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The Beginners’ Portfolio is a virtual portfolio, which is run as if based on real money with all costs, spreads and dividends accounted for.
We’ve had news from a handful of Beginners’ Portfolio shares recently, but before I review it, it’s about time we checked on the valuation of the portfolio — especially as we have some new shares in it now.
I’ve reinvested the cash from the sale of Vodafone together with accumulated dividends, and it went two ways. First, I topped up our holding of Rio Tinto, and then I plumped for Barclays with the rest. Here’s what the portfolio is looking like now:
| Company | Shares | Buy | Cost | Bid | Value | Change | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tesco | 159 | 305.5p | £498.23 | 322.4p | £502.62 | £4.39 | +0.9% |
| Glaxo | 34 | 1,440.5p | £502.22 | 1,678.0p | £560.42 | £58.30 | +11.6% |
| Persimmon | 79 | 617.9p | £500.55 | 1,433.0p | £1,122.07 | £651.52 | +124.2% |
| Blinkx | 1,319 | 36.9p | £499.68 | 111.0p | £1,454.09 | £954.41 | +191.0% |
| BP | 112 | 434.5p | £499.01 | 507.9p | £558.85 | £59.84 | +12.0% |
| Rio Tinto* | 16 | 3,048.4p | £500.18 | 3,430.0p | £538.80 | £38.62 | +7.7% |
| Rio Tinto* | 15 | 3,223.0p | £495.87 | 3,430.0p | £504.50 | £8.63 | +1.7% |
| BAE | 146 | 332.3p | £497.59 | 402.6p | £577.80 | £80.21 | +16.1% |
| Apple | 2 | $458.40 | £605.98 | $522.00 | £607.65 | £1.67 | +0.3% |
| Aviva | 146 | 321.4p | £470.71 | 473.5p | £681.31 | £210.60 | +44.7% |
| Barclays |  210 | 245.2p | £546.56 | 252.9p | £521.09 | -£25.47 | -4.7% |
| Cash |  |  |  |  | £54.33 |  |  |
| Total |  |  | £5,073.66 |  | £7,683.62 | £2,609.96 | 51.4% |
* I’ve included our two tranches of Rio Tinto separately for now, but I’ll combine them in future updates.
First up, a 51.4% rise since our first purchase in May 2012 is really not bad. But I am disappointed as we were up around 67% before the Blinkx (LSE: BLNX) shock sent its shares crashing and took our gain to only 191% — prior to that we’d been up a storming 380% on it!
The scare there hasn’t been fully shaken out yet, so I’ll be keeping my eye open for future developments — but as far as the company is concerned, it looks like business as usual.
Weakness at BAE
Full-year results from BAE Systems (LSE: BA) (NASDAQOTH: BAESY.US) on 20 February after weaker US defence spending led to profits coming in below expectations. After an £887m impairment charge from US businesses, the aerospace and defence engineer recorded a pre-tax profit of only £422m — we saw £1.2bn a year previously.
We did get a hint in advance after Rolls-Royce Holdings saw its results similarly lowered for the same reason, but it was still a bit of a disappointment.
But even with a flat year forecast for 2014, BAE shares are still on a forward P/E of only 10 with dividend yields of around 5% expected.
More cash
Talking of dividends, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL.US) lashed some more cash our way in the form of a quarterly dividend of $3.05 per share. It’s not a huge amount, but dividends so far have added £18.80 to our total from the company, and that takes our return to 3.4% to date compared to a bare 0.3% capital appreciation after costs — and currency movements have gone against us, too.
And Apple isn’t the only company to provide cash, as we’ve also had a final dividend from BP this month of 5.76p per share to give us an extra £6.45. And GlaxoSmithKline went ex-dividend on its final payment of 23p per share for another £7.82.
These might sound like small amounts, but we’ve had a total of £337.44 in dividends so far, accounting for a gain of 6.7% on our initial total investment.
Housing looking good
To finish on an upbeat note, housebuilder Persimmon (LSE: PSN) released results on 25 February, and I liked them! Pre-tax profit rose by 49% to £330m, after full-year revenue picked up 21% to £2.1bn.
Completions were up 16% to 11,528 with an average selling price 4% ahead to £181,861, and that helped boost Persimmon’s return on average capital employed to 17.6% from 12.2% in 2012.
Underlying earnings per share rose by 47% to 83.3p, and going into the new year forward sales are “strongly ahead” at £1.4bn compared to £1bn a year ago.