Yes, as it’s a gift to myself I could have speculated a little and moved for a slightly sexier small-cap growth stock, but there’s one thing that the pharma giant can offer my portfolio that most of my other holdings can’t: a great dividend.  Since 2009, the dividend yield has hovered somewhere between 4.6% and 5.5%, with last year’s coming in at a very respectable 4.8%.

Now could be a good time to buy, too, in terms of the share price.  It may have seen a steady rise to just under 1,500 since its October low of 1,324, but overall, the price is still down nearly 6% over the last 6 months.  I could even consider that to be an early January bargain.

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Chris Nials has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has recommended GlaxoSmithKline. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Today I’m going to quickly review three figures for anyone thinking about investing in Quindell (LSE: QPP)

1.  £153.7m

This is Quindell’s pre-tax profit that the company reported in its most recent trading update – a jump of 292%.

It also saw overall revenues soar by 119% to £357.3m during January to June.  This can be partly attributed to a number of large contract wins in the Professional Services Division.

2. 76%…

… That’s the overall drop in share price that Quindell has seen in the last six months.  Back on 7 April, shares were priced at a lofty 656p.  Now, they’re languishing at around 159p.

The main reasons for this have been much publicised.  The prime attack coming from Gotham City Research, which declared that the business was “built on sand”, and stated that the shares were worth no more than 3p each.

3. 12,500

This is the number of words contained in the 22-page rebuttal that Quindell released in response to Gotham City Research’s claims, calling them a “co-ordinated shorting attack.”

Quindell’s reply specified that it believed short positions had been taken ahead of the report’s publication, and announced that it intended to take legal action against the research house.  This was on the back of them stating that the comments were “highly defamatory” and “deliberately misrepresentative”.     

And it seemed the courts agreed, as the company released a statement on 9 September stating that it had received judgement in its favour.  The process of evaluating the damages will begin at the end of November.

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Chris does not own any share mentioned in this article.

But large, established companies such as BP often come with many interesting stories from years gone by. I’ve trawled the Internet and discovered these fun facts you probably never knew about the FTSE 100 member:

Awesome Power

In order to stay as a front-runner in searching for new sources of oil and gas, BP continues to invest in its supercomputer based in Houston, Texas.    

This is used to process the vast amounts of data that the seismic exploration teams produce, and has the unbelievable capacity of more than one petaflop.  This means it can runover a thousand trillion floating point calculations per second.

BP at the forefront of Biofuel research

In July 2013, BP (in a joint venture with AB Sugar and DuPont) opened the UK’s largest Bio-refinery in Hull.   

The Vivergo plant will produce 420 million litres of bioethanol a year when it finally gets up to full capacity.  This is equivalent to a third of the UK’s current demand. Bioethanol is a renewable transport fuel which is added to petrol. 

Always the Innovators

As you would have probably guessed, BP is often the first to develop new drilling and mining techniques.  But what might not be so obvious is the somewhat tiny tweaks they make to existing methods that go on to provide a real difference. 

For example, water has always been used to flush out trapped oil in rocks.  However, BP developed (and subsequently now own outright) a slight variation on this, which has resulted in being able to harvest 40% more.  This ground breaking discovery?  Using water with a slightly lower salt content.  It really is the little things. 

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Chris Nials has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has no position in any of the shares mentioned. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

https://youtu.be/sFqzdOAx2bI

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The Motley Fool owns shares in Unilever.

Firstly, I become physically unable to ever want any pancake-related item of foodstuff anywhere near my person for at least another year.

Secondly, my inbox becomes clogged with emails from numerous financial institutions reminding me that it’s ISA season again.  Large in number they may be,  but they raise a good point.  Stocks-and-shares ISAs should be a key part of any long-term investor’s armoury — they do provide tax-free returns after all!

One of the challenges with leaving it to (or as there’s still the best part of a month left – close to) the last minute before the 5 April deadline, is figuring out quickly what shares to buy into.  So, in order to help, let’s have a look at one stock that I think would be a stellar contender for a portion of your £11,520 allocation: BT (LSE: BT-A) (NYSE: BT.US).

