Sunday share tips: MP Evans, Hilton Foods

The Financial Mail on Sunday's Midas column told readers to hold onto their shares of MP Evans, the producer of sustainable Indonesian palm oil.

Indeed, long-term investors may even want to snap up a few shares, the tipster added.

In a nutshell, so to speak, palm oil was one of three vegetable oils most commonly used and went into all sorts of products, ranging from Flora margarine to Maryland cookies or even toothpaste or soap.

Nearly half of the world's output of another oil, from sunflowers, came from Ukraine, and the 2022 harvest was likely to be "horribly disrupted".

Hence the recent price jump from already elevated levels and traders believed that it might remain high "for some time".

Analysts' expectations had been that MP Evans's profits would dip in 2022 and 2023 and that its dividend payout would flatline.

But, said Midas, "these predictions are likely to be upgraded in the next few days."

"Midas first recommended MP Evans in 2011, when the shares were £4.20. The price has more than doubled since then to £9.59 and should continue to gain ground.

"The firm boasts a 30-year track record of maintained or increased dividends too. Existing stockholders should sit tight. Longer-term investors may even want to snap up a few shares."

The Sunday Times's Lucy Tobin told readers to 'buy' shares of Hilton Foods, pointing to the company's nimble strategic acquisition plan to back up her investment thesis.

She also highlighted ShoreCap analyst Darren Shirley's characterisation of its chief executive officer, Philip Heffer, as a "very safe pair of hands".

Analysts continued to project healthy growth for Hilton's topline, to £3.8 billion for 2022, which would be up from £1.8bn in 2019 and £3.5bn in 2021.

Indeed, the company supplied 41% of the country's households with meat from its site in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, although it had another 18 factories spread across Europe and Australasia.

And survey data showed that Britons continued to have a voracious appetite for the likes of rashers of bacon.

The company had also bolstered its supply chain and diversified away from meat through the acquisitions that it had carried out over the past year.

Furthermore, she noted how Shirley expected leverage to come down once all of Hilton's deals had been embedded., which would free up the balance sheet again.

"The shares are cheaper, there’s a meaty dividend policy, and a nimble, strategic acquisition plan will soon begin to plump up profits," she wrote.

"Hilton Foods is worth taking a butcher’s knife at. Buy."