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Gold miner Randgold Resources shares rose 3,910% during the Noughties, making it the FTSE all-share's single best performer.

The shares headed higher again yesterday on figures that roundly beat forecasts. Gold sales were $139m (£89m) in the last three months of 2009, up 78% year-on-year, with full-year diluted earnings per share coming in at 84c, against the 73c that the stock market had been expecting. Randgold's historically high operating costs should continue to fall, while $590m of net cash gives it plenty of room to manoeuvre. Hold on says the Times.

St Modwen has a finely honed model for processing land that has seen it through previous property cycles, and it should work again. However, with rises in NAV still six months away, and no dividend expected before 2011, at 188½p, there will be better times to buy says the Times.

Barely more than a week after it had secured its biggest contract so far, yesterday's first-half results from Kofax — a developer of software that digitises paper documents — provided further signs of progress. Sales were up 17% in the six months to December 31, or a still-respectable 7% once the boost from the $33m (£21 m) purchase of America's 170 Systems in September is stripped out. At 194p, or 13 times next year's earnings, tuck away suggests the Times.

The outlook for Kofax's software business looks to be improving - it grew 17% in the first half against just 1% in the hardware business - and the company increased the guidance accordingly. Hold says the Independent.

Even in the context of the battered airline industry, Aer Lingus has had an unusually torrid year - not helped by continual carping from rival Ryanair's famously outspoken chief executive, Michael O'Leary. The new Aer Lingus chief executive, Christoph Mueller, who came on the scene last September, has put in place a stiff cost-cutting plan designed to slash €97m from annual running costs by 2012 by paring back the group's head office, updating its technology systems, and cutting 675 staff. Tricky? Yes. But worth a punt. Buy says the Independent.

An election is a "great shop window" for groups like online market research outfit YouGov, which also conducts market research for a whole raft of organisations. On a price to earnings ratio of 14 times, YouGov looks a little more in line with its peers, but with the publicity from the election, buy says the Independent.


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