Horrible, busy day today.

Well a busy day for company announcements today so I'll keep it brief. First up of course is the post close update from Restaurant Group (RTN) which I flagged up yesterday. The figures themselves which show total sales growth of 7.9% and LFL of 1.5% show a slight slow down from their last update at 45 weeks and suggest that Christmas maybe wasn't so strong for them and as a result of this they suggested that they expect their figures to be in the middle of the current range of market expectations.

So probably what could be described as an in line update, however they are also flagging in the statement a slow down in consumer demand as the year went on and talking cautiously on the outlook on the back of things like potential BREXIT vote, the living wage and global uncertainty all being mentioned. As a result they say are more cautious than previously on the outlook for 2016 and are talking about openings being broadly in line with this years 44 new sites, which probably means a few less. They finished up by saying:

"TRG has an excellent portfolio of businesses with strong market positions. The Company's move towards a more balanced portfolio is paying dividends and we have a proven track record established over many years of delivering strong financial returns and excellent cash flows, even through more difficult trading periods. Therefore, notwithstanding some of the uncertainties described above, we are confident that TRG is well positioned to deliver further profitable progress in 2016 and subsequent years.

Thus on balance it looks like a bit of a slowing in their growth is likely this year, but they still seem confident of making progress nevertheless, as they have done in the past. The market seems to have taken this very badly first thing and marked the shares down by around 14% to 550p at the time of writing. I have to say I am surprised by this and it seems like a bit of an over reaction to me in the short term. If we take the current forecasts for 2016 which show double digits eps growth and trim this to say 7% that might suggest something like 35.7p of earnings and a similar rise in the dividend could give something like 18.2p which at 550p would put it on 15.4x with a  3.3% yield which seems reasonable to me. However, I guess it might be best to see where the estimates actually move to to get a better handle on the valuation and see if the market wants to de-rate it some more.

Meanwhile Jupiter Fund Management (JUP), which is held in the Compound Income Scores Portfolio and which came close to be sold at the year end re-screening has announced a trading update and funds under management (FUM). These totalled £35.7bn at the year end having seen decent inflows of £0.5bn in Q4 and £2.1bn over the year. On this they said this reflected their strategy to diversify by product, client type and geography, all supported by strong investment performance. Across the whole of 2015, these combined to deliver organic mutual fund flow growth of eight per cent. and to increase total AUM by 12 per cent, despite broadly flat markets. So looks like they should be able to report the strong expected results, but in current markets fund management companies may not be top of everyone's buy lists, although this one looks reasonable value too with PE of around 15x and a yield of 5.5%+.  May be one for brave contrarians who think the sell off in the market is over done?

That's it for today off to plough through all the other statements and watch the carnage in the markets at the moment, be careful out there as it seems even in line statements and note of caution can be treated savagely.