COSTAIN GROUP:
An election is a definitely on the cards this year and if, as expected, the Labour Party win, they have vowed to reform our planning systems by reintroducing mandatary local housing targets, recruiting hundreds of new planning officers, and giving mayors new planning powers.
Many of the large building companies are waiting on the side lines in anticipation of this promise.
So.............on this basis the China Dolls have invested into one of the largest British construction companies which has been in the doldrums for the past 5 years.
COSTAIN GROUP: is a British construction and engineering company headquartered in Maidenhead, England. Founded in 1865, its history includes extensive housebuilding and mining activities, but it later focused on civil engineering and commercial construction projects. It was part of the British/French consortium which constructed the Channel Tunnel at the end of the 1980s, and has been involved in Private Finance Initiative projects.
In the year 2019 Costain share price reached a high of around 305, however it then followed a downward path, dropping to 48p by October 2023, since when it has been rising slowly and now sits around 75p.
As usual, we have started off slowly investing just £3000 and may add to this amount over the next few months. Wish us luck on this one!
One of our members saw a very positive article on Costain in today's Times newspaper.
CRODA: Once one of our star shares, Croda has been taking a beating over the past year dropping by over 31%.
However, thought is that Croda is in a decent position to weather a short-term storm. With a strong balance sheet, and with its debt under control, it is expected to emerge on the other side.
Croda is in a good position showing higher profits and is considered to be a good buying stock.
We are still showing a profit of 67% on this share as we bought many years ago and are holding on.
RELX: Our relatively new share purchase into the technology sector. The share price has risen 15% in the past 6 months and is rated a moderate buy with expectations of an increase over the next year.
We are hoping they are correct as recently the price dropped slightly.
This is a long term investment and we are holding.
DECISIONS:
In order to finance our investments this month, we sold off two of our AIM shares, Agronomics and Tristel. Neither of these companies have been performing quite as well as we hoped. Reports in the market think that Tristel is overpriced, and whilst it has performed relatively well for us, we decided to sell all of our holding.
CORNISH METALS: We sold our stake in Cornish Metals a couple of months ago after watching its decline from 14p to 10p. The share price then continued on its downfall to 7.3p. However we have been keeping an eye on it and over the past month it has been rising, bringing it back to 10p on reports that their South Crofty mine is on track for delivery. We will keep following and may well reinvest,after discussion next month if it continues on this upward path.
DISCLAIMER
The China Dolls is a group of private individuals who meet regularly to discuss investment strategy and make investments based on the collective opinion of the the group.
The China Dolls is not in the business of offering any form of advice on investing or other financial matters.
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