Sunday newspaper share tips
Each week we round up the Sunday newspaper share tips. Read the latest tips and archive of Financial Mail's top stock-picker: Midas archive.
We look through them so you don't have to ...
Sunday Telegraph
Government plans to introduce random breath tests for motorists could provide a boost for Concateno, the UK's biggest drug and alcohol testing company.
The Aim-listed company has contracts with the Prison Service, major shipping lines and train operators, as well as police forces up and down the country.
Concateno's market is growing at its fastest rate, with an expansion rate of around 20% a year. Employers are increasingly set to test their workers for jobs, and the links between substance abuse and crime is helping to drive the political agenda.
The firm is expected to have moved into a small profit last year - results are due in March. A joint-venture with Phillips to develop a new roadside drug testing device adds to the significant upside potential. Buy.
RPS is Europe's biggest environmental consultancy and has been sold down heavily in the recent market turmoil. But the group issued an upbeat trading statement, with profits well ahead of estimates. Recent buys - six businesses for £33m - are proceeding well and the acquisition pipeline also remains healthy.
And all three division - planning, development and environmental management, have performed very successfully.
Climate change as an issue is not going to disappear so RPS should benefit from the trend for increasing environmental legislation. Demand for oil and gas is not slowing down either, despite fears of a recession, and production work should remain high.
RPS should be able to report another impressive year of growth when its delivers full year results in March. With so many brokers pinning target prices some 100p above the current level, now is a good time to buy.
Sunday Times
Investors should be raising a toast to the board of Scottish & Newcastle, maker of Foster's lager. They have played a blinder, forcing a consortium composed of continental rivals Carlsberg and Heineken to raise their bid three times against the backdrop of the most savage bear market since the bursting of the dotcom bubble.
The pair's first shot at S&N was a 720p per share offer. In the months since that was made, the market has fallen by about 15% but the Danes and Dutch upped the offer to 800p to secure a recommendation from the S&N board.
At this level, shareholders would be wise to accept even if the offer was being made against the backdrop of calmer markets.
SABMiller and InBev are privately ruling themselves out, leaving Anheuser-Busch as the dark horse. Either way, S&N investors are on to a winner.
Overcapacity continues to plague the printing industry. Last week's collapse of the Canadian printing giant Quebecor World into Chapter 11 underlines the point. It tried and failed to sell its European operations, including a plant at Corby in Northamptonshire that produces magazines and supplements for Emap and Guardian Media Group.
Now Corby faces an uncertain future. Buyers may be put off by the deficit in the company's UK pension scheme. Another operator, Polestar, a one-time merger candidate for Quebecor, has just shut its Scarborough plant.
All this could benefit printer St Ives, whose performance will forever be measured against the notional price offered by Michael Green's Tangent Communications vehicle in October 2006. The approach was unceremoniously rebuffed by the St Ives board, led by Miles Emley and Brian Edwards.
St Ives's shares (246½p) are trading at an undemanding 11 times 2008 earnings and around 10% below Green's 272p offer, despite almost touching £3 last November.
The dividend, which St Ives held even when it was not covered by earnings, is yielding an attractive 7%. That, at least, suggests that the shares have bottomed out.
Still, so much consumer exposure in a rocky sector does not make St Ives feel like a safe haven for investors right now.
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