Sunday share tips: Quiz, Halma, Halfords

Quiz, the fast-fashion retailer, was tipped in the Sunday Times' Inside the City column. The company, which was founded 25 years ago by Glasgow-born Tarak Ramzan and has 71 stores and 147 concessions around the UK, floated on the LSE's junior market last summer at a valuation of £200m at the initial public offer price of 161p. Ramzan, his family and other selling shareholders reaped £92.1m of this total. Last week the shares closed at 187p, around 34 times last year's EPS.

With a short turnaround to getting new designs made in the UK, Quiz aims make its buying strategy more efficient by putting UK-made designs on the racks before it extends lines in China, also testing its market alongside employing social media 'influencers' such as 2017 Love Island Gabby Allen, whose 1m followers on Istagram see her showing off the company's wares. Last month, the company told investors about plans for overseas expansion, driven by online growth and guided by chairman Peter Cowgill of JD Sports fame.

Halma was a 'hold' for Questor in the Sunday Telegraph. The FTSE 100 company has four divisions: infrastructure safety, which includes smoke detectors and lift safety systems; environmental, which ranges from monitors for water and food quality and pipeline flows; medical, which provides equipment that tracks blood pressure and is used in eye surgery; and the smallest, process safety, which supplies safety systems and hazardous gas detection kit to guard against industrial accidents. Halma's record of 15 consecutive years of revenues and profits growth, with the annual dividend upped at least 5% for more than 39 years, is undeniably attractive.

With another 2.5bn people flocking to the world's cities by 2050, lifting the number of cities with population north of 10m from 10 in 1990 to 41 by 2030, the ensuing health and safety risks around the public transport systems and water supply alone present opportunities for companies like Halma. After Halma shares quadrupled over the past six years, since mid-June they have retreated around 8%. There they sit on "chunky" forecast p/e ratio of 29, the top end of Halma’s average over five to 10 years. "At this price that there must be better value elsewhere."

Shares in Halfords, another retailer, were backed by Midas in the Mail on Sunday as a 'buy'. Sunny weather and and a summer of sport gives the cycling-focused retailer a chance to make up for a dismal winter. The share price skidded down 16% after recent full year results, which showed bike sales down 4% but its motor accessories division steady. New chief executive Graham Stapleton is working on a strategic review but this is not expected until September, giving braver investors a chance to "break away from the peloton".

Halfords online sales grew 6% last year, with 85% of those being click-and-collect, the holy grail of generating internet sales without cannibalising its bricks and mortar operation, while also getting the opportunity to attract customers into picking up additional purchases in-store. Cycling as a market in the UK still offers plenty of growth, with Britain having the third-lowest percentage of people who cycle daily in the EU. Stapleton’s plans for the retailer could include making more use of the huge customer database and services division.