Daily Mail share tips

By This Is Money
Updated: 06:32 EDT, 9 January 2007

Twice a week, the Daily Mail's shares experts take a quick look at two stocks of note . . .

Centaur

VITAL STATISTICS:(full-year trading statement)
Forecast profit: £16.5m
One-year share performance: +40%

If 2007 carries on in the same vein as 2006, then the smart media money is heading into business publishing. At the sleepy end of the sector, Centaur is already benefiting. The publisher of Marketing Week and The Lawyer has seen its shares soar, partly on consolidation hopes, partly on good performance.

Sales in the past six months are expected to be 10% ahead of last year, helped by acquisitions. Only lower exhibitions income, after its Mortgage Summit missed the accounting period, knocked the shares.

Four months after the long-awaited handover of power to Geoff Wilmot, it is too early to detect a change of pace at Centaur. Certainly, it could work harder on new launches after Finance Week was closed and its website hived off. Trading at 18 times this year's earnings, there is perhaps a little more value here.

But Informa or United Business Media are more obvious picks in this sector.

VERDICT: Try elsewhere

Michael Page International

VITAL STATISTICS (fourth quarter trading update)
Gross profits: £93m, up 32%
One-year share performance: +68%

The recruiter Michael Page International, which started as a two-man band above a laundrette some 30 years ago, is doing very nicely thanks to continuing strong demand for white-collar professionals across the world.

Continental Europe is booming, but the rest of the recruitment group's markets are also experiencing strong growth. New boss Steve Ingham has continued to expand the business, opening offices in five territories including South Africa, Mexico and Russia.

Shares don't look cheap. They are trading on a price to earnings multiple of almost 14 times 2008 estimates - a premium to the FTSE 350's average.

But with little sign of demand for top-end staff easing, the good times look set to roll on. Some analysts believe pre-tax profits will surge to £164.4m in 2008 from an expected £96.7m for 2006.

VERDICT: Add