SABMiller is a FTSE beater
LONDON listed SABMiller will aim to outperform the FTSE 100 index for the tenth straight year in 2010 and confirm its status as one of the best market-beating stocks around, according to financial website The Motley Fool.
The South African brewer is expected to receive a boost from the football World Cup this summer and complete its decade long run.
However the stocks’ exceptional performance over the past nine years has not been enough to dislodge BHP Billiton as the best performing FTSE 100 share since 2001. While shares in SABMiller have increased by 284 per cent, its rise has been dwarfed by the performance of the miner, which has risen 708 per cent over nine years.
Miner Anglo American, defence contractor BAE Systems, and cigarette companies British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco have also continually beaten the market. But the only bank to have matched their achievement is Standard Chartered, which beat the market in seven out of the last nine years.
Ten companies over the past decade have more than doubled their share value despite failing to beat the index year in, year out. These include Marks & Spencer and Rolls-Royce, whose shares have risen by 188 per cent.
One company, the industrial distributor Electrocomponents, has never beaten the market in any year between 2001 and 2009 and unsurprisingly is no longer in the FTSE 100.
“The fact that only one company has beaten the market year in, year out over nine years shows how difficult it can be to pick market-beating shares,” said David Kuo, director at The Motley Fool. “We sometimes focus far too much on the short term, and making decisions because a share has underperformed in the short term can damage our wealth.”