recession-grwoth

The success story of the first half of the year, without doubt, is UK Mail. It simply, absolutely, will not stop, moving parcels with volumes up 25% in the first quarter year-on-year. If you had bought a share in the firm in January, it would have set you back 365p (giving the firm a market capitalisation of £199m). If you would buy one today it is 580p (giving UK Mail a market cap of £319m). That's a share price rise of 58%.

By comparison the next best performing share in the first half of the year? Dart Group - up 50.7% from 142p to 214p.

After that Hargreaves continues to perform well, rising 13.8% in the first half to 820p, from 706p.

NWF Group is flatter than a proverbial pancake, not moving an inch from 116p in January, to 116pps in July. With a market cap of just £54m, and three separate divisions in areas of interest to its rivals - you have to question the long-term strategy at NWF. It isn't generating a return for shareholders.

That said, neither have two of the 'Big 6' 3PLs in the UK: Wincanton's share price has fallen in the past six months by 4.3% from 69.5p to 66.5p but the biggest faller is Stobart Group - down from 100.2p to 92.75p - a fall of 7.6%.

That said, here are the share prices for the past three months (just to confuse you).

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And here are the market cap's for the same period.

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