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The chair of building materials group Breedon is continuing to build his holding in the company, adding a further 1.25mn shares last week at a cost of just over £4.8mn.
Amit Bhatia, who increased his stake via his Cyprus-based vehicle, Abicad Holding, now owns just over 19 per cent of Breedon. This is an increase of nine percentage points on March last year, or five percentage points on last October, when Abicad said that it intended to keep buying Breedon shares as an investment but that it was “not intending to make an offer” for the company.
Breedon shares have made steady, if unspectacular, progress this year, up 6 per cent despite the wet weather putting a dampener on things in the first quarter.
Like-for-like sales were down 9 per cent year-on-year, but chief executive Rob Wood argued Breedon had “laid good foundations” for the rest of year following the completion of a couple of acquisitions. The most important of these was the $300mn (£238mn) buyout of BMC Enterprises in March, which provides an important route into the US market.
Breedon’s three biggest institutional shareholders are Invesco, BlackRock and hedge fund Lansdowne Partners, although the latter pair have been net sellers in recent months, according to FactSet data.
Earnings are likely to remain under pressure in the short term, with the Construction Products Association forecasting a 3.1 per cent decline in new work this year. But the company’s shares “appear relatively undervalued” when compared with the wider UK building materials sector and European peers, analysts at Investec argued last month.
Breedon’s shares currently trade at almost 12 times forecast earnings for this year, although this falls to 10 times next year based on an expected improvement in profitability.
Outgoing Tristel chief cashes in
Top brass at Aim-listed disinfection specialist Tristel have offloaded shares in the wake of a recent leadership shake-up. On June 11, the group’s chief executive, Paul Swinney, sold nearly 58,000 shares at a price of 441p apiece. Chief financial officer Liz Dixon offloaded 29,000 shares at 440p on the same date.
The divestments came just a day after Tristel announced the appointment of a new chief executive, Matt Sassone, who will take up his post from September 2. Sassone was formerly chief executive at London-listed Lidco before its 2021 acquisition by his current employer, US medtech business Masimo.
Swinney, who has been at the helm of Tristel for the past 30 years, announced at the end of last year his intention to retire. Under his tenure the group has latterly begun a US expansion, with its ULT solution — a disinfectant foam for ultrasound probes — approved by the US Food and Drug Administration a year ago.
The company is also planning to submit an ophthalmic device disinfectant to the regulator later this year, meaning it could soon have another foothold in the all-important US market. Although Tristel’s shares trade well below the heady levels seen in 2021, they have made a moderate 8 per cent gain over the past 12 months. Some analysts have questioned whether it’s possible to sustain even this momentum, especially given the US rollout is in its early stages.
“While we are of the view that Tristel’s recent record and the growth potential warrants a premium valuation, we think that this is largely baked into the current share price,” said Liberum analyst Seb Jantet in February.
As it stands, Swinney holds 0.33 per cent of the company’s total issued share capital, while Dixon has 0.42 per cent. Institutions hold nearly three quarters of Tristel’s stock, while insiders retain just over 3 per cent in total, according to FactSet.
