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LONDON -- It's been nearly two months since our end-of-2012 valuation update, so how is the Beginners' Portfolio doing?
In short, it's up 22.6% since we made our first purchase of Vodafone Group (VOD -0.76%) (VOD -1.74%) on May 18 of last year. Since then, Vodafone has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride. By August it was nicely up, but the tail end of the year saw a slump as low as 154 pence -- partly based on tough conditions in Europe leading to falling service revenues. But data revenue is up, and Vodafone's global reach helped it gain a new contract with German giant ThyssenKrupp last week. Ace U.K. investor Neil Woodford famously sold Vodafone this month, but I'm happy to go against the guru, and I still think Vodafone is a buy.
Company |
Shares |
Buy price |
Total Cost (pounds) |
Bid Price* |
Proceeds (pounds) |
Price Change |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vodafone |
289 |
168.5 pence |
499.51 |
163.5 pence |
462.52 |
(7.4%) |
Tesco |
159 |
305.5 pence |
498.23 |
373.6 pence |
584.02 |
17.2% |
GlaxoSmithKline |
34 |
1,440.5 pence |
502.22 |
1,474 pence |
491.16 |
(2.2%) |
Persimmon |
79 |
617.9 pence |
500.55 |
898 pence |
699.42 |
39.7% |
Blinkx |
1,319 |
36.9 pence |
499.68 |
93 pence |
1,216.67 |
143.5% |
BP |
112 |
434.5 pence |
499.01 |
452 pence |
497.25 |
(0.4%) |
Rio Tinto |
16 |
3,048.4 pence |
500.18 |
3,519.5 pence |
553.12 |
10.6% |
BAE Systems |
146 |
332.3 pence |
497.59 |
350 pence |
501 |
0.7% |
Apple |
2 |
$458.40 |
605.98 |
$452.60 |
548.25 |
(9.5%) |
Dividends |
91.62 |
|||||
Total |
4,602.95 |
5,645.02 |
22.6% |
The winners
In Tesco (TSCO), I sided with that other guru, Warren Buffett, who dipped in for a large helping when the price slumped last January in response to a poor Christmas period. Subsequent updates from the U.K.'s biggest supermarket have shown that the company's turnaround plans are bearing fruit, and the share price has regained a good deal of its loss. We're up 17% on Tesco since our purchase on May 23, and it is definitely still a buy for me.
Our biggest winner so far is clearly Blinkx (LSE: BLNX), the video technology developer, whose shares surged more than 20% earlier this month when the company told us that full-year sales could be ahead of target. I have been pleasantly surprised by the rapid rise we've seen from Blinkx, as I was expecting growth to be a bit slower. But these things can happen with high-tech growth shares, and we should just smile and be grateful when they do.
Persimmon (PSN 3.48%) has also done well for us, as the homebuilding sector has recovered strongly over the past six months. The share price did dip a bit on Monday to 898 pence despite full-year results showing a 52% rise in underlying pre-tax profit, with a 6% rise in completions and a 6% rise in average selling price. Persimmon is due to pay a 75 pence-per-share dividend on June 30, but that will be it until a planned 95 pence payout two years later.
Valuation
Since the last update, we've had a final dividend from BP to add 10.08 pounds to the pot, a final dividend from GlaxoSmithKline of 7.48 pounds, and approximately 3.50 pounds as a quarterly dividend from Apple. The extra cash all helps take us to that 22.6% rise -- and that's offer-to-bid, with all charges accounted for, representing what such a portfolio would actually raise should it all be sold.
It's still early days, and we're in this for the long run, so valuations are not that important now -- but it is nice to see things going well!
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