One year on, some of the lockdown winners will surprise you

Cast your mind back a year. Complacency about the coronavirus (COVID-19) virus being a Chinese problem was being replaced by panic as people realised it was everyone’s problem.

That sense of panic spread to the stock market; between February 15 and March 14 – the day after Valentine’s Day and the day before the ides of March if you are looking for symbolism – the FTSE 350 fell from 4,182 to 2,875, which is a fall of 31%.

Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy is a well-known investment adage and if you had the chutzpah or cojones to dive into the market a year ago, good on you; the FTSE has rallied to 3,830 – almost exactly a third higher than its March 14, 2020, low point.

Some of the winners over that period are easy to explain and others, not so much.

The easy to explain winners

(), up 641%, is the best FTSE 350 performer, reflecting the agreed bid from Caesar’s Entertainment.

Some other online gambling plays also did well, such as (), up 380%; PLC (), up 339%, and (), up 209%.

The liberalisation of sports betting in the US and expectations of further consolidation in the sector have all driven share price growth, plus it is possible many of us have been gambling like lunatics online during lockdown to alleviate boredom.

(LON:CMC) probably won’t thank me for lumping the stock in with the bookies but its 244% gain is hard to ignore.

Contracts for difference trading platform operators love volatility so it is small wonder CMC has done well but how do you explain its outperformance compared to its rival, Holdings (), which is up a comparatively measly 50%?

If we’re betting or trading online incessantly, we’re also still baking a lot and stuffing our faces judging by Premier Foods PLC’s () 429% gain.

Interestingly, Premier still only trades on a price/earnings ratio (PER) of 11.2 based on its last 12 months to earnings and that PER falls to 9.9 if you put faith in brokers’ earnings projections for the current 12 months.

The nation must need a strict diet – check out gymnasium shares now – given that not only have we apparently been gorging on Mr Kipling’s finest, we’ve not been toddling down to the shops, relying instead on Royal Mail Group PLC () – up 249% – to deliver goods to our door.

For the same reason, online white goods seller () has had a good pandemic, with the shares up 410%.

I can see the nation pulling back on its consumption of Bakewell tarts but the trend towards shopping online looks irreversible.

The head-scratchers among the winners

In the colour me puzzled section we have pubs group PLC (), up 209% over the last year.

The last time I checked it was not possible to get the full pub experience online and according to that nice Mr Martin at PLC (), the government is hell-bent on killing off all of Britain’s pubs, presumably so the plots can be bought up on the cheap by its mates in the housebuilding sector.

To explain (partially at least) M&B’s eye-catching recovery over the last year you have to go back a bit further to that fateful date of February 15, when the shares were trading at 376p; a month later they were languishing at around 109p as it did not take traders long to work out that “lock-ins” = good for pubs, “lockdowns” = bad.

So, although the shares are now bobbing along fairly nicely at 309.5p, they have still not recovered to February 2020 levels but then neither has the company gone bust, and that looked a possibility even in the good times.

If pubs have had a hard time, think of the poor old bus companies, as the trend towards working from home has not only hit passenger numbers over the last year but is likely to put a permanent dent in the bus companies prospects.

The situation appears to be a…