Thursday tips round-up: Weir and Facebook

2nd May 2013 06:18

The Tempus column in The Times has given a cautiously optimistic outlook for engineering firm Weir Group despite the company reporting a weak first quarter yesterday. The paper says that, like several firms so far this year, Weir's first three months were "not that brilliant" but it assured that it would make up for it in the second half. While like-for-like orders were down sharply, owing to a poor performance from oil and as, trends are still positive which is an improvement over some of the profit warnings seen from other industrial suppliers in recent weeks. Current-year forecasts mean that the stock is trading at 14 times earnings. "All the drivers for growth are there, but immediate progress looks limited," the paper says.The Financial Times' Lex column has said that social network firm Facebook is too expensive given the way that revenues are growing.Sales grew an impressive 38% in the first quarter of the year, but the paper highlighted that this can be divided into two parts - member growth (+26%) and revenue-per-member growth (+12%) - and only a growth shift from the former to the latter will get the stock moving."Everyone knows people like to use Facebook; what remains to be seen is how much advertisers will pay to reach Facebook users," Lex says.Please note: Digital Look provides a round-up of news, tips and information that is impacting share prices and the market. Digital Look cannot take any responsibility for information provided by third parties. This is for your general information only as not intended to be relied upon by users in making an investment decision or any other decision. Please obtain a copy of the relevant publication and carry out your own research before considering acting on any of this information.