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Twenty top performers

Created:
10 June 2008
Updated:
12 June 2008
Written by:
Jonathan Eley

There's so much doom and gloom around, you might find it hard to believe that any shares have actually managed to rise over the past six months. But search hard enough and they're there - and a pretty diverse bunch they are too.

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I trawled the whole of the FTSE All-share to find shares that are up over the past year, six months, three months, one month and the past week. Because everyone knows that commodity stocks have been propping the FTSE up since the credit crunch began last summer, I deliberately excluded shares in the mining, oil and gas producers and oil and gas equipment sectors. I also excluded anything with a share price less than 10p, or a market value of less than £50m, in an attempt to strip out illiquid tiddlers.

These are the results, ranked in order of price appreciation over six months:

Name  6M change 12M change 3M change 30D change 7D change
Oxford Advanced Surfaces Group  107.8 107.8 16.2 0.0 0.0
Enodis  90.5 56.7 102.6 7.8 1.0
Telecom Plus  82.8 74.4 37.1 6.3 1.5
Nord Anglia Education  58.3 28.1 43.6 35.8 28.9
Plant Health Care  57.7 51.3 59.2 19.9 17.3
BATM Advanced  56.8 44.5 21.7 8.2 2.2
Horizon Technology  55.4 20.7 196.7 1.1 0.0
BTG  49.3 18.3 64.5 19.5 19.0
Origin Enterprises  45.9 50.3 4.2 1.7 0.0
Corac Group  44.0 124.3 10.6 19.9 34.2
Sagicor Financial Corporation  41.3 0.0 35.3 11.0 0.0
Rurelec  37.9 17.4 37.9 20.3 8.4
Jetion Holdings  35.9 0.0 1.6 25.3 0.6
RWS Holdings  35.4 13.9 7.4 11.2 3.7
Hilton Food  32.3 10.8 13.1 2.8 0.5
Endace  31.1 29.3 54.0 19.8 1.0
ASOS  26.8 162.9 17.2 1.8 1.0
Genus  26.5 33.6 22.7 3.1 4.7
Chemring Group  22.8 27.4 12.1 2.6 1.0
Spice  22.4 12.6 38.7 9.5 3.1

Your first question is likely to be the same as mine: who on earth are Oxford Advanced Surfaces Group?!

The company's press releases say it "develops and commercialises advanced materials and technology solutions leveraging breakthrough surface modification technology." You can find out what that might mean in English at the OASG website. A glance at the company's share register gives some clues as to its provenance: One prominent name is Richard Griffiths, the colourful founder of Evolution Securities. Mr Griffiths left Evolution in late 2005, in the aftermath of its controversial involvement with Regal Petroleum. He is also chairman of ORA Capital Partners, another Oxford Advanced Surfaces shareholder. David Norwood is the chief executive of IP Group, another major shareholder. OASG shares are thinly traded, and the company has no substantial assets or revenues.

Some recurring themes run through the other entries in the table. Takeovers is one: Enodis, Nord Anglia and Horizon Technology have been, or are, subject to takeover bids. Food is another: Plant Health Care, Origin Enterprises and Genus are all exposed, in a positive way, to booming agricultural commodity prices.

Finally, it's pleasing to report that a fair smattering of these stock market stars are currently Investors Chronicle buy tips. They are: Telecom Plus, Plant Healthcare, Corac, Rurelec, RWS, Hilton Food, Spice and Jetion. If you're an IC Advantage subscriber, you can read our original tip advice on each of these companies by clicking on the links.

Companies we've not written about previously, apart from Oxford Advanced Surfaces, include Sagicor and Origin Enterprises. We'll be taking a look at these companies in the days ahead.

WHAT IS IC ADVANTAGE?

IC Advantage is our online subscription service. You get everything you get in the print version of the magazine, only quicker, plus additional online-only editorial and access to our portfolio and alerting service and the stock-screening tool that generated the table above.

For a summary of what is included, click here.

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