With only a few weeks to go until 2016, we are coming to the end of our second year since we converted from being a hotel owning and management group to a leisure industry investment and management group, and it has been both an interesting and successful year.
This month, as we expand, we have moved our administrative offices to G7--Ground Floor --Battersea Studios 1 --80 Silverthorne Road --London SW8 3HE.
Our client Rachel Wang of Chocolate Films Ltd became Entrepreneur of the year at the annual Black British Business Awards lunch at the Hilton Hotel in London in October rounding off a record year of film and video production; a great achievement in this industry.
On the investment front, as envisaged in our autumn review the AGM of REDROW updated trading with a 28% increase in orders and a 15% increase in average sale prices since the year end, which should give another record year's profits and dividends on this investment.
GALLIFORDTRY had its AGM and, like Redrow, is forecasting a record 2016 profit and dividend from its rapidly growing housebuilding activities in the SouthEast and Yorkshire, with orders for new homes up by some 30% in the first 19 weeks of its new financial year, allied to a very focused construction business with schools, hospitals, hotel/leisure and infrastructure contracts throughout the U.K. Good to see Peter Truscott from Taylorwimpey has joined GT as CEO succeeding Greg Fitzgerald who retires in 2017 after 35 very successful years building this great business.
INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS continued to be the source of bid rumours in October but has confirmed there is nothing happening other than the business continues to grow , and we still must wait until February to find out the size of the anticipated dividend/capital distribution from the proceeds of its HongKong and Paris property sales. Provisionally Feb 16th.
The announcement of the Marriott takeover of Starwood has created the largest hotel group in the world in place of IHG, but leaves IHG in the unique position of being the group with the lowest capital commitment in freehold property and likely to attract approaches from other groups, possibly from China and remains attractive with its low PE Ratio vis-a-vis its peers.
Our two new investments, ACCOR HOTELS and SODEXO continue to have solidly based share prices, regardless of the terrorist problems in France.
SODEXO figures for the year to September have exceeded our expectations with a record 22% increase in profits and dividends allied to a £300 million capital distribution to shareholders as this group continues to lead the field in contract catering and services,
TAYLORWIMPEY announced in mid November that trading was once again at record levels and a further substantial special dividend is intimated for 2016. It claims to be the UK's biggest builder, as does Persimmon, but with sizeable holdings in each company, it is only of academic interest to us. Of particular interest here is the improvement in operating margins of 2 basis points allied to a 12% plus increase in the order book for 2016.
The PERSIMMON IMS looks to be the basis for a greater than scheduled annual dividend well ahead of its projected shareholders returns annually until 2021. Dividend expected to be announced early February.
COMPASS GROUP announced last week another set of excellent figures in spite of reduced profits in catering for mining and oil production companies which have reduced their activities in the short term. It continues to purchase its own shares in the market to be held in treasury from its surplus cash generated funds and has increased the dividend payable in January by 11% to 29.4p for the year. Our holdings in Compass and Sodexo give us a sound and well spread investment in the contract catering and services industries.
BERKELEY HOMES GROUP has its interim results on 4th December which should continue to be very good and indicate a particularly successful year ahead in 2016/7 as major developments reach completion.

We wish all our management clients and associates a very happy XMAS and a prosperous NEW YEAR.