Updates

Southern Cross

July 2007

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

Care home operator Southern Cross has acquired Avery Healthcare for £96.5m, adding a further 845 beds in 15 high quality, purpose built locations, mainly in the North East. As with its previous acquisitions, Southern Cross will sell Avery’s freehold properties and lease them back, which effectively reduces its cost for the operating business. Avery’s annualised EBITDA is approximately £7.5m, while average occupancy in the year ended 31 March was 81.6%, partly reflecting the fact that several homes were newly built and hadn’t reached mature occupancy levels. Current occupancy across the mature homes is 97.3%. Broker UBS notes that if Southern Cross continues to acquire at the current pace ...

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Caphone Warehouse - Finally solving TalkTalk problems; eps to soar to 25.5p in â€˜09

Experian - Shrugs off slowing US economy

Southern Cross - Fee rises support margins (October 2009)

Southern Cross - Portfolio constituent hits six-month high (June 2009)

Southern Cross - With debt concerns almost eliminated the shares look cheap on PE of 4.3 (April 2009)

Southern Cross - Dramatic recovery in finances means care homes operator looks over-sold (March 2009)

Southern Cross (October 2008)

Southern Cross - Shock profit warning (August 2008)

Southern Cross - 5.8% increase in fees (July 2008)

Southern Cross (April 2008)

Southern Cross - Underlying occupancy over 92% (November 2007)

Southern Cross - Divests freehold for Â£30m (October 2007)

Southern Cross (June 2007)

Southern Cross (May 2007)

Southern Cross - Blackstone exit triggers re-rating (April 2007)

Southern Cross (February 2007)

Southern Cross - Largest provider of care homes exhibits strong demand profile (November 2006)

With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

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