Shares are often seen purely in financial terms. But some companies treat shareholders as privileged part owners of the company. A number of companies offer perks to investors holding as few as one share. This can be an additional benefit and in some cases it can even be an incentive to buy a small holding. Here are two UK shares with perks I would buy.
These UK shares offer a 6% yield – and more
General insurer Legal & General (LSE: LGEN) is an attractive investment to me for a number of reasons. Its long business history in the relatively stable insurance sector gives me confidence that it will be around for a while.
While insurers such as Aviva suspended their dividends last year, Legal & General did not yield to regulatory pressure and continued to pay out. That in itself is attractive to me as a yield hunter. But I also like the fact that, whereas Aviva recently announced a dividend cut, Legal & General has outlined a five-year plan to increase dividends. At the current share price, it yields over 6%. That is an attractive yield for blue-chip UK shares like L&G.
And the perks for shareholders in L&G? Discounts across a range of insurance products. For example, L&G offers shareholders 15% off the cost of its travel insurance plan. For this and a range of other discounts, the qualifying shareholding is just one share.
One I’d tuck away in storage
A different sector I am bullish on as a whole is self-storage. The industry has grown a lot in the UK but still lags far behind the US in terms of its scale. So I expect years, if not decades, of growth to come.
One of the larger players in self-storage is Safestore (LSE: SAFE). While these UK shares plunged close to 500p last year, they are already 60% up since then. As well as its strong-performing business in the UK, the company is expanding in Europe. In its last quarterly results, it noted improving trading momentum and record occupancy. Long-term I am optimistic about the shares, although at a price-to-earnings ratio of around 30, I don’t think its shares are cheap.
I might value them differently if I wanted to put some items in storage, though. That is because these are shares with perks. As a new Safestore customer, being a shareholder with at least 100 shares would entitle me to a 25% discount on storage charges.
I already hold L&G shares without claiming a discount and would only ever buy based on my belief in the company’s prospects, rather than the perks. But I also think those perks incentivise shareholders to get more involved with the businesses in which they are investing. To me, management engaging shareholders in this way is positive. It suggests they are serious about building a business that clicks with shareholders as customers. Over time I would hope such an approach would reflect positively on a company’s business prospects and its share price too.
