, because it screams “no economic moat” to me.
The PE multiple afforded to it by investors has generally been on the lower end of the scale, and that remains the case today. But to be honest, this PE ratio still looks possibly on the generous side to me:
This year, it has been integrating 298 stores acquired from the Co-op, which bring the total estate to over 1,600 now, most of these being convenience stores rather than newsagents.
Because of that acquisition, the headline growth numbers aren’t too important here. What matters is like-for-like sales, which are up 0.1% for the full-year, i.e. effectively unchanged.
Q4 LFLs were down 0.4% due to category mix and unfavourable weather. Weather had been a positive factor earlier in the year, so maybe the full-year result is neutral weather-wise?
Either way, it adds up to an in line with expectations update for the full year.

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I’m always on the lookout for shares that could deliver returns ahead of the FTSE 100, which is why I’m focusing on Tesco PLC (LON:TSCO) (TSCO.L), BT Group plc (LON:BT.A) (BT.A.L), Diageo plc (LON:DGE) (DGE.L) and Unilever plc (LON:ULVR) (ULVR.L). Tesco has a bright future in my opinion.

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