Sunday share tips: Countrywide, Hollywood Bowl, BP

A round-up of share tips from the Sunday newspapers, including Countrywide in the Sunday Times, Hollywood Bowl in the Sunday Telegraph and BP in the Mail on Sunday.

Countrywide had not impressed the Sunday Times' Inside the City column, which said the estate agent's £140m emergency cash call left a "bitter taste" for small investors, who have been treated "like second-class citizens". The group, which owns chains including Bairstow Eves and Hamptons, needed to fix its balance sheet and pay down its £212m of debt or risk falling into the hands of its banks amid a stagnating property market. On Wednesday evening Countrywide's shares closed at 50p and the next day the company announced a placing would completed at a bargain price of 10p, but would not be open to all shareholders unlike a rights issue.

Only “qualifying” institutional shareholders were invited to take part in the placing. "The placing looked suspiciously like it was tailored to favour dominant shareholder Oaktree Capital Management, and two as-yet-undisclosed new blue-chip investors," said the column, with smaller shareholders able to take part in an open offer of £28.6m of new shares though their holding would be diluted by 67.9%. Any small shareholders who were not able to join in would be left nursing losses of 85.3%.

Countrywide’s directors and senior managers were able to take part on the same terms as the big institutions and suffer no dilution, the column said. Their argument is that a time-consuming rights issue would have been too risky and might have resulted in some shares being left unsold. Some risk at an 80% discount, the column said, as proved by the shares leaping as high as 27.3p after the fundraising and ended the week at 16p. Meanwhile, a long list of bankers, debt advisers and lawyers shared fees of £11m.

Questor in the Sunday Telegraph tipped Hollywood Bowl as a buy. While the long hot summer of 2018 does not seem like the ideal time for an indoor activity, the popularity of bowling alleys is increasing, after several decades where they have been in and out of fashion.

BP shares were tipped as "compelling" for long-term investors by Midas in the Mail on Sunday, eight years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and "renewed confidence" in the business. The oil giant's dividend was hiked last week, the first time the dollar-denominated payout has been hiked since 2014, though UK shareholders have enjoyed a steady rise due to the weakening exchange rate. For the full year, dividend is forecast to come in at 30.7p, giving the stock a yield of 5.5%.

As well as profiting from a surge in the oil price over the past two and a half years from $29 to $72 a barrel, BP is also much changed itself, from the board to the business culture, and stronger focus on financial and operational discipline. Last week's quarterly results showed profit quadrupling $2.8bn on the back of stronger production as new projects came on stream, with more planned for the near future.

After the $10bn acquisition of BHP's US shale oil and gas fields, BP's largest purchase since 1999, that this was the precursor to a string of expensive deals. But management assured against this and said the deal will quickly boost the top and bottom line.