We talk Apple, Tesla, Primark, 'Start investing now' step-by-step guide and lots more

In our latest podcast, the Sharesify talk rock ‘n’ roll, Primark, change at the top of the Apple (AAPL) tree. Additionally, they discuss incoming Tesla (TSLA) earnings.

There’s also vaping, condoms, friends ‘with benefits’ [no, not that – ed], plus our new step by step guide to ‘Start investing now’. Furthermore, there is more content available.

James reveals how Gear4Music (G4M) has been blowing out the speakers and flags the long-mooted ‘Primark’ spin-off from AB Foods (ABF). Will both sides of the group make the FTSE 100, wonders Steve… yes, reckons James. So, a demerger to keep your eyes on.

Vape supplies firm hikes Surpreme (SUP) hikes guidance. Meanwhile, consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser (RKT) and footwear flop Shoes Zone (SHOE) make less encouraging noises.

Products guy in at Apple

There’ll be new man on stage at Apple events as Tim Cook readies to hand the CEO batten over to John Ternus, Steve explains… a shift from Cook’s ‘safe pair of operational hands’ to engineer and products guy Ternus.

Ian explains what’s caught his eye at Personal Group (PGH), the workplace pensions tiddler, and flags small company warnings, including the ironically named Coral Products (CRU). He also highlights the Middle East war warning from housebuilder Crest Nicholson (CRST). This warning needs a bit of explaining.

Tesla earnings are incoming this evening (~9pm BST), but Steve reckons the big questions hanging over the AI-robots-EVs-‘Terrafab’ firm probably won’t get answered.

Towards the end, Steve explains the thinking behind Sharesify’s new 10-part work-in-progress aimed at new investors, the ‘Start investing now’ series. Parts 1-3 are available now. There’s 3 key takeaways, he explains:

• there’s never a bad time to start investing
• you can start with just £100, or even less
• investors play a long game – don’t get spooked by the news

Get involved

If you want to get involved, email us your thoughts, suggestions and questions at editorial@sharesify.com. For those tuning in via YouTube directly, please remember to click the like and subscribe buttons on our channel.

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And if you’re a company, fund or investment trust, and you’d like to get your voice heard on the podcast, tell your story and expand your retail investor base, here’s your chance. Just email us at editorial@sharesify.com and we’ll do the rest.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hi and welcome to today's show. As usual, there's a lot to get through. We'll be talking rock and roll, we'll be talking Primark, Vaping, Condoms, Friends with Benefits, and our new series on how to get started investing. So, James, what's rocked your world this week?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hey Ian, one that's definitely rocking out is Gear for Music. Um, the online musical instruments retail delivered yet another upgrade. Um, it's benefiting from self-help and the demise of some rivals. I guess the big consumer story really was Associate British Foods confirming those plans to spin off Primark. You know, it's been rumored to push it.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

That's been a long time coming, isn't it, James?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Yeah, absolutely. After years of speculation, yeah. But the uh the shares actually went down on the day, which was more to do, I think, with an H1 earnings miss. Also some commentary around whether now is a good time for Primark to stand, you know, go on its own, given you know pressures on the consumer and inflation, all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

James, do you know if um do you know if Primark as a standalone business is likely to go into the Footy 250 or perhaps even the 100?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, I think they're both going to be footy 100 um businesses, so so separately separate businesses. Uh George Weston will leave the lead the food business, and Owen Tongi will steer Primark. So, yeah, a very big story indeed. Um, some other stories that caught my eye. The vapes, batteries, and drinks, supplies supreme, that raised guidance. Uh, we had a bit of a disappointing update from Wreck It with Q1 sales down, and also disappointing with ShoeZone. So a bit of a punishing profit profit warning that's taking its market cap to just above 20 million. So, um, yeah, there might be some speculation it could do at all birds, you know, and stick AI in its name.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Shoezone AI. I like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

