FINANCE AND INVESTMENT
By CUSTOS
AFTER a brief attempt to shake off their lethargy, markets h relapsed into inactivity. If it is true this*. Budget uncertainties ha been removed without any unduly painful consequences, it is al true that the spring battle season is at hand. What investors w to know is which side will take the initiative and hold it successful! If in these coming campaigns the Allies are merely going to fig rearguard actions, investors will naturally be content to do the sam An offensive on the battle-fronts will engender an offensive spin: the markets. We shall have to wait and see.
CUNARD RECOVERY
Meantime, the news from the industrial• front is giving invest plenty to bite on. The 1941 accounts of the Cunard Steam S Co., for example, bring striking evidence of a recovery in fortun Last year income more than doubled at k1,022,287, against L505,3• mainly because the Cunard White Star, the giant subsidiary wht owns the ' Queen Elizabeth' and the ' Queen Mary,' paid a maid dividend, and another subsidiary declared a special dividend to with the task of clearing off preference arrears. At the moment, dividend on Cunard Steam Ship First Preference stock is paid to date, and Sir Percy Bates now discloses the board's intention adopt the same policy of paying off arrears in cash in respect the second preference stock. This will involve a net sum of a L330,000, and should be accomplished by the end of the year. Next year, therefore, the company will start with a clean slate, ordinary stockholders have their chairman's assurance, which valuable in these days, that in anything like reasonable cirtumstan they will, get a dividend. Just what size of dividend it is safe expect it is not easy to gauge. Unfortunately, the 1941 accounts the Cunard White Star, the real key to the position, are not available. Ordinary stockholders are entitled, after such a to period of waiting, to generous treatment, and I feel that they get it. If only 5 per cent. is in early prospect, Cunard £r at 15s. 3d. would return over 64 per cent. It seems to me that stock is well worth holding as a lock-up investment.
BRITISH OXYGEN RESULTS *Taxation has hit the British Oxygen Co. and robbed it of pecuniary advantage from ,increasing business. This group's p were well maintained at £1,863,352 against £1,897,508, but U income-tax called for L518,598 against £4o4,228, reducing solidated profit, after tax, from kr,o42,172 to £884,693. Hence cut from 15 per cent. to 14 per cent. in the ordinary dividend the balance-sheet a rise of kz3o,000 to £963,613 in the work progress item is flanked by a fall of about L245,000 in cash. liquid position is thus being gradually encroached upon 1
ined requirements of the tax-gatherer and an increasing volume orL CEMENT GROUP PROFITS ars in the City that the cement companies would show sub- ;ally reduced profits for 1941 have not been fully justified in event. Both the Associated Portland Manufacturers and its sh Portland subsidiary have been compelled to lower their dividends, but only moderately. Profits held up remarkably deliveries of cement being only slightly below the 1940 level. :a disappointing start, demand steadily improved, and was strong rds the close of the year, thanks .to heavy Government require- 5. In spite of these calls on supplies, record stocks of clinker cement were held at the end of 1941. The " Blue Circle " group sits a strong financial position. Associated has an aggregate lag of L1,500,000 in cash and gilt-edged. For British Portland total is L1,150,000. These companies haire post-war recovery otialities.
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