Over the last five years it has delivered impressive growth, as you can see from the table below:

As a result, the shares traded as high as 1,191p in December last year. However, since the turn of the year they had begun to trend downwards along with many technology stocks from its high, until mid June when it was trading around 750p. Then, on 17 June, the company put out a profit warning — the shares fell to 500p, and continued to fall: they are now trading at around 245p. The profit warning indicated that revenue for 2014 is projected to be approximately £130 million and that margins were under pressure.

Since the profit warning, though, the CEO has bought in excess of 20,000 shares, the financial director has bought almost 7,000 and the R&D Director (thin film) 40,000 shares. While it is clearly not proof, it does suggest that key people in the business with inside knowledge do see the future as positive. For now, it is not enough to get this Fool buying, but it is enough to get the company on my watch list…

The post Is Xaar plc One To Watch? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

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The writer of this article currently holds no shares in Xaar, but will be considering them for future purchases.

New finance director Alan Stewart joins with a reputation as an effective cost cutter from his tenure at Marks & Spencer. This may be useful, but seems to contradict most of the messages from Tesco over the last two years. My reading has been that management felt that a large part of the problem was a lack of investment in products and stores. Particularly when others (Sainsbury’s) were investing for the future and new competitors (Aldi, Lidl) were entering the market.

I also wonder why they are hiring from M&S. There does not seem to be anything particularly exciting in the last results from M&S that would suggest that Tesco would pick it as their hiring ground or need to throw cash at new hires to get them to move.

Tesco is part way through a change in moving from low-value general merchandise to higher-margin clothes and housewares, and presumably Mr Stewart will help with this (though he is on gardening leave until December). He also has turnaround experience having worked with Kate Swann at WH Smith. But I do wonder whether this is a missed opportunity.

Tesco has three, largely unvalued, strings to its bow that I would like to see it clearly delivering on:

1. Through the Clubcard, it has one of the biggest sets of data on UK consumers. Used well, I see this as an advantage for retail operations (presumably enacted) but also as a way to leverage the data into other products, probably with other partners.
2. Tesco bank. With the changes we are seeing in digital banking, including such areas as paying in cheques by phone, I see Tesco as well placed to be a genuine challenger bank, if it wants to become one.
3. IT and distribution services. Amazon has the Kindle, last Christmas Tesco launched its tablet, the Hudl. By all accounts, a very well priced (you could use Clubcard points) and well-specified product. It also featured a ‘buy from Tesco app’. Tesco seems to be in a position to choose to be a significant player in the UK consumer IT market (1,000 Tech support advisors in 200 stores), and a potentially genuine competitor to Amazon in the UK with a distribution network in existence. But it has to make a conscious decision to do this.

I do not see Mr Stewart joining as being a negative. But equally I do not see it as a positive declaration that Tesco is going places or introducing new initiatives. Hiring the Amazon UK FD would have made the market sit up, as I think might a number of other possible choices. The shares seem fully priced for now…

The post Can Tesco PLC’s New Management Solve Its Troubles? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

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Jonathan Curry has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Tesco.