Dod101 wrote:Its one merit is its yield, where it gives a respectable 4.6%. It is dearly bought income though. I bought it first only in September 2014 at £7.27. It peaked at around £8.70 in October 2015 since when it has drifted downwards and closed last evening at £6.385.
Compare that to other stalwarts of a HYP such as Shell yielding 4.9%. In October 2015 it was standing at £17.75 and is now £27.25, HSBC is yielding 5%. In October 2015 £5.32, now £7.20 or Unilever yielding 2.9%. In October 2015 £29, now £43.62.
I agree that British Land has been a
long way short of a stellar performer, but you would make a much better case for that if you chose a less biased way of comparing it with other shares.
Any share will look average at best and probably mediocre if you choose to start the comparison on the date that it peaked!
For instance, Unilever peaked on 18 October 2017, at a closing price of £45.485. At £43.62, it's now 4.1% down on that. On the same date, HSBA was £7.483 and RDSB £23.345, making them down 3.8% and up 16.7% at the prices you quote: both have done better than Unilever, Shell considerably better.
If you want a reasonable argument about how the shares compare, choose a starting date in a way that does not depend on how the share has performed - for instance, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years ago. I've just done that using the FT's charting facility - with percentages up (approximate due to being eyeballed from the charts), the orders of the shares were:
5 years: ULVR 75%, RDSB 25%, BLND 15%, HSBA 5%
10 years: ULVR 195%, RDSB 45%, BLND 0%, HSBA -5%
15 years: ULVR 280%, RDSB 100%, BLND 55%, HSBA 0%
20 years: ULVR 250%, RDSB 150%, HSBA 100%, BLND 50%
25 years: ULVR 610%, RDSB 250%, HSBA 240%, BLND 100%
It's that sort of consistent performance difference over a number of different periods, none of them chosen with regard to any particularly good or bad performance by any one company, that I regard as reasonably convincing evidence that Unilever has been getting things right and British Land hasn't.
Only "reasonably convincing", though, because that's just price performance. Dividends do need to be taken into account as well, and over periods of many years they can make a big difference. But not very plausibly as big as those differences between Unilever's and British Land's price performances...
Gengulphus