Sharesify
Sharesify is an online resource for private investors and produced by several former employees of Shares magazine. It aims to help private individuals manage their own money and investment portfolios.
Launched in 2026, we publish daily news content, analysis and thought-provoking written content about stocks, investment trusts, funds, ETFs, ISAs, SIPPs, plus produce podcasts, webinars and more.
Our easy-to-read style and depth of analysis aims to make Sharesify essential reading for those investing today.
We write about all companies on the UK stock market, covering large, mid and small cap stocks on both London’s Main Market and AIM. We also provide extensive coverage of stocks listed in the US, Europe, Asia and other overseas stock markets, interview fund and investment trust managers about performance and the secrets of their investing technique, highlighting products that provide exposure to interesting companies, geographies and growth or income-generating assets.
We also write about ways in which to build a diversified investment portfolio as well as managing your investments once you have started to put money into an ISA (individual savings account), dealing account or SIPP (self-invested personal pension).
Our digital content will be full of ideas for filling your portfolio, whether you are saving for something like a new house or car, or if you are investing to fund your child’s university fees, your grandchild’s Junior ISA, or building a nest egg for retirement.
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Sharesify
Talking Bytes, Gym Group, Curry's, GSK, Marks & Spencer, Meta, Moderna and Murray International
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The guys discuss the latest news from US hyperscaler Meta Platforms and wonder about the potential upside for AI in other areas such as pharmaceuticals. Recent sector rotation into stocks such as Moderna suggests they may be onto something.
In the UK market, they recap results from Curry's and look ahead to M&S's trading update next week, while reflecting on their interview with Samantha Fitzpatrick of Murray International, one of the AIC's 'Dividend Heroes'.
Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of the Shares of Five Podcast. I'm joined as always by Steve and James. How are we doing, chaps? How are you? Good. Very well, thanks. Uh now, US markets closed today because um normally it would be closed on the 4th of July for Independence Day. It's July the 3rd. But even so, Steve, that hasn't stopped the news flow, has it? There's some huge news out of one of your stocks.
SPEAKER_00Well, at least it's not SpaceX in, but it is another technology. It is another technology name. Um we're talking about meta platforms here now. Everyone's familiar with Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram to a lesser degree, perhaps. Um what it's basically positing, and it's not not set in stone yet, but the idea it's floating around is that it's it's building all of this data center capacity and it needs much of that for itself, for its AI ambitions. However, it's gonna have some excess capacity. So what he wants to do is set up his own internal business that's going to resell that capacity. So much like AWS uh is a big public uh hyperscale platform and an Azure from Microsoft, Google Cloud, Meta basically wants to set up a business in that space. Now, very, very crowded space and dominated by the three companies I've mentioned. But of course, Meta's got very, very deep pockets, so they've got a lot of scope to make this work. Now, what the investors are saying about that, what they're seeing with this is rather than data centers now being just a Capex sinkhole, it's now potentially got a revenue generation element to it as well. Now that's what's attracting investors, but of course it's going to be about execution, so we'll see how that plays out. There's more details on our website, um, but we've written a piece about it. So go and have a read of that if you're curious. Um, but quite an interesting story, certainly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And AI, the whole thing is evolving, isn't it? Um, I'm noticing a lot of commentators talking about let's find, let's not not just data centers and chips and bottlenecks and so on. Oh, there are other areas that might benefit from AI. And and one area they're coming back to again, which was mentioned kind of almost at the beginning, was healthcare and pharmaceutical and drug discovery and that type of stuff. Now we know Moderna, right? It was a big stock for Scottish mortgage before SpaceX was a big stock. Yeah, Moderna was the big stock. I was looking at that at the end of last year, it was about 30 bucks, and had a very good Q1, it went up to about 60 bucks actually, and then it kind of drifted back. And then I this discussion came up again. So I went back and had a look in early June. $45, it's $80 now. In in the space of a fortnight, it's it's amazing. It's shot up again. It's really interesting because you think, okay, is there an opportunity here in some of these things? You look at Glaxo, it's up about eight, nine percent this year. But the analysts hate it. There's like, you know, as many sells as there are buys, and then most analysts are sitting on the fence for the hold. Astra, um, it's just gone nowhere really this year, although analysts are really bullish on it. So I think I think it's gonna be worth doing a little bit of digging into some of these pharma stocks and see if there's an AI angle. We wrote about this a long time ago. I need to go back and kind of revisit this, but I that could be an interesting area for people, don't you think?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as well on on the on the on a slightly wider note as well. I mean, we've been uh discussing uh with fund managers recently. We we spoke to Emily Whiting of the JP Morgan Asia Growth and Income Trust, and she was saying exactly that about the AI story is a much deeper story than just about data centers and just about chatbots. We are talking about a whole massive ecosystem, and that's where the real real value is, is when you have this entire ecosystem. So you've got loads and loads of suppliers, even think down to energy generation, got to power these data centers, power all these tools. So there's a whole massive ecosystem and supply chain that's that's really under the radar. And and Emily Whitem is was pointing that point, well making that point to James and I on that podcast. So, listeners, if you're interested, go and check out that podcast, it's available in that podcast section. She's got some really good insights into far eastern uh supply chain um companies opportunities that you would never have heard of. You know, I've never heard of them.
