We are now two months into the new year and after the juggling around with share prices by hedge/fund managers which takes place every Dec/Jan we can look at things objectively. The hotel industry continues to expand worldwide with Europe growing surprisingly in 2016. There are 865 new projects in various stages of development including 95 from Intercontinental and 72 from Accor, our two main holdings in this section of the leisure industry. Accor continues to do well in spite of short term damage to bookings from terrorist attacks in its home base of France and it has made strategic moves internationally with the acquisition of Fairmont Hotels, together with meaningful stakes in two companies in the AirBNB bookings business, thus we anticipate our holding here will recover well by the year end. IHG has just produced excellent figures, an 11% dividend increase and a special dividend of around 80p per share from the proceeds of the sale of its HongKong and Paris Hotels. Future forecasts are encouraging with some 100,000 new rooms in the pipeline, and a strong cash flow which makes our continued holding here look good. Interestingly IHG CEO Richard Solomons received a hotelier of the year award. The contract catering industry continues to grow steadily and profitably with our two interests here, UK based Compass and France based Sodexo both producing good figures and dividends from a strong international base which will cover any short term political changes in Europe. Both groups will remain as two of our top investments. Building rooms be it in hotels or houses has more than justified our holdings so far this year. There is much negative rubbish written about the future problems of the building industry but the figures produced in the past two months show only too clearly that there is a great future not only short term but in particular long term, as shown by the latest figures from our holdings here and other companies in the industry. This month 1 Persimmon Homes has profits up over 30% and an increased dividend from the forecast 10p to 110p with a forecast of at least 110p for each of the next 5years. 2. Gallifordtry has produced a 20% profit increase and18% dividend hike. 3. Redrow Homes has doubled its interim dividend an forecast a 60% + final increase. March will see figures from TaylorWimpey and we can expect at least 25% increase in both profits and dividends from this very successful group.
To summarise we anticipate retaining all our existing holdings in the hotel, catering and building industries during 2016 and beyond.
Leisure Management in 2016 Our clients here continue to prosper with steady growth in the film and television/video industries Consultancy services: * The past three months has included visits to Mauritius and Colombia to review new developments * There will be visits shortly to France, to Spain where tourism is growing fast again helped by the adverse situations in the Middle East and to Greece where the immigrant problem is seemingly not able to be resolved in the near future.
Future Reviews will be made monthly updating our associates and clients as the year progresses.