My pleasure.No doubt it is a good long-term hold. That...

My pleasure.

No doubt it is a good long-term hold. That Australian Super owns nearly 10% of PFP is a good indicator that this is the case. However, I reckon we are in for a rude shock on the 25th when the half yearly report is out. IVC had a 58% reduction in earnings in 2018 (the second substantial drop in two years). They blamed it on a lack of deaths over that period (which will affect PFP in the same way), in particular attributable to a weak flu season.

I checked the IVC forum to see if they could explain why the share price went up so much (you are right, it's just not a sexy sector - the IVC forum doesn't have much on it either despite it being a $1billion company). The only explanation was that it was a short covering. This seems unlikely to me given that the results would intuitively support a short position. Regardless, I don't think a similar thing will happen to PFP as IVC is the fifth most shorted stock on the ASX (12.95%) and PFP doesn't even make the top 100. One other possibility is that the reduced earnings weren't as bad as expected and that the market had already factored in a very bad year based on ABS data on deaths or something similar. If this is the case, then perhaps we won't be in for a rude shock on Monday.

If there is a big drop off on Monday I will take it as an opportunity to accrue some more. This is a defensive stock for me with long term potential for substantial growth. The increase in share price in both PFP and IVC since the beginning of the year indicates to me that the market believes that this sector is perhaps a bit oversold and a new growth trajectory has been established.

I don't know about technical analysis but I can eyeball the chart and use Barchart.com. According to that site, the Overall Average Signal calculated from all 13 indicators give PFP a 96% buy signal. https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/PFP.AX/opinion That's almost as strong as it gets.