Top ten companies that are selling at a discount – FTSE 350

On the previous blog, also dated 25th February 2017, Nick has provided the list of companies from the FTSE 350 that made the grade for our long-term investment.

The spreadsheet was the cumulation of focused effort by Nick and me over a 9-month period a few years back. Nick, spent, subsequently, a considerable amount of time improving the calculation.

Here’s an example of the back sheet of information that is taken for up to 10 years of figures for each company in the FTSE 350 – and this does not show the mind numbing calculations that are used within each of these boxes.

We must emphasise that this is meant for longer term investment. The principles of which use many ideas from the great investors, but primarily that of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett – and, if you know these investors, we are talking longer term.

Nick has only provided FTSE 350 as the information is aimed at UK ISA or SIPP investors.

Here is a synopsis of the filters of the principal figures used: “and, we have to say, principal figures that cannot be found anywhere else” 

Margin of Safety: price is less than 60% of value

Age: more than 4-years trading with less than 2-years of negative earnings

Growth: a growth rate greater than 10% to ensure a reasonable rate of return

Consistency: 10% growth rate in all variables – consistency score greater than 60%

(Blackberry conundrum: consistency of growth improves over time)

You will notice, in the more detailed sheets below, that annual report dates can be over 12 months old. That is because of the release time of annual report information. Although we are long-term investors with this information, Nick will run the calculations every few months to capture annual result information reasonably early.

Here is the more detailed, and most up to date annual report information, on each of our companies that made the cut:

Finally, anyone using this information to invest we must, of course, point you to our disclaimer page. Also, it is important that individuals do their own due diligence. It is important that, as investors, we understand the company we are investing into. The information above is detailed but we must determine for ourselves if we think a company has legs for the longer term.