Friday tips round-up: Hammerson, EnQuest, pub groups

Hammerson, the FTSE 100 shopping centre developer, is selling a 51% share of its O'Parinor development in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north east of Paris, to The National Pension Service of Korea, which last year bought HSBC's Canary Wharf tower, with an option to sell on another 24 per cent next autumn. The shares yield a reasonable 4.5% . A good hold for any recovery in the French economy, according to the Times.

North Sea oil group EnQuest said this week that production would be higher than previously expected. The group now expects to produce 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) this year instead of its previous forecast of 18,000. Questor put a hold rating on the shares when they were first given to Petrofac shareholders but, after the first set of interims, the shares are now a buy, according to the Telegraph.

Tenanted pub groups Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns have low valuations, but the Independent prefers pubs that have the flexibility to grow their estate and invest in the four Fs: food, females and punters in their forties and fifties. For these reasons, it puts JD Wetherspoon, M&B and Marston's on its buy list.

Shares in Wellstream, which makes flexible pipelines and the like, now sell on a stratospheric 27 times this year's earnings and 15 times next year's. What is holding them up is the prospect of a bid. Absent that, and there seems to be nothing on the horizon, the shares look like a "sell" in the Times' view.

In January Gerry Bacon was appointed chief financial officer of the Indian energy company Essar. This summer he decided to retire, to study the history of art at Reading University. According to Deutsche Bank's estimates, the shares sell on 55 times this year's earnings, shrinking to 15 times next year's. This suggests some ambitious plans, and Essar is spending $11 billion over the next four years, $1.5 billion in the first half, to achieve it. Avoid, says the Times.


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