To start with, you cannot argue that BT is a telecommunications stalwart.  It has a 61% market share of the UK landline business,  over 7 million broadband users in the UK (making it the largest) and is now taking on BSkyB for the rights to show more Premier League football.  It has already replaced ESPN as the ‘secondary’ Premier League broadcaster, and recently completed a £900m deal for the rights to show European Champions League and Europa league matches.  Beating BSkyB in the process, no less. 

So, what about its financials?  Well, BT currently trades on a P/E of 14.69, so perhaps could be considered relatively well priced at this moment in time.  With regards to dividends, its yield is currently just over 2.5%, so a little below the 3.5% FTSE 100 average.  However, over the past couple of years, its dividends per share has been on the increase, posting totals of 7.4p in 2011, 8.3p in 2012 and 9.5p in 2013. 

The main reason, however, as to why I would consider BT a great selection for your ISA is because of its growth potential. In its last quarter results (released in December last year), it posted a 2% gain in group revenue and an 8% rise in group profits.  Its EPS was up a fantastic 12%, too.  And that’s just in the short term:  BT’s long-term growth has been solid, too.  In fact, the share price is up over 440% since March 2009.  So, to apply a pound value to that, if you invested your entire £11,520 allocation in BT shares and saw similar growth, they may be worth over £50,500 in just five years’ time.

And when you remind yourself that that’s nearly £40k of tax-free profit, you’ll hopefully understand why this telecoms giant is firmly in my thoughts.

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> Chris does not own shares in BT.

Firstly, I become physically unable to ever want any pancake-related item of foodstuff anywhere near my person for at least another year.

Secondly, my inbox becomes clogged with emails from numerous financial institutions reminding me that it’s ISA season again.  Large in number they may be,  but they raise a good point.  Stocks-and-shares ISAs should be a key part of any long-term investor’s armoury — they do provide tax-free returns after all!

One of the challenges with leaving it to (or as there’s still the best part of a month left – close to) the last minute before the 5 April deadline, is figuring out quickly what shares to buy into.  So, in order to help, let’s have a look at one stock that I think would be a stellar contender for a portion of your £11,520 allocation: SABMiller (LSE: SAB) (NASDAQOTH: SBMRY.US).

To start with, you cannot argue that SABMiller is a FTSE 100 stalwart.  It has operations in 75 countries across the world, and sells over 20 billion litres of lager per year.  It has a market cap of around £47bn, making it the second biggest brewer in the world after Anheuser Busch InBev, with household name brands such as Fosters, Miller, Grolsch and Peroni under its wing.  

So, what about its financials?  Well, SABMiller currently trades on a P/E of 13.29, so perhaps could be considered relatively well priced at this moment in time.  With regards to dividends, its yield is currently just under 2.4%, so well below the 3.5% FTSE 100 average.  However, over the past couple of years its dividends per share has been on the increase, posting totals of $81 in 2011, $91 in 2012 and $101 in 2013. 

The main reason, however, as to why I would consider SABMiller a great selection for your ISA is because of its growth potential. In its last half-year results (released in November last year), it posted a 5% rise in group profits.  Its basic EPS was up a solid 8%, too.

And that’s just in the short term. SABMillers’s long-term growth has been solid as well. In fact, the share price is up over 318% since March 2009.  So, to apply a pound value to that, if you invested your entire £11,520 allocation in SABMiller shares and saw similar growth, they would be worth over £36,600 in just five years’ time.

And when you remind yourself that that’s nearly £37k of tax-free profit, you’ll hopefully understand why this beverage giant is firmly in my thoughts. 

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> Chris does not own shares in SABMiller.

https://youtu.be/URhTRoJEofc

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> The Motley Fool owns shares in Tesco.

https://youtu.be/zI5v7Prf6Z4

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> The Motley Fool owns shares in Tesco.

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> Neither Chris nor Mark own shares in either of the companies mentioned.

https://youtu.be/G7Sf0q2cZbQ

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> Both Nate and The Motley Fool own shares in Tesco.