We've got a story actually on the website on all birds and other meme stocks. So uh do check that one out. Um, Steve, what's been uh what's been grabbing you this week?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, I mean, one of the the uh the big stories, of course, has been the the transition of of of um of the CEO uh uh Apple. Um Tim Cook is finally going to step down from that CEO role and and it's it's interesting time, and he's he's gonna be around until pretty much the end of the year in this transition period as he hands over to John Termos. Um and he's gonna remain as executive chairman, but it sounds like he's going to take a more of a kind of a top-level kind of uh political almost uh role talking to to regulators and stuff like that. So, who is John Termos? Well, I mean, this is a guy that's basically uh cut his teeth in engineering and product development, so it begs the question about whether or not um we might see more money, more CapEx put into product development down the line and how that would play out. So I think the way investors can see this is Steve Jobs way you know years ago, um, the real kind of um ideas, man. Uh Tim Cook was always seen as a very sort of safe pair, pair of hands running the operation on a day-to-day basis. Now, John Turns comes in and we'll see whether or not he's likely to really try and do things a bit more excitingly than Tim Cook and what the impact might be for cash flow dividends and and returns.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Ian, what's been on your radar?

SPEAKER_02 3:13

Uh well, James, I mentioned at the intro uh Friends of Benefits, uh, put a note out on Personal Group, which is a workplace pensions and benefits provider. I think this is a cracking story, and the growth, you know, the growth potential for this business is pretty big. It's undervalued, and there I think there's um well that there is income appeal as well because it's paying about 7.5% dividend yield. So we put a note out on that. I think that's quite interesting. Um, and then unfortunately, you know, things might have calmed down in the Middle East, but we're starting to get more warnings coming through and identifying the Middle East as one of the problems, and it's smaller companies to start with because smaller companies always feel the pain before bigger companies do. Yeah, same when things are going well, they always rather like little ships and big ships. Little ships catch the wind in the sails, they start to move quite quickly, and when the wind drops, they stop quite quickly, and that's what's happening. So, a firm called Coral Products is a tiddler, makes plastic packaging for food and plastic products for other people. So, customers are starting to delay orders, existing customers, new leads are also on hold. Um, MPAC, which makes packaging machinery. Interestingly, they've they did a bit of a goodwin, they came out with very good results for FY25, but then there was a clear drop in orders, and the firm said, like you know, Goodwin. Oh, um, orders haven't been cancelled, but it's just difficult to tell when they're going to come in for the second half. Again, market wasn't very happy with that, and I guess the last one, Chris Nicholson, House Builders, they partly blame the Middle East for lowering guidance. But to be fair, most of that was most of the the warning was down to the fact that we said it before, you know, houses aren't selling, so they're scaling back their completions target, and interestingly, land sales, and they say people in the land market are not willing to pay the market price for things. I think you can take that as other house builders that they were looking to sell plots to aren't selling.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

I mean, I wonder if there's an impact here in about um new rules coming in about for private landlords and that may be reshaping how property investors actually react to whether or not um giving tenants uh rights for long-term ongoing contract and so on. So I wonder if that filters through into customer prices and so on.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

It could be, Steve, but you know, as I say, we've been looking at this market for quite a long time. Uh, thought things might be turning up, but that that's a bit of a warning from and and I did see somewhere somebody talking, they did actually also say, Chris Nicholson, that they were in discussions with their lenders to extend their covenants on the debt. And I've seen somewhere else somebody's talking about Vistry and a dash for cash to uh to keep that business going. So um that's what we yeah, we don't need that.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Some something that occurs to me is the irony with uh coral products because it you know coral obviously is one of the the most um the most impacted um organisms in in in the the um in the in our oceans, and of course it what does it do? It makes plastic products, which is one of the biggest causes for coral system equal.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

I mean, I I'd never come across a company before, but as usual, scanning the RNS, you know, it's very easy to overlook these things because it's kind of sub 10 million quid. But what the company said I thought was really interesting, and it it you know, we will see more of this. This this yeah, there are going to be challenges for companies coming up. Um, James, what what else have we got for the rest of the week?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Well, we've got a big day for Nick Train tomorrow, so a couple of his stock stocks are reporting. Uh Fisherby Gross and Income Trust underperformed the market in the first quarter. Well, we've got LSEG and uh Relks out tomorrow, so he really needs a good reaction to both companies. We've also got Sainsbury's uh three years. Aren't they those, James, in his portfolio? They are so L Seg is the number one holding. Relks is I think number five at about 10% of assets. So yeah, we'll keep an eye on those. Isn't Nick Train a bit?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Isn't Nick Train a bit personal non grata these days?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah, well, he's been underperforming for about I think it's about five years now, isn't it? It's been a prolonged old period. So yeah, absolutely feeling the heat.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

And is there isn't there a there's um a potential change at the top at the LSEs there and and and just um whether or not the LSC can can regenerate um the growth that that their data business kind of promises. So I don't know whether that's likely or not, but um that's what the investors will be looking at, certainly.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Oh, you heard it here, you heard it here.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Uh something else that's worth watching out for, of course, is is Tesla and that that they're reporting this evening after the bell, so around nine o'clock BST. Um I mean it's amazing if you think back, all of us have been in the market for a long time, but two two years ago, two and a bit years ago, I mean, Tesla was the dominant force in earning season, a bit like NVIDIA is today, and now it just so is not. And and the big reason, of course, is there's lots of fluff, lots of bluff stuff from Elon Musk, but not an awful lot of gravitas and data and cash. So interesting things to watch out for will be CapEx, you know, it's burning at least 20 billion quid it's gonna be on various AI projects and so on. Um, but none of that estimate, none of those estimates factor in um his Terrafab idea now. Terafab is going to be this gargantuan data center he's got planned. It's gonna cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build it, so it's gonna be built in a modular form over years, but none of the CapEx fans factor that in. So seeing what he says about CapEx will be a factor. The other thing is is things like Optimus. Uh, again, we've said this before, you know, it it looks great, brilliant for YouTube clips, but you know, how much will they cost? Who's gonna buy them, and how much do they cost to make? And we still don't know answers to those questions, and we're probably not gonna get answers to those questions this evening. So the market is like to focus on what has been another pretty dismal volume quarter in terms of electric vehicles. So look out for margins to to feel the pressure from um from cat um from competition, etc.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah, absolutely, Steve. Absolutely. And uh I must say before we go, we've got a big uh we've got to big up your uh Start Investing Now series, which is um on the website. Tell people a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah, I mean I think you know we we we are in this market for to help all investors, and that means new ones as well. And and so what we've started is a is a what will be a 10-part series. We've got the third first three parts out. It's really designed around if you've never invested in the stock market in your life, start here and we'll walk you through the steps A, B, C, um, and we'll turn you into someone a bit more informed about markets, to someone much more confident about making decisions, to someone who actually will pull the trigger and spend some money. And there's there's three points I think it's worth making. Firstly, don't worry about what's going on in the news um in the Middle East. There's never a bad time to start stock market investing. You can't time the markets. So start today is the key key question. The second thing is everyone seems to think that you need to be super wealthy to invest in stock markets. Well, look at the three of us, we're not super wealthy. We invest in stock markets, and everyone can. Your average platform will last for about a hundred quid uh deposit and maybe 25 pounds or so on a monthly uh direct debit. We're not talking about a huge spend here to get yourself invested. And the final factor is uh markets will go up, markets will go down. You'll plan a long game. Don't worry about what the stock market is doing today, don't worry about the stock market does tomorrow. You'll plan a game for 10, 15, 20, even 40 years, who's to say, depends on how old you are and what your time horizon is. So come to the website, have a read of that series, and um and please let us know what you think. You can doctor liner editorial at shazify.com as usual. Um, that's going to be roughly a wrap for us then. So um, thanks guys for uh informative little chat, and uh we'll see you again probably on Friday. Take care, everyone.