SPEAKER_01No, I I I missed that one. I sat that one out. It was you guys, wasn't it? Um, but another area that people are talking about is consumer stocks. And James, another good one, another good report this week from a uh a big retailer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, bringing things back to AI Curry's is the biggest uh AI laptop seller in in the country. Um yeah, and actually the retail has widened its total address, total addressable market or the TAM to 48 billion, and it's got less than 10 billion revenue today. And this is all to do with you know that AI tech cycle, uh business-to-business revenues and services. Um, and Curry said trading in the early part of the new year is very solid. So, you know, the consumer seems to be holding up quite well.
SPEAKER_00That's that that's really interesting, James, because we we spoke uh about a week or maybe two weeks ago about the comments from Tim Cook at Apple about price rises and whether or not that will flow through to the high street. And Curry's is a great example, and we wondered what the uh the tone of the commentary would be, and as you rightly pointed out, surprisingly upbeat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we've got another big week next week, haven't we? In we've got an MS Q1 update, and we've also got a half one update from the gym group. I don't know if you've got any thoughts on MS and what we might expect.
SPEAKER_01I think MS would be driven by the food business because that's now bigger than the general merchandising business. And according to World Panel, I think the uh 12 weeks to the middle of June, which is almost their whole Q1 basically, because Q1 for them runs from April to June, uh end of June. Uh, I think they had they don't they don't class MS as a food retailer because it's got general merchandise as well. But food sales they reckon were up 12%. That's in a market that grew one and a half percent, and a cardo sales were up 14%, and of course, that's a 50-50 joint venture with Mars. But I was interested, you've had you've had a few conversations with fund managers about consumer stocks, haven't you? And you put up uh eight names that are interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was just too you know, with uh lots of investors overexposed to AI and tech. We just thought we'd ask uh a few fund managers and an analyst what perhaps more prosaic names that are doing well. So a few retailers, a few consumer names that are using AI, but also have their own structural drivers. So we've written an article on the website. Do check that out, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Um, Steve, going back to tech, you've got um bytes next week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so bytes technology is um it's perhaps slightly lesser known, but computer centre, big IT reseller of products and tools and stuff. Um, SoftCat also net market, Bytes is the third really big player, it's a 4250 company, it's it's of significant scale. Um, what's been going on in the background is about companies addressing their AI needs. How can we use AI tools to either generate growth or to uh create operating efficiencies? And so they they've been seeing the whole sector's been seeing a lot of demand um from uh corporate IT departments. How can you help us make the best use of these new tools? And that's what's effectively going to be really setting the tone for um it's a Q1 AGM update uh for next week, and we'll want to see momentum. It was quite strong in the second half of last year. Um, investors will want to see that that momentum has continued into the start of this new financial year. So these are going to be the questions I think that will either move the share price or or make investors go go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, the other thing I was gonna say, chaps, I caught was your uh your chat with Samantha Fitzpatrick, uh, Murray International. Very interesting. So for um listeners who don't know it, it's a popular income uh trust, it's an AIC dividend hero. How many years, James?
SPEAKER_02Has it raised the div? Yeah, over two decades. It recently got uh dividend hero status. I think it was in 2024.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's 21 21 consecutive years. It's done, but most recently the 21st year. So um an amazing spread of uh opportunity as well. And and and it's got a sort of a mid three and a half percent yield, and that that's really part of their key part of their ethos, is they want their shareholders to to enjoy a decent quality yield. So they look to manage that um very carefully. But they've got some amazing companies in their portfolio, companies that don't generate huge yields, so it's a real balance, it's across the globe, it's a real balance about finding good growth but some income and other high-income stocks balance with slightly lower growth. So a really broad spread of uh in investments.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a really interesting podcast. So for anybody who hasn't watched it, it's on the uh or listened to it, it's on the website. Make sure you do. Um, with that, we'll uh wish you good weekend. Obviously, good luck to the boys on Sunday night, Monday morning. Um, and we'll we'll catch up with you next week and hopefully be celebrating.
SPEAKER_00Yes, let's hope. Cheerio. Cheerio.
