Wednesday newspaper share tips: Ashmore Group, AB Foods

Argentines aren’t the only ones with sturdy egos these days, emerging market bond fund managers also have a new-found spring in their step, the Financial Times’s Lex column said.

That follows strong debt issuance by emerging markets over the past year, which was up by 12% according to data from Dealogic.

Sentiment has also shifted in favour of the asset class and way from high-yield US corporate debt – as much due to their own fundamentals as to US energy companies’ current travails.

Capping it all off was Argentina’s recent return to international capital markets with a well-received – and over-subscribed – $15bn sovereign bond issue.

UK-listed emerging-market debt specialist Ashmore has been a direct beneficiary of those strong market conditions.

Indeed, Ashmore chief Mark Coombs continues to believe EM debt offers plenty of “absolute and relative value”.

However, the run-up in the stock has already priced-in a hard to believe jump in earnings for over the next two years.

“Unless the growth in inflows is surprisingly sharp over the coming year, Ashmore shares have seen their best,” Lex concluded.

The cycle may be turning away from Primark and towards sugar at Associated British Foods, The Times’s Tempus said.

After several years of acting as a drag sugar again turned a profit in the first half of the company’s financial year.

On an operating basis earnings at the unit, which makes up 15% of the group, was at $6m, in comparison to profits of £500m at its peak.

A return to those lofty levels is not on the cards – because of overproduction and depressed prices – but the market is coming back into balance.

ABF has also slashed its cost of production from 36p a pound to 20p, with the benefits of that likely to become apparent in 2016-17.

The company is also consolidating its hold on low-cost African producer Ullovo, paying £262m for the half of that outfit which it does not already own.

Hence, by the 2017-18 financial year sugar should be raking in about £150m in profits.

Nevertheless, on a price-to-earnings multiple of 34 times’ this year’s earnings and 30 for next it still appears to be a little too early to buy.

Indeed, at this level the stock looks dear, so avoid for now, Tempus said.