Thursday newspaper share tips: More bad news for RBS possible

The Times’ Tempus doesn’t think all the bad news from Royal Bank of Scotland is out yet.

As well as confirming the bank will make a loss for 2015, the FTSE 100 company announced on Wednesday a large clean-up in the fourth quarter, including £500m of PPI provisions, $2.2bn (£1.5bn) for US residential mortgage-backed securities probes, and £4.2bn poured into its pension fund.

The combined charges will amount to a £2.5bn hit to profits in 2015.

In the unscheduled trading update, chief executive Ross McEwan said: "I am determined to put the issues of the past behind us and make sure RBS is a stronger, safer bank. We will now continue to move further and faster in 2016 to clean up the bank and improve our core businesses."

He later confirmed on a conference call that the bank will make a loss for 2015, which was widely expected.

Tempus said investors are entitled to wonder if it’s the beginning of the end of the bad news for the bank, and whether it’s time to buy shares again.

“The answers look like maybe and probably not.”

The column said it will take time before a line can be drawn under the last decade of events, but there will be more to come.

“Still to come: further legal action on US mortgages from the federal government’s justice department and some states; further claims on swaps mis-selling to small businesses; action over those allegations that RBS’s Global Restructuring Group pushed small companies into financial collapse; and litigation over Libor and foreign exchange-fixing.”

With no certainty that all the bad news is out, Tempus advised to ‘avoid for now’.

In The Telegraph, Questor was keeping an eye on Avon Rubber after shares fell earlier in the week.

Continuing soft conditions in the dairy market hit the company in the first quarter of the year, exacerbated by the timing of orders in the defence business.

However, new chief executive Rob Rennie, who started in December, said management remained confident in trading over the long-term and analysts made no changes to forecasts.

Moreover, strong cash generation saw net debt at 31 December 2015 fall to £10.0m from £13.2m at the end of September.

In the Protection & Defence division, the "timing of order receipt remains unpredictable" for the order fulfilment of gas masks to the US Department of Defense, though the company still expects one of these orders to be received and fulfilled in the first half of this financial year.

In dairy, demand has been squeezed lower as low milk prices continue to depress market conditions for dairy farmers, particularly in Europe.

On the upside, the take-up by farms of the innovative Cluster Exchange service was said to have remained at "encouraging levels" in both North America and Europe.

Questor highlighted that the company’s main business is making the gas masks, of which it delivered 140,000 to the US and has another 50,000 on order for the year ahead.

“The defence contract provides steady revenues, but the real opportunity comes from one-off orders from customers in the Middle East who pay a premium,” it said.

Questor said the shares have had a great run and are currently trading on 17 times earnings.

“The shares are still not exactly cheap. However, we’d hold for the long term.”