Parents can often embarrass. Ask Babcock & Brown Public Partnerships (BBPP), the FTSE 250 infrastructure fund that, since floating three years ago, has been managed by the Australian investment house from which it takes its name.

However, with Babcock & Brown now crushed by its debt – the Sydney-listed company was placed into voluntary administration this month – what was once an asset has become a liability. Uncertainty over who would take over the running of the London-listed fund, and the fate of Babcock & Brown’s residual 8.3 per cent stake, have caused shares in BBPP to underperform in recent months – especially relative to HSBC Infrastructure, its closest peer.

So there was some relief that yesterday’s full-year results dealt with the first of those worries. In short, BBPP’s management company has been bought by its existing staff, who will run the fund as before. Unsurprisingly, it will also drop Babcock & Brown from its name in favour of the anodyne International Public Partnerships.

As befits a company whose assets are reassuringly boring, about 50 PFI-style projects, the bulk of them in the UK, there was little to unsettle in yesterday’s numbers. Net asset value up 4.6 per cent, pretax profits ahead 8 per cent, £75 million of firepower from cash and undrawn banking facilities, and balance sheet gearing of a lowly 13 per cent.

Yet it is BBPP’s 5.4p dividend, providing a solid 6.3 per cent yield, that is the biggest attraction. The company gets paid by the Government for building and managing assets, schools, hospitals, magistrates courts and the like, under 30-year contracts. With revenues and costs linked to inflation, BBPP has a high degree of certainty over its future cashflows and, by extension, its dividend payments.

The risk and opportunity for investors is that around one third of BBPP’s portfolio is still under construction, meaning that, relative to HSBC, for example, it has greater scope for wringing value from immature assets. At a time when Credit Suisse estimates that about €20 billion (£18.5 billion) of European infrastructure assets are potentially for sale – everything from Gatwick to the M6 toll road – there is an obvious risk that oversupply has a depressive effect on valuations as a whole.

A more immediate concern for prospective BBPP investors is the overhang of Babcock & Brown’s 8.3 per cent stake – albeit that the clarity provided by yesterday’s results provides an obvious chance to find institutional buyers – and the danger that the severance of links with the parent may bring pressure on its successor to reduce management fees.

For those reasons, even at 87p, up 1p, or a 23 per cent discount to the shares’s ex-dividend NAV, first-time buyers should sit on their hands.

AG Barr

It is the end of an era at AG Barr, the owner of Irn-Bru. Robin Barr, the 70-year-old great-grandson of the founder, delivered his last set of full-year results as chairman yesterday. When the Scottish fizzy drinks maker next files figures, it will be the first time in its 134-year history that a Barr is not at the helm.

Mr Barr hands over the business in good shape: turnover up 14 per cent, pretax profits ahead 10 per cent and the dividend raised 8 per cent. And although the soft drinks market as a whole was flat last year, Barr is outstripping that part of it – fizzy drinks – that is still growing. Revenues from Irn-Bru were up 8 per cent, against 4 per cent for the wider category. In January the bright orange concoction became the biggest selling noncola carbonated drink nationwide, dislodging Fanta.

Increased marketing spending and new sponsorship deals – Irn-Bru now sponsors Rugby League, in addition to the Scottish Football League – should at least maintain that momentum. The greater comfort is that Barr has now demonstrated, through two consecutive wet British summers, that it can prosper whatever the weather, providing a clear upside to sales if 2009 proves drier. At £12.11, off 19p, AG Barr, now in the FTSE 250, has outperformed the stock market by 61 per cent over the past year. With net debt a modest £31 million and profit forecasts more likely to rise than fall, at 13 times earnings, they have farther to go. Buy.

Asterand

Not all banks are out of favour. Shares in Asterand, Britain’s only quoted operator of biobanks, or repositories of human tissue, surged 160 per cent last year, securing it the prize at this month’s PLC Awards for London’s best-performing fully listed company.

They advanced a further 35 per cent yesterday as Asterand reported its first full-year profit since its listing eight years ago. Revenues doubled to £15.2 million and pretax figures swung from a £1.9 million loss to a £3.9 million profit. Although those numbers were boosted by a one-off $6.25 million upfront payment from Allergan, of California, a legacy of Asterand’s inherited portfolio of early stage drugs, its core business of supplying cancer tissue samples for pharmaceutical research showed above-forecast growth: ahead 46 per cent on the year. The company also has £6.9 million of cash and no debt.

Asterand’s allure is that the increasing emphasis on gene profiling in the development of new medicines means that demand for human tissue is unaffected by recession. Moreover, about three quarters of its rivals are academic institutions, which typically do not offer Asterand’s range of samples or back-up consultancy services. The company’s recent contract with the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology would appear to confirm as much.

At 21½p, up 5½p, buy on weakness.

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