Are there any rich pickings among the post-referendum fallen? Here are three companies releasing news today, whose share prices are in the dumps — they just might be bargains!
Easy bargain?
Airlines suffered badly from the Brexit fallout, with easyJet (LSE: EZJ) shares down 40% to 1,010p — even if access to Europe’s open skies is retained by EU negotiation, the fall in the pound has hiked fuel costs in sterling (although revenue in euros will be worth more now).
Last month’s disappointing third-quarter update didn’t help, with total revenue per seat dropping 8.3% (at constant currency) even though the number of passengers carried rose by 5.8%. That wasn’t entirely due to the Brexit vote, mind, and the firm put some of the blame on a number of other causes including terrorism, an air traffic controllers’ strike, and runway closures.
Today we’ve had passenger statistics for July, and they’re looking good, Passenger numbers rose by 6.7%, with easyJet boasting a 95.8% load factor (up from 94.3%) which some other airlines can only dream of. Over a rolling 12 months, 6.8% more passengers were carried at a load factor of 91.7%.
What about valuation? Even with downgraded forecasts, the shares are on a forward P/E of only nine and there’s a 5.3% dividend yield expected. That looks oversold to me.
Another cheap airline?
Meanwhile, International Consolidated Airlines (LSE: IAG) has released its July traffic statistics too — the owner of British Airways and Spain’s Iberia reports differently to easyJet, but its figures look impressive.
The company measures revenue passenger kilometres and reported a 15.7% rise against July 2015 (5.6% on a pro-forma basis), with capacity (measured in available seat kilometres) up by 14.3% (4.6% pro-forma). Pro-forma premium traffic was up 6.1%.
The share price is up a modest 1% on the day to 392p, though it’s still down 26% since the Brexit vote after a bit of a recovery since the immediate aftermath. Looking forward, forecasts value the shares at only five times full-year earnings, with a dividend yield of 5% on the cards. That looks too cheap to me.
Recovery candidate?
Marketing services firm Communisis (LSE: CMS) has seen its shares slide by 39% since last October up until yesterday’s close, but a positive set of first-half results today provided a 7.7% boost to take the shares to 37p — chief executive Andy Blundell said the firm has “grown profitability, sustained strong cash generation, further reduced net debt and increased the dividend“.
Revenue remