News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

25 February 2022 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO

• The Russian invasion of Ukraine began
• Markets were surprisingly resilient with the US market finishing up on both the day and the week
• The oil price went through $100 and bond yields fell

A WEEK IN FUNDS

Regional REIT, the out-of-town owner of regional offices, released a significant increase in its portfolio valuation, rent collection of 98.6% (based on occupancy of around 80%) and a dividend yield of 7.5%

COMPANY NEWS

• Cash machine-like returns from Rio Tinto who returned record money to shareholders on the back of free cash flow of $17.7bn. Having paid down debt they now have net cash of $1.6bn and the dividend yield is now 13.4%.
• Glaxo unveiled Haleon as the new name for its soon to be spun-out consumer health division
• Lloyds released messy results with costs up and a £600m provision for misdemeanours in the Reading office over 15 years ago
• Newmont Mining were modestly ahead of expectations, no change to dividend policy

SMALL-CAP NEWS

Investors in the international digitally-led maternity and nursing wear brand, Seraphine, really spat the dummy out this week with shares falling by 70% as the company announced they expected full-year revenue “marginally” below market forecasts and adjusted EBITDA “significantly” below expectations at £4.5m. Although there was good growth in North America, they admitted February sales had been “soft” and expected March to be better. Baby steps!

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

• 1947: Polaroid demonstrated its first instant camera. Polaroid was the leading tech stock of its day. However, the company was never able to adapt to the rise in digital photography, and would be bankrupt by 2001
• 2021: the weakest US Treasury auction on record hit prices across the whole spectrum as the five-, seven- and 10-year notes all fell sharply in price. Researchers at the Federal Reserve called it a “flash event”

IN OTHER NEWS

The Russian stock market finished down around 30% on the week, the rouble down around 10% and the FT reported that at one point a leading bank was offering to buy Russian government bonds at less than half the price it was prepared to sell. Meanwhile private banks UBS and Credit Suisse were indicating that they had imposed margin calls on customers using Russian assets as collateral

MARKET DATA

 As at 25^th February 2022. Source: Financial Express

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