Flat share prices but rising dividends.

We have had results today from two companies that I have written on in the past namely Picton Property Income & RPC Group (click the names to read previous comments). In the case of Picton (PCTN) it is a little unfair to say a flat share price as that only really applies in the last 5 months or so as you can see in the chart below.

Prior to that as I had flagged before this property trust had delivered decent shareholder total returns of 50% in their previous year and has followed that up with a further 32% return in their latest results for the year to March 2015. When I last wrote on this one back in March this year they were at 72p which is roughly where they are today, although the latest announced NAV is catching up with the price coming in at 69p so the premium is now smaller than it was.

Going forward they have already announced that they intend to increase this years dividend from 3p to 3.3p which at 72p will give a gross yield of 4.58% which should still be covered as they continue to invest the proceeds of their most recent fund raising in income producing assets with another deal also being announced today.

So as the commercial property market seems to have some momentum behind it maybe this one can make some further progress in the year ahead, but again I would probably expect the rate of progress to slow again this year. Despite that this still looks like a good way to play growth in the sector in a diversified fashion with a decent yield too.

Moving onto RPC Group (RPC) I guess this is one where the flat share price tag perhaps is more relevant if you look at their chart below in so far as it is at around the same level as it was a year ago when I last wrote it up after their results at that time. However this masks some distortions and big swings that resulted from their acquisition related rights issue. Last year I mentioned that this is often a good opportunity to add cheaply to a holding during the process. Indeed I followed my own advice from last year and picked up some more of this one around the 500p level during last years rights issue.

This has worked out OK as the issue has been digested and they have started to bed in the acquisition of Promens Group and they have doubled the suggested synergies from this to €30m per annum in today results announcement. In this

they delivered revenues and earnings slightly ahead of consensus but the dividend was slightly light, due to the adjustment for the rights issue, coming in at 15.4p rather than the 15.7p that had been forecast, although it was still up by 12% in line with earnings against the re-based comparative. This extends their record to 22 years of rising dividends since the Group listed in the early 1990's (see my previous post for more history / Company details and today's results).

Looking at current forecast for the coming year, assuming no great changes after these figures suggests earnings of around 45p with a 17.5p dividend but up by around 11%. At a share price of 639p (+3.4% today) this would leave them on around 14x with a yield of 2.74%. This gives me a strange sense of deja vu as this is almost exactly the same prospective rating that it stood on when I wrote about it a year or so ago and back then I said it "seems fair for this well managed business."
It seems worth repeating this year so ditto and I note the shares are also approaching the highs of last year which could act as resistance in the short term as they approach over bought levels. I guess time will tell if they can break out from this range which might be a bullish sign for a re-rating, but in the absence of that I would suggest again that up here they remain a strong hold as part of a more broadly diversified income portfolio.