Yertiz
30 Mar 2016
Re: We're here Schtill schtum......so's everyone else on here!
Yertiz
23 Mar 2016
Re: We're here Schtum.....lips are sealed!
Hardboy
23 Mar 2016
Re: We're here Now Yeritz, don't you dare say anything this time.
valuemanbuyer
01 Mar 2016
Re: We're here I suspect she's finishing the bottle !
Yertiz
01 Mar 2016
Re: We're here Chickened out.....running profits is a better, more sensible option and one I'm sticking with. The way Halma has shrugged off the market woes and has resolutely remained on an upward march is encouragement enough.Next stop £10.
Yertiz
01 Mar 2016
We're here £9 has been touched this am - time to take some of the top off my holding and reinvest in AHT I tthink!Whatever happened to Lambrini girl's 'prophecy'?
Rhigos
29 Feb 2016
New all time closing high Halma now elevated to my favourite share in my collection based on upward gradient of SP chart since purchased measured by AER (for my purchases 53.0%, 28.8%, 25.3% and 18.7% pa).Regarding comments about number of shares I have it is currently 43 so 42 was a very good guess Hardboy 
That is a bit misleading though as I have several real stinking dogs that are hardly worth selling. Value of my Arian Silver shares now would not pay for a round of drinks. I have 3 others that are worth less than £1K each. I only have shares in 33 companies that are each worth more than 1% of total. Probably still too many.Today a good day for my portfolio up 0.56% compared with a flat FTSE 100. Being overweight in commodity shares paying off for a change, unlike 2003 to May 2008 when it was a winning formula. Those were the days RIO over £60 a share (due to Rights issue been corrected down on charts to around £58). At one time RIO was 14% by value of total share holdings. I did sell most of them before SP crashed. Now RIO my tenth biggest instead of biggest.
valuemanbuyer
17 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares Like you I've owned Halma for a few years now and thank Mutandis for his original comment.The ceo recently said that he has appointed all 3 divisions with CEOs. The reason was that each division has the potenta to grow to the same size as the current whole . That to me is a very exciting prospect and one worth waiting for . They keep delivering due to unique niche products and increasing regulation that allows for superior pricing and therefore margins.
Hardboy
16 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares Wow, Rhigos, you certainly do a lot of research and keep tabs on a lot of companies. If you don't like having more than 2.33% of your holding in any share, that means you'll have a minimum of 42 shares; which in my mind is a little too many to keep fully abreast with. I'm also impressed that you do your own research rather than just following other people's say so. Following 500 companies for 6 months is impressive; and I guess your 1st conclusion backs up what I was saying about companies with high PEs are expected to out perform the market (in terms of EPS growth at least.) It also backs the momentum trading idea; but I always worry if I've missed the boat. I was with Brown Shipley too - no complaints about them, but when my main contact left I moved my account with him.
Rhigos
16 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares Thank all of you who responded to my post on 'expensive shares'. They have reassured me that I made the right decision with my 4 purchases of HLMA from 4 Sep 14 to 3 Nov 15 at an average gross SP of 691.Interesting mention of Brown Shipley, they were my first Stock Broker. I am now with Charles Stanley Direct.At 3.75% of total value of portfolio I have a decent sized holding of HLMA though a good bit smaller than the 6.43% which is ABF my largest holding. Another high PE share that I admit is higher risk than HLMA but I think Primark is a real winning formula. I will hold HLMA but am comfortable with present holding which is above my average size of 2.33%. If I had less I would top up so my opinion is now weak buy. Nice to see sharp rise in SP yesterday and fair rise again today. Helps to make me happier with them. I have noticed HLMA's appetite for bolt on acquisitions which should bring growth to company.I remember years ago doing an analysis of about 500 shares, noting some basic fundamentals, then 6 months later seeing if there was any pattern in noted fundamentals of those that did much better and much worse in terms of SP. Ones with high PE did better on average than those with low PE. But the strongest bias was those that had a 65 day moving average SP that was going up 6 months before tended to outperform those that did not 6 months later. An argument for momentum buying (if combined with lots of other research).
Hardboy
12 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares Companies with high PEs have a high price because they are expected to grow their profits (while low PEs mean profits are expected to fall.) So the share price is reflecting a higher EPS which is expected in the future. In Halma's case, this is not some young AIM company with a good story that has convinced the market of its prospects; it is a well established company that has delivered profit growth year on year on year, so the expectations of higher earnings are backed up by a track record of doing so.As Mutandis has said, we have an update as recent as Thursday to confirm everything is on track. We all get panicked when markets tumble, but if you are a reasonably long term investor, I believe you should not react to market movements this year (a guy from Brown Shipley on Bloomberg this week reckoned current markets were pricing in a 2008 size collapse of financial markets & 10 years with 0 growth & 0 inflation) - maybe instead of considering selling because of the decline in share price, it would be more sensible to buy more. Remember the Sage's saying - be brave when others are fearful.
mutandis13
12 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares There is a risk of owning poor quality expensive shares, but with Halma's track record, for a long term investor in the shares, it will be irrelevant what happens to the SP over a short period.The last set of full year results were the 12th consecutive year of record sales and profits and their dividend was the 36th year of increasing the pay-out by 5% or more. They returned 22.7% on their capital employed against their weighted average cost of capital of 9.8% and their average free cash flow over the past 3 years returned almost 18% on their capital employed.In their most recent trading update they stated that they expect adjusted profit before tax for the year end to be in line with market expectations and order intake has remained ahead of revenue. So EPS should be 33.6p, up 7.8% on last year's 31.17p. Further out analysts are expecting the business to grow EPS by about 9% pa to 2018, some of that growth will be through acquisitions (over the past 10 years they have made 30 bolt on acquisitions). They currently have £610m of facilities available and were using at the time of their interims just £93m.I first purchased HLMA in May 2007 at 232p (yielding 3.2%), by April 2009 it had lost 26% of its value - nothing wrong with the business just the market. June 2011 it was 394p, but then fell 16% by November of that year, once again business still sound. Currently HLMA is off about 13% from its 52 week high, it may well fall another 13% as in 2009, but I would rather pay attention to the fundamentals of the business, rather than the weighted average intelligence of the market.If I had to leave all of my money with just one company for the next 20 years, HLMA would certainly be on the list, based on their quality of earnings, a strong position in the markets they service, good growth prospects within those markets and a track record of acquiring good businesses in a fragmented market.I'm with LKH and Pharmaspecialist on this one.
schovald
12 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares I have heard these sort of shares described as "growth at an unreasonable price".Happy to hold and will look to top-up on further weakness.
pharmaspecialist
12 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares I think it would be fair to say that there is a diversity of opinion on the risks of owning "expensive" shares. Terry Smith of Fundsmith has put figures forward to show that owning highly rated shares of the type of companies he owns is not a problem at all, in fact it is an inevitable part of his strategy which, up to now, has been very successful (and also successful in backtesting). The critical thing is not the p/e, it is the type of company and the ROCE. Having said that, I am not necessarily suggesting that Halma should be held, although I am happy to do so myself.
LK Hyman
12 Feb 2016
Re: Risk of owning expensive shares Rhigos,Say what you like, m8, I've made out like a bandit with this puppy over the years, and the recent share price fallback does not make me wish to sell, no sirree. I shall hold.The people in the C-suite at Halma seem to me to be the cold fishy-eyed hard sonnamabeeatches that I like to have running what passes for the shrunken wad ofLKH on the flybridge
