Lots of results from my kind of stocks and too many for me to go into great detail. So look out for results and updates from the likes of Britvic (BVIC), Nichols (NICL) & Unilever (ULVR) in the food, drinks and personal care area. Britvic & Nichols have both made add on acquisitions which should enhance their growth prospects. There is also a small (5%) placing from Britvic to help fund their Brazilian deal and it looks the best value of these stocks on a mid teens PE compared to 20x+ for the other two.

Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) have reported more fund outflows reflecting investor worries on emerging and far eastern markets and less favourable investing conditions generally. They do however flag their strong balance sheet and diversification efforts but the market doesn't seem to like it.

Meanwhile after my DIY efforts yesterday and my purchases from Screwfix which is owned by Kingfisher (KGF) I see their results seem OK with even France finally showing some signs of life. Bloomsbury Publishing (BMY) have also had a good start to the year in what is a quiet quarter for them any way. Finally SSE has reiterated their earnings expectations and promised dividend increases at least in line with RPI going forward from the current full year dividend which gives a yield of 5.5%.

That's all for now as I am preparing to do a piece with the ADVFN Podcaster Justin Waite at Sharepickers.com today. So I'll try and do a quick update later with what I'm covering and details of where you can listen to it if that is of interest to you.

As it is yet another "hottest day of the year" in the UK today I thought i would feature three drink related stocks which have had announcements today. 

First up is a stock I have mentioned before in relation to benefiting from Company mishaps, namely Britvic (BVIC). They have reported a Q3 IMS today which reads quite well and in which the key point was that they suggest their full year EBIT is now expected to be towards the top end of the £148m to £156m range guidance. This was driven by a good performance in the UK and France, while Ireland was a bit weaker. They are also highlighting good progress in the US with Fruit Shoot continuing to build momentum. This one has done well for me and been re-rated a little as they have delivered a good profits recovery since the Fruit Shoot problems a few years ago and the failed merger with A.G Barr. They now trade on around 15x next years expected earnings to September 2015 with a yield of 3% at a price of 730 pence. This seems fair enough to me so I'm happy to hold it as part of a diversified income portfolio, but it doesn't look juicy enough for me to suggest you rush out and buy it.

If Robinson's Barley Water is not your thing then how about a pint of Marston's Pedigree? Marston's (MARS) have also announced a reasonable looking IMS today in which they reported overall LFL sales of 4.1% for the 41 weeks to 19 July 2014. Surprisingly they said the World Cup had been neutral as it hit food sales while benefiting wet sales and the take home trade in particular. I guess England's early exit didn't help either. They remain confident of meeting full year expectations and hope to open around 27 new-build pub restaurants in the current financial year. I have done OK out of this one having bought it for £1 back in 2012 when it was on a tasty 6% yield. It re-rated nicely from there but has rather sat there like a flat pint over the last year or so around the 150 pence level. This leaves it on around 11x earnings with a yield (the main attraction) of close to 5% which is expected to grow at around 4%. So I'm happy to hold it on that basis, although the debt is higher than I normally like to see, but I can live with that in this case given the nature of the businesses and the assets backing the debt.

Finally today we have had another drink related stock reporting today which is probably the best quality stock on AIM as a Carlsberg advert might say. In this case it is a company called Nichols (NICL). If you are not familiar with it Nichols plc is a highly focused soft drinks business. Its brand portfolio includes Vimto, which is sold in over 65 countries and Levi Roots, Sunkist, Panda and Weight Watchers which are sold in the UK.  The Group has a leading market position in both the "Still" and "Carbonate" drinks categories. Click the highlighted name above for a link to more information about them

They have reported interim results today which showed another strong performance with double digit growth in profits, earnings and dividends which has often been the case with this one. Indeed I made several times my money on this one a few years back but sold out as the growth appeared to be slowing and the rating got too rich for my taste based on my 2% and 20x sell discipline. The shares did carry on rising for a while as they continued to demonstrate growth, but as this has slowed recently the shares have come back and de-rated a little. In these figures they say they expect the second half to be stronger and that the full year results are expected to be in line at this stage. They also took an £8 million exceptional in these figures for a legal case that they lost. This represents about 35% of their PTP and I note the stock has fallen by around 8% since this was announced. The balance sheet is however solid with net cash of £32.9 million versus the £340 million market cap.

So again this could be a case of an opportunity being thrown up by a company mishap perhaps? However, having said that the rating still looks quite high at around 19x this years expected earnings with a 2.3% yield before any changes on the back of today's numbers. Thus I'll leave it on my watch list for now but i wouldn't put you off if you are prepared to pay up for quality, cheers and keep cool if you can.

I have written in the past about how corporate restructuring's which lead to subsidiaries being de-merged can lead to good value opportunities. Today I thought I would touch on the opportunities afforded when Companies suffer a mishap. In these cases it is important to determine the cause, extent and likely cost of the mishap and try and decide if it will be a short term one off or something more lasting and damaging to the business and its reputation and prospects. You can then compare this to the price reaction to see if there is a value opportunity as a result.

A good example of a bad mishap which was actually self inflicted by the management and which had long lasting effects was when Gerald Ratner in a speech described one of his own products as "crap" - see a brief video and a more recent interview for more details if you are not familiar with this case. Obviously you would want to avoid a Company with this type of mishap!

A more recent example where the mishap was smaller, less damaging and ultimately not as costly was back in 2012 when Britvic (BVIC) had to recall some of their Fruit Shoot drinks due to a choking risk for children from a small part on the top. While this was potentially very damaging, it was handled very swiftly and dealt with well by the company and they were very up front about the costs. This type of recall is quite common in the food and drinks industry and the direct costs were fairly easy to calculate. Obviously the longer lasting damage to the product and the company were an unknown at the time and hence the market marked the share down quite heavily as you can see in the chart above. This afforded a great opportunity to pick up the shares and enjoy the recovery as the recall did not do any lasting damage.

The shares recovery was also helped along by their subsequent attempt to merge with A.G. Barr which failed due to monopoly considerations. However, the Company has continued to prosper since then and indeed reported some more good interim numbers today. In these they saw revenues up 4.7% with 3.9% from underlying growth and 0.8% from pricing. Margins increased by 0.6% to 9% helped by on going cost saving initiatives which are expected to deliver £30 million per annum by 2016. This led to earnings growth of 16.9% which is around the rate of growth that seems to be forecast for the full year. So probably no change to forecasts I guess as they have been rising gently recently and their indicated range for EBIT this year of £148 - £155 million seems to be reflected in consensus forecasts already. The dividend was increased by a useful 13% on last year, reflecting they say confidence in future prospects. Adjusted net debt fell to £479.4 million which compares to a market cap. of £1.8 billion and represents 2.6x EBITDA down from 2.9x all of which seems OK given the fairly steady nature of this one. 


Overall, this one continues to deliver steady progress and has some good operating metrics. However the value is not as good as it was when the mishap happened and it seems fairly fully priced on approaching 17x and around a 3% yield so more of a hold than a strong buy I would say, although Mr. Market seems to be excited today as he has marked it up by 5% first thing on the back of this announcement, cheers.