Fortnightly Publication Highlighting Latest Insights From IRF Providers
Company Research
Consumer Staples
Smart Insider ranked TSCO +N on Jan 29th based on a £150k purchase from Gerard Murphy (Chair since 2023) at £3.71. The stock has moved lower since, and on Apr 11th, the CEO, CFO and a director combined to purchase £280k worth of stock at around £3.20. Ken Murphy (CEO since 2020) spent £130k and Imran Nawaz (CFO since 2021) spent £50k. Both have only one prior purchase, in Oct 2022 at £2.00, which proved to be very timely. Chris Kennedy (Director since Feb 2025) made his first purchase, spending £100k. Smart Insider are upgrading the stock further, from +N to +1 (highest rating).
Edition: 209
- 18 April, 2025
SAP (SAP GR) Germany
Technology
Guy Cerundolo provides a basket of long ideas in Europe. These stocks have good and improving multi-factor model scores. In addition to SAP (see chart) he also highlights companies including ASM International, Assa Abloy, CRH, Ferrovial, Philips, Rolls-Royce and Tesco.
Edition: 192
- 09 August, 2024
FTSE 100 stocks & sector review
Messels currently has 19 long positions in their FTSE 100 Momentum portfolio having closed their position in Rio Tinto after it pulled back in the five-year range and broke medium term relative support. They remain overweight Retail and in particular, Howden, Tesco and Marks & Spencer which maintain uptrends and JD Sports and Kingfisher which renew base formations. Other stocks highlighted in their technical review this week include Informa, which has rallied back to the highs and rallies from relative uptrend support; while M&G finds 18-month uptrend support and develops a base at the bottom of the relative range.
Edition: 191
- 26 July, 2024
Consumer Staples
Insider selling has picked up in a meaningful way in May, as six officers have sold a total of 1.6m shares at prices ranging from £2.65-£2.81. Adrian Morris has sold 634k shares, 591k of which are option related, but this is greater than his combined sales since joining. Christine Heffernan sold 175k shares, her largest sale and 5x her only other sale in Nov 22 at £2.77. Alessandra Bellini, Gerry Mallon, Jason Tarry and Ashwin Prasad are also making large sales. While SmartInsider would expect to see some insider selling given the strong share price performance over the last 9 months, some of these sales look particularly aggressive.
Edition: 162
- 09 June, 2023
UK Supermarkets: Ripe For Activism
Consumer Staples
Following Asda’s buyout last year and Morrisons rejecting a £5.5bn takeover earlier this week, Will Nutting looks at what is driving private equity interest in the sector. He also explains why he believes Tesco would make an ideal candidate for activist involvement and why management should be aggressively buying back stock. While Sainsbury’s and Waitrose both remain viable acquisition targets, he remains very bearish on Ocado - besides valuation concerns, it is too small and consequently while it's best in class tech solution may give 50-100bp advantage it’s weaknesses in other areas make it ultimately uncompetitive.
Edition: 113
- 25 June, 2021