Today I am running the rule over three Friday movers.
Still soaring
Budget flyer easyJet (LSE: EZJ) has endured a torrid time in recent weeks, the stock losing 11% of its value since the start of the year. But the business was recently dealing 5% higher in Friday trade after releasing a fresh batch of bubbly passenger data.
The Luton airline advised that passenger numbers advanced 9.8% in February, to 4.93m, underlining the steady acceleration in traveller totals in recent months. On a 12-month rolling basis passenger demand advanced 7.5% through February.
With sales of budget tickets expected to keep on rising, and easyJet boosting the number of routes it operates to meet this demand, I reckon earnings at the firm should keep on flying higher.
This view is shared by the City, and the company is expected to enjoy a 7% earnings rise in the year to September 2016 alone, resulting in an exceptional P/E rating of 10 times. And a projected 59.7p per share dividend — yielding a substantial 4% — should attract the attention of savvy income hunters.
Plumbing new depths
Oil services play SeaEnergy (LSE: SEA) has also dominated the headlines in end-of-week trade, with the release of a bearish trading update sending its share value plunging 52% lower from Thursday’s close.
SeaEnergy reported that “trading conditions within the oil and gas industry have deteriorated further since the start of the year“, meaning that many projects due in the early part of 2016 have been booted to later in the year or possibly beyond.
Furthermore, the business advised that it is still “generating losses at current activity levels” despite rampant cost-cutting and divestments. Consequently SeaEnergy plans to assets like its ‘R2S Visual Asset Management’ division to continue trading beyond May without the need for additional funding.
Considering the poor state of SeaEnergy’s balance sheet, not to mention the remoteness of a sudden upturn in the oil and gas market, I believe shrewd stock pickers should resist the urge to go bargain hunting at the struggling services provider.
A tech terror
Payment processing specialists Monitise (LSE: MONI) has seen its share price gallop 36% higher in Friday trade, taking total gains since the start of March to 55%. Even so, that still leaves it down 85% down since this time last year.
Monitise announced today that it was in early-stage discussions to hive off its Markco Media division. The business snapped up the operator of sites such as MyVoucherCodes.co.uk for a potential £55m just a couple of years ago.
Still, the news comes as relief to investors following the tech play disastrous trading update last month. Monitise advised that revenues slumped by a 21% between July and December, to £33.4m, while the impact of massive write-downs caused pre-tax operating losses to quadruple to £211.6m.
But the City is not expecting Monitise to turn a profit in the years to June 2016 or 2017, a huge disappointment for a firm with hot growth prospects just a few years ago.
With the business failing in its efforts to switch to a cloud-based model, and industry heavyweights like Apple and Google increasing their footprint in the mobile payments space, I do not expect things to improve at Monitise any time soon.
