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.
We show you how to make money and save money by giving you all the important information to help you make informed investment decisions.
Sharesify
Talking Alphabet, Intel and Tesla, plus AEWU, AIRE, BIOG, Burberry, Rotork, Wetherspoons and Wickes
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join the guys as they recap a rocky few days for markets and look ahead to updates next week from Alphabet, Intel and Tesla in the US and Wetherspoons and Wickes here.
Also in focus is UK M&A, with Gooch & Housego and Rotork both the target of bids, AEW tilting at AIRE and Biotech Growth Trust celebrating its eighth takover as Eli Lilly bids for portfolio holding AtaiBeckley.
There's also a special offer on tickets for the Sharesify Wealth & Retirement Show on 6 November so stay tuned to the end to find out more.
Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of the Shares of Vite Podcast. As always, I'm joined by Steve and James. How are you guys? Very well. Nice. And uh it's uh it's been a busy week. It's been a fairly turbulent week now, hasn't it, Steve, on US markets?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I mean it's you know we talked about this before about volatile times, and and it's it seems that um the market's in a very capricious mood. Um it's largely been led by um chip firms. I noticed that the SOX is is is close to being in an official bear market, it's down nearly 19%, uh, which is a gobsmacking event if you think about it, given the the strong rally this year. But of course, uh bear markets are pitched on 20% off your recent peak. So that's that's where we currently sit. Um at the moment, I mean there's there's a lot going on in the sort of the AI trade. We had IBM earlier in the week um offering pretty weak guidance. And and the most interesting thing about it, it wasn't really about the tax being turned off AI spending at all. It was really about redeployment of cash and capital to um parts of the supply chain where there's really tight uh uh tight uh supply. So um they've directed customers have been directing money away from what IBM are fundamentally doing. But more interesting than that, I think the CEO accepted that he thinks they've been a little bit slow to adapt and react to changing market dynamics. Now, that to me sends a good message because that's controllable by the firm. They can address that issue themselves, they can't do much about how their customers are spending, but they can do something about being better at spotting market trend changes. So it suggests to me that um IBM can dig themselves uh at least out of this partial hole. And there's been a load of other stuff going on. We've covered loads of stuff on the website. Uh, listeners just come to the website, have a look. There's uh there's stuff about PayPal and it's massive uh potential um buyout. There's there's um stuff about Netflix, there's there's all sorts of stuff of tech in there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh MA, I mean I was gonna say that's the other thing that's kind of almost defined this week has been the level of MA deals has shot through the roof, isn't it? Uh in the UK as well, James.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. And uh I see Rotalk agreed an offer from Swedish engineer ABB, quite a handsome premium. And um, talking about MA, uh, I've done a feature on the FTSE 250, the mid-cap index. Um, this is referred to as the Heineken index. If you remember the advert from the 80s and the 70s, due to it's constantly being refreshed through uh promotions, relegations, IPOs, and MA. Uh currently it's going through a rare sort of bout of underperformance against the FTSE. So I've had a chat to a few fund managers, they've told me why they think there could be a re-rating on the cards and they've suggested some of their stock picks. So do check that out on the website.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's there's so much that's there's been a lot of stuff we put out on the on the website covering uh trusts and funds and so on. But the AirMLA stuff uh interesting ABB buying them because uh I seem to remember them being a popular holding in one of the trusts we recently uh did a podcast with. I can't remember which trust it was now, but I know it's a very high-quality business, um, and it's not necessarily one that retail investors will know very well. Um, so interesting if they're uh showing interest in rotor.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I mean it's automation, Stephen, and there's a there's a hint. I mean, so ABB's always been famous for factory automation, lights out kind of stuff, you know. There's a hint in there that they're talking about more complex infrastructure projects, which would suggest by any other name, they're talking about data centers, but they've um they've come in with a huge premium. I mean, I I don't think this road's ever traded at that price, so it just tells you that you know, if if you're gonna do an MA deal in this market, and and you know, UK companies are cheap, you can afford to pay up, and also you get that kind of if if you land that knockout bid, land that knockout blow, it's very unlikely somebody's gonna come along and try and trump you. Whereas Castle Lake for Easy Jet, you know, they've they've had what five goes, keep upping the price, up in the price. And Apollo comes in and goes, Bosch, there you go, we'll pay 25p more. And the management says there's that that arbitrage as well.
SPEAKER_02I mean, if you're if you're if the buyer is a relatively highly rated company, I believe ABB is quite highly rated. Oh, very highly regarded, it can afford to use its paper as a as a makeway in that, and then you make local um invest uh um shareholders part of your wider investor family, and they can decide to to to walk away in their own time if they choose to, but it's a good way of actually funding these deals because you use higher value paper against lower value paper, so it's a really sensible way of of utilising uh you know a good valuation, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then James, you and I we wrote about biotech, didn't we? Back in March, I think it was, and we said, Yeah, get on board the sector. Well, you wrote recently about International Biotech Trust, because that had um received a shot in the arm, as you put it, with one of their companies being taken over. Today we've got uh Eli Lilly buying a company called Atti Beckley, and that's a big hub. What was a 1% holding for um biotechnology uh growth trust run by Jeff Shu. Now that's the eighth company in their portfolio to be taken over this year, which kind of I think I think that validates the gut their strategy. Um, but also in the trust space, we've had this uh really interesting situation where again Glenstone have made a couple of offers and they said, Oh, this is our final offer for AIRE, alternative income rate, and AEW's reappeared on the scene. Now they used to manage AIRE. Um, they've come in with um uh Glenstone's made a cash offer, uh AEW UK, who I know the management of that trust very well, they've come in with a share offer and a premium to the Glenstone offer. And what it means is, of course, if you like AIRE, you want to be in a REIT, then you can continue to own REIT and those assets and AEW assets. And bear in mind, AEW has paid an 8p dividend every year since 2016. That includes the pandemic, which is subgoing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, with with trusts, I mean we know about they have this dynamic that they can um store cash uh on their balance sheet, and and that can help them through tougher times like 2020, 2021, etc. So you can afford to keep the dividend stable as opposed to you know having to react to to market conditions. So that's another great advantage of investment trusts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. James Consumer been a bit of a skinny week for you on the consumer front, is there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, skinny, but lots of action in luxury. So we had uh sales beat from Richmond, which is uh Cartier and uh you know Van Cleef and Apples, but today's um Burberry Q1, um, pretty decent growth across all divisions for the first time, I think three years, but a slight miss on the sales, which disappointed the market, along with some cautious guidance. Earlier in the week, Watches of Switzerland was uh you know uh received. I think there's a bit of a bid premium in that one. So news of a good start in the US, yeah, and signs of improvement in the UK. So contrasting fortunes for luxury names.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it's it's been such a um a boom space uh for many years, but the last couple of years that they many of the big luxury firms seem to have struggled a bit, and I suppose it most of that is down to um weakness in the Chinese consumer dynamic. That's that's really what's driving um taking the cream off the top, I suppose.
SPEAKER_01So uh looking ahead to next week, Steve, as well. It's Friday lunchtime. Um, what's the what what big stocks are you looking out for?
SPEAKER_02I mean, so there are three very popular names um due next week. So one we've looked at in our regular coming next week uh is is Alphabet. So obviously the Google parent. Um they'll they'll be reporting on um Wednesday uh after the market closed. So obviously that's going to be a major market mover. Um, and also you've got Intel been on an absolute tear in terms of uh share price, um, all about you know the implied turnaround. Um whether that turnaround will come through, I don't know. Um and the other big company as well will be Tesla. Um, I I speculate, and it's purely my speculation, that it's gonna be we know the deliveries, we've already seen the delivery data. This is purely the financial data now. Um I kind of figure the financial data is gonna be a bit soggy. Um, I suspect most of the chatter around it will be about SpaceX and is there likely to be any kind of merger? And I don't suspect you're gonna get much um from Elon Musk or any of the CEOs, uh the executives there. But I mean that's probably what's going to dominate the um the conversation around Tesla is what about SpaceX?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, James, uh what are you looking out for next week?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll be keeping my eye on Wix. So Q2 update on Tuesday. Uh DFS this week flagged a slowdown in demand for furniture. So you know that big ticket space is really under pressure. Um, but Wix, the membership scheme, I reckon, should be doing well. Could launch a fresh buyback. I'm just speculating there, given the kind of share price in the doldrums. And this is one that's quite weather sensitive. So in the last quarter, it was rainfall that you know, deferred outdoor projects. We'll wait and see what happened with the heat wave, you know, whether that uh coached people outdoors for some DIY or yeah, they were hiding indoors.
SPEAKER_01Cool, yeah. I don't fancy doing DIY outside of this weather, I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_02I never fancy doing DIY.
SPEAKER_01Um, and and I'll be watching out for spoons, JD weather spoon. Um, we flagged it.
SPEAKER_02A World Cup winner. I I think we call you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, flagged it as a World Cup winner. It's it's it's done really well, it's beaten the footseat. And in fact, all the pub stops. If I just stuck to the pub stocks and the drink stocks, I'd have been all right with those. Um uh yeah, Young's rival Young's uh said they had an exceptional trading uh over May Bank holiday weekend. And so next Wednesday, Weather Speens will tell us about the fourth quarter, which is to middle of well, pretty much now to the middle of July. Uh Young's the same quarter, uh they posted uh really quite strong light for likes. So I would imagine that Weather Speens is going to seem the same, you know. Anywhere that's kind of big, showing the football, um, got outside seating, that kind of thing, take advantage of the weather. Um, yeah, that those should be absolutely fine. We will, of course, get the usual moan from Tim Martin about you know, rising costs and taxes and supermarkets, not you know, but half of the course basically.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, is it this weather is an absolute gift for the hospitality industry as a whole, isn't it? How many people are just thinking, hang it, I don't care. The cost, stick at the credit card, we're going out for dinner, we're going out for a pint tonight, you know. Uh I you can really understand that because people want to milk this moment in the sun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Um, that's about it, isn't it? Uh for us.
SPEAKER_02But just one reminder. So our listeners will be aware that we're we're putting on our uh a big investor show, the um the retirement and wealth uh show um later in the year. It's on the 6th of November. But just want to give you a heads up. I mean, you're regular podcast listeners, let's let's hope. Um, if you want to get a discounted ticket, so the tickets are normally 30 quick, you can get a 50% discount if you use the promo code podcast. So just P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you can get a 50% production on your tickets. So this won't be around forever. So sign up, get your tickets in early. We're gonna have a whole host of investment trusts um and uh expert um uh investors, some real insights uh about how to run portfolios, looking for growth, looking for income, and any other questions you basically want to throw at um the um the uh the delegates in the um the presenters in in the show. So uh yeah, remember that promo code podcast and you can get 50% off your tickets.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and tea, coffee, biscuits, and lunch thrown in. Absolutely, yeah. Can't say fairer than that. Uh, with that, we'll wish you all a uh top weekend. Cheers, yeah. Take care.
