With the end of the current tax year now firmly in sight, it’s more important than ever to take advantage of your £20,000 ISA allowance. Having done so, the only question that remains is what to buy with your capital.
Here are a couple of (what appear to be) bargain stocks offering enticing dividend yields for those comfortable investing lower down the market.
Dividend delight
It may be a minnow in comparison to FTSE 100 giants such as Rio Tinto, Glencore and BHP Billiton but £580m cap miner Central Asia Metals (LSE: CAML) looks a tempting option for those wanting to take advantage of the current bullish sentiment surrounding commodity markets. The base metals producer owns the Kounrad solvent extraction and electrowinning copper facility in Kazakhstan as well as 80% of the Shuak copper exploration project in the north of the country.
It doesn’t stop there. In November last year, the firm purchased Lynx Resources for just over £400m and, in doing so, acquired the Sasa zinc and lead mine in Macedonia. Once integrated, the low-cost project is expected to generate cash for Central Asia Metals in its first year. More recently, the company signalled that it was looking to acquire another low-cost copper project — this time in Africa — in an effort to further diversify its operations.
Aside from these encouraging developments, a big attraction to the stock is the dividends on offer, made possible by the general rise in commodity prices over the last 12 months. Based on its current share price (which has already climbed almost 50% over that period), owners can expect to receive a 5.3% yield in 2018, easily covered by profits which are forecast to soar in the next financial year and leave the company valued at just 8 times earnings.
Full-year numbers from Central Asia Metals are expected on 2 April. With investors continuing to salivate over the electric vehicle revolution, the positive impact this could have on the mining industry and the possibility of the copper market finally slipping into deficit, I think now is as good a time as any to begin building a position.
Strong trading
For something completely different, consider the UK’s second largest home-collected credit lender Morses Club (LSE: MCL).
A beneficiary of Provident Financial’s troubles, recent trading at the £177m cap has been described as “strong” by management, even if this is yet to be fully reflected in its share price.
The total amount of credit issued by Morses in the year to 24 February was £174.3m — a 21% rise on the previous year. In addition to growing its gross loan book by 12%, the company also saw impairments “at the upper end” of previous guidance — something it attributes to the “quality” of its 229,000 customers.
Elsewhere, there’s been decent interest in its Club Card offering with 21,000 customers now signed up and £10.6m of loan balances on the cards. The launch of its online instalment loans product — Dot Dot Loans — is another intriguing move and likely to be a catalyst for further growth over the medium term.
While the somewhat risky nature of its business means that the value of shares in Morses Club are unlikely to lose touch with reality, a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) of 10 for the next financial year still looks great value, particularly when you consider that the shares look set to yield around 5.7%.
