Results season is finally over, which means it’s time for the first quarterly review of the year.
I’ll start with short-term performance and then move on to long-term performance, strategy tweaks, recent trades and my outlook for 2022.
You can continue reading this article on my new website, UKDividendStocks.com:
What do you think of DS Smith John? I am 53 and approaching retirement and thought this was a good company priced at £2.50 a share. Plastics will slowly be replaced with Cardboard as a key ESG metric.
Hi Suraj,
It seems to be quite well-placed as you say, as a leading provider of cardboard and other sustainable packaging. However, I haven’t looked at the company in detail so I don’t have any opinion on its quality or valuation.
One thing I noticed is that it does seem to have a lot of debt. According to data from SharePad, it has borrowings of £2.3 billion, whereas its profits are typically in the £200-£300 million range. That’s a debt to earnings ratio of about eight, which I think is a bit on the high side.
Sorry I don’t have a better answer, but as I said, I haven’t looked at it in detail.
John