Unipalm is growing sales in its most promising line of business not by a respectable 10 per cent a year but by 10

Unipalm is growing sales in its most promising line of business not by a respectable 10 per cent a year but by 10 per cent a month. The second company, Datrontech, is a distributor of memory upgrades and other accessories to enhance personal computers. Between 1990 and 1994, its sales grew from £8m to £86.5m, while profits quadrupled, with more of the same expected for the current year. The growth of these companies is rooted in the explosive worldwide spread of computer technology. Computers outsold cars last year, with 45 million PCs sold worldwide. By 2000, annual sales are expected to exceed 100 million units, which means personal computers will be outselling televisions This growth is creating an amazing number of opportunities.

Shares in such US giants as Intel and Microsoft, which supply respectively the microprocessors and the key software packages, are powering to new highs almost daily, in a boom that is lifting the entire US stock market. Two companies that stand to benefit are Unipalm and Datrontech. With more than 40 million computers linked to the Net, there are inevitably opportunities for investors. THE explosive growth of the personal computer market has been sent into overdrive by the huge rush to join the Internet, the worldwide computer network that allows users to tap into everything from cookery notes to hard-core pornography for little more than the price of a local phone call.

Share price 745p Prospective yield 4.8% Prospective price-earnings ratio 13.8 Dividend cover 1.9 1993 1994 1995* Turnover £8.4bn £9.2bn £10bn Pre-tax profit £374m £408m £713m Net profit £257m £188m £367m Earnings per share 35.7p 26p 54p Dividend per share 27.5p 27.5p 29p (* forecast). If you are in genuine leadership positions, it's easier to deal with the downturn."While the analysts on average expect ICI to improve 1996 profits from £713m to £870m, Mr Lambert's view is that ICI's medium-term fate is out of its own hands, in that it is dependent on the course of the US, UK and Australian economies."Given those economies' combined prospects, the outlook for 1996 could be pedestrian," he warned.The shares should be avoided until the chemicals cycle shows signs of turning up again.Activities Paints (Dulux, Glidden, ICI Autocolor); materials (acrylics, plastic films, polyurethanes); explosives; industrial chemicals (PET resins, surfactants, catalysts, titanium dioxide pigments, CFC replacements). Mr Miller Smith is confident - well, he would be, wouldn't he? - that ICI is pushing efficiencies hard enough to withstand the downturn he agrees is not far off.He said: "You can't protect yourself wholly, but you can make the business as robust as possible. They buy £3bn of paint a year in repairing 20 million vehicles, subject to a variety of environmental laws and the varying requirements of the leading car-makers.That means more intensive training of ICI staff and the repairer-customers, but the payback is fatter profit margins.As far as the bulk chemical business is concerned, no amount of smart marketing will open the industrial customers' chequebooks any wider. In this way he hopes to lift them out of the commodity category and find reasons for raising their prices and squeezing more profit out of them.As part of that drive, ICI has separated out its car paints business into a strategic business unit, ICI Autocolor, aiming at the world's 500,000 car bodyshops and commercial bodybuilders.

We are enjoying rapid growth in Asia."Apart from the relentless search for more productivity and efficiency, Mr Miller Smith wants to add value to some of the products by targeting them at particular specialist markets. ICI has gone through a lot of change in the last five years, but we have concentrated on three themes:"1 Strong focus on businesses where we can have real competitive advantage by our technology and our position in the market;"2 Rigorous search for value, building stronger businesses;"3 Responding to changes in the worldwide market. On the way down it is hard for investors to think of anything else, but on the way up the critics are wondering what happens on the other side of the hill.As Sir Ronald stepped up to be chairman, so the chief executive's baton passed to Charles Miller Smith, who had previously been beaten in races to run Unilever and Barclays, and joined the ICI board last year.Mr Miller Smith pointed out: "We are going to do the same as before, but pursued more energetically. It makes it hard to see what the future holds."While this may seem unfair and even curmudgeonly, it is a fact of life in cyclical industries. The more buoyant the numbers, the more the concern about how long that will continue. This deluded some commentators into claiming that at a stroke it justified the Zeneca demerger, but the more cautious analysts took the view that it only heralded the beginning of the real battle.Charles Lambert, chemicals analyst at Smith New Court, said: "The numbers are being driven up rapidly by the commodity chemicals side of the business, which is deemed least reliable. Last week ICI paid £180m for Grow Group, the US architectural paints and coatings company, transferred its end-user liquid CO2 business to Norsk Hydro in return for long-term bulk CO2 supply contracts, and went into a joint venture in India with Zeneca to make crop protection products.Sir Ronald arranged a fine send-off for Sir Denys, with first-quarter figures showing pretax profits more than doubled from £103m to £244m.