Vodafone Group plc (LON: VOD), Tesco PLC (LON: TSCO) and Blinkx Plc (LON: BLNX) contribute to a great start.
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It's 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 (LSE: VOD) (NASDAQ: VOD.US), on 18 May last year. Since then, Vodafone has been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride and by August was nicely up, but the tail end of the year saw a slump as low as 154p -- partly based on tough conditions in Europe leading to falling service revenues. But data revenues are up, and Vodafone's global reach helped it gain a new contract with German giant ThyssenKrupp last week. Ace UK 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 | Bid price * | Proceeds | Gain/loss | % change |
|---|
| Vodafone | 289 | 168.5p | £499.51 | 163.5p | £462.52 | -£37.00 | -7.4% |
| Tesco | 159 | 305.5p | £498.23 | 373.6p | £584.02 | £85.79 | 17.2% |
| GlaxoSmithKline | 34 | 1,440.5p | £502.22 | 1,474.0p | £491.16 | -£11.06 | -2.2% |
| Persimmon | 79 | 617.9p | £500.55 | 898.0p | £699.42 | £198.87 | 39.7% |
| Blinkx | 1,319 | 36.9p | £499.68 | 93.0p | £1,216.67 | £716.99 | 143.5% |
| BP | 112 | 434.5p | £499.01 | 452.9p | £497.25 | -£1.76 | -0.4% |
| Rio Tinto | 16 | 3,048.4p | £500.18 | 3,519.5p | £553.12 | £52.94 | 10.6% |
| BAE Systems | 146 | 332.3p | £497.59 | 350.0p | £501.00 | £3.41 | 0.7% |
| Apple | 2 | $458.4 | £605.98 | $452.6 | £548.25 | -£57.73 | -9.5% |
| Dividends | | | | | £91.62 | £91.62 | |
| Total | | | £4,602.95 | | £5,645.02 | £1,038.58 | 22.6% |
* Bid prices are from mid-afternoon Monday while markets were open, so I could get accurate spreads
The winners
In Tesco (LSE: 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 UK'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 23 May, 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 (LSE: PSN) has done well for us as well, as the housebuilding sector has recovered strongly over the past six months. The share price did dip a bit on Monday to 898p 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 75p-per-share dividend on 30 June, but that will be it until a planned 95p payout two years later.
Valuation
Since the last update, we've had a final dividend from BP to add £10.08 to the pot, a final dividend from GlaxoSmithKline of £7.48, and approximately £3.50 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, and represents 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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I also think you should get a copy of "What Every New Investor Needs To Know", as it really does help beginners with some of the basics.
> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares in Tesco and Apple, and has recommended shares in Vodafone.
