Much has been reported in recent months of companies de-listing from the London Stock Exchange and de-camping to the US for better valuations of their businesses. And yet the UK has its champions and investors should perhaps consider the positives and buy more British.
One advantage for UK investors is that companies remaining listed in London are seen as cheap – and these are not companies which are doing badly – it is just that they are often under appreciated.
Alec Cutler, portfolio manager and head of multi-asset at Orbis Investments (pictured) says: “UK names keep popping up as being super cheap. We find that they’re good companies, they might need a tweak here or there, but they’re fantastic yet selling at very cheap prices. So they offer high dividend yields, high free cash flow yields, very solid book, and cheap book values.”
Examples, he highlights are Headlam, energy players Hunting, Drax and Balfour Beatty, the latter he says “one of the best positioned construction companies in the world, selling at a double-digit free cash flow yield, eight times earnings.
“The reason these companies are cheap is because of changes to pension reform in the UK. UK pension holdings in UK equities went from approximately 50% around 1997 to 4% today, a massive outflow of money. And the current prices reflect the fact that investors around the world just don’t know these names as well as they should, and as well as we think they will.”
Examples of a company which wants to forgo its London listing and one which might like to list here, are Okyo Pharma and Coinbase, respectively.
Gabriele Cerrone, founder and chairman of biotechnology company Okyo Pharma, which specialises in eye disease treatment, is taking his company out of the UK and his issue is not so much valuation as appreciation. Quoted in the Daily Mail he says UK investors are only interested in mining and oil giants – “What I learnt about trying to create a niche biotech company in the UK is that it is like trying to grow plants in the desert. It has been a complete waste of time and we never raised money from investment banks. There’s no biotech culture nor any liquidity in the United Kingdom at all.”
In its Notice of Intention to delist from the London Stock Exchange, Okyo said: ‘The Company has decided to request the voluntary cancellation of listing as the volume of trading of the Ordinary Shares on the Main Market is negligible and does not justify the associated costs.’
Meanwhile crypto exchange Coinbase may not be averse to the idea of a London listing given dissatisfaction with the clarity of crypto regulation in the US.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and chief executive officer of Coinbase told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, when asked if he would have considered listing on the LSE rather than New York: “We started in the US so it was natural for us to list there but honestly given the UK has recently actually been quite positive on crypto, in a different world going back we may have considered it, to be honest at this point. I do think the US risks falling a little bit behind here if some of the regulators don’t engage further with the industry and create that clear regulatory environment that will remove some of these clouds.”
Then we have statistics from The Insolvency Service showing that the number of corporate insolvencies was 16% higher in March than in the same month last year. Yes, there is a cost of living crisis but when we do spend and where are we spending? Not on these businesses, it seems.
One has to consider where, as investors we are focusing. Who does crypto currency investing benefit and who benefits from biotech investing? No one is suggesting one invests in the latter for philanthropic reasons alone – there are returns to be made after all. But is investing in something that can’t be seen, rather than in something that develops treatment for inflammatory eye diseases, somewhat myopic.
Stephanie Spicer is head of content at Quill PR
