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TURNER AND NEWALL PROGRESS • I wish all out large industrial companies produced accounts as informative as those of Turner and Newall, the asbestos combine. Here is an annual report which not merely reviews all aspects of the company's trading, but in- cludes consolidated accounts and an advance copy of the chairman's speech. For this company the year to Septem- ber 3oth, 1939, was satisfactory from the trading standpoint. Trading profits rose from £1,650,386 to the record figure of £1,727,453, but the whole of this increase and a good deal more has been swallowed up in a much heavier provision for taxation. Actually the taxation charge is up from £238,749 to £618,826, with the result that the board, which is notoriously conservative, has felt compelled to reduce the ordinary dividend from 20 to 15 per cent. This, in my view, is sound policy and in the best long-term interests of the stockholders.
As usual, profits are conservatively stated and the con- solidated balance-sheet bears witness to the strength of the group's reserves and liquid resources, the fruits of years of progressive trading and " ploughing back " earnings into thebus:ness. It is now the company's aim to make the maximum national contribution to the war effort and, as far as practicable, to maintain and expand its export trade. The programme of capital expenditure, it seems, is virtually complete, and although research and development will con- tinue, new ventures will be embarked upon only if the necessity is clearly established. Following the dividend cut Turner and Newall £r ordinary units have fallen from 725. 6d. to 64s., at which the yield is about 41 per cent. The immediate speculative prospects are not exciting, but the units have solid merits as a long-term holding.
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