The FTSE 100 started the year with a whimper. It dropped 1.33% in January to finish at 7,630 points. For context, it was at 7,730 in January 2018.
Fortunately, investors can choose to pick individual Footsie shares rather than worry about the wider index. And those holding these four FTSE 100 shares will have been satisfying last month.
Flutter Entertainment
Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR) has decided to spread its wings and fly across the pond. It listed in the US on 29 January and intends to switch its primary listing from London to New York “as soon as practicable”.
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The firm said the move will make the stock “more accessible to US-based investors and gain access to deeper capital markets.”
In essence, it wants a higher valuation and thinks New York will provide that. This arguably became self-fulfilling as the stock surged 16.8% last month.
The move makes sense as Flutter, which owns Paddy Power and BetFair, is one of the world’s largest gambling companies. And right now there’s a boom in US online sports betting, which was illegal until 2018. The firm also owns FanDuel, a US leader in this area.
Last year, the firm generated revenue of £9.5bn, a third of which came from North America. Future regulation is a threat, but it appears to have huge growth prospects if all US states legalise sports betting (not all have).
GSK
Next, we have pharma giant GSK. The stock jumped an impressive 8.1% last month as investors cheered its new RSV vaccine Arexvy achieving blockbuster status.
That is, the drug brought in more than $1bn in sales last year. That’s remarkable considering it was only out for roughly six months.
Litigation related to its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac continues to hang over the stock, though. Consequently, it’s dirt cheap on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 10.
Hikma Pharmaceuticals
Third, we have Hikma Pharmaceuticals (LSE: HIK). Shares of the generics and injectables manufacturer progressed 7.9% in January.
In November, it upgraded its full-year guidance in two of its three divisions. Then, in January, a deal was announced with US liquid biopsy firm Guardant Health.
This was to promote the latter’s next-generation sequencing tests for cancer screening, recurrence monitoring and tumour mutation profiling for solid cancers in the Middle East and North Africa. Hikma has a good presence across those markets.
The company faces regulatory risks as a pharmaceutical firm, but investors may have been drawn to the stock’s very undemanding forward P/E ratio of 11.5.
BAE Systems
Finally, we have BAE Systems (LSE: BA.), whose inclusion is no mystery. Iran-backed Houthi rebels are causing chaos in the Red Sea and and three US troops were recently killed in a drone strike in Jordan. This is threatening to spill over into a much wider Middle East conflict.
In response, the BAE share price has now risen 5.9% this year. And it has almost doubled since Russian’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
One thing I’d highlight here is valuation. Prior to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the stock’s P/E ratio was around 10.5 (or 76%) less than the 18.5 it is today.
That said, geopolitics hasn’t been this unstable for many decades, which is reflected in the defence giant’s record order backlog of £66.2bn.
