UK Equities not as expensive as people think?

Lots of people are worrying about "the market" being expensive these days, which in the US may be true to a certain extent. In the UK however, this may not be so true as we struggle with BREXIT & a generally downbeat economic outlook post the budget. This may not be such a bad thing though as there has been research in the past showing that equities in countries with low GDP growth tended to outperform those in countries that high GDP growth rates.

Any way lets look at the evidence of the valuations attached to UK Equities. According to Stockopedia the FTSE 100 index for example has a Median trailing PE of 17.8x with a forecast PE of 15.3x, which is not far off the long term average. This is and based on forecast earnings growth of just under 10%. Looking at the yield side of the valuation on the FTSE 100 Index this shows a trailing yield of 2.9% and 3.3% forecast, which must therefore be factoring in similar or slightly higher rates of growth to the earning growth forecasts. That headline yield of around 3% does compare favourably with what you can get on Gilts and on cash in the bank. Given the forecast growth it should also protect your income from the current 3% inflation too in the short run and in the long run too I would argue.

It is worth remembering not so long ago before Central Banks really got going with manipulating interest rates, there was something called the reverse yield gap. That was the gap between equity yields and government bonds where equities yielded less (yes less that's not a typo) but these days as the old chines curse says - we live in interesting times.

Now the other interesting fact when looking at the FTSE and looking at the highest yielders is that there are 25 or a quarter of the index yielding more than 5%. Thus it should be possible to put together a diversified portfolio of say 20 FTSE stocks with an average yield of 6% if you equally weighted them. You could take your pick form the list below although the growth on offer is lower than the headline figure suggested above and the cover is quite low in a number of cases, so dividend cuts could be possible in a number of these.

Despite this though some such as Centrica (CNA) and Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) have indicated that they are prepared to run with low levels of cover and maintain their payouts. Indeed GSK is currently toward the bottom of its 5 year range (see graph at the end) and therefore may be offering an attractive entry point. Whether these yields prove to be sustainable in the long run though remains to be seen, especially if GSK should finally decide to split the business up. Meanwhile in a similar fashion on SSE,  I suspect their proposed merger of their distribution business may well lead to a lower total distribution from the split business, if it does go ahead down the line. Like GSK  though they are also trading toward the bottom of their 5 year range too (see graph at the end). I'll leave you to decide if you think that's a good entry point or not.

Any way just goes to show you can get quite a lot of value in the market at the moment, although I wouldn't necessarily suggest rushing out and buying all the names below as they are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of their scores on the Compound Income Scores, but as part of a diversified income portfolio some of them could do a good job for you.

As ever you should always do your own research and pay your money and take your choice or not as the case may be. Good luck with your investing and don't forget you can get this kind of information and more to help you identify good value, growing, quality  yield stocks if you sign up for the Compound Income Scores. These are now available via Dropbox, Microsoft One Drive as well as Google drive / docs. Alternatively if you would prefer to receive them via e-mail in a spreadsheet of pdf form then please do get in touch & I'm sure we might be able to arrange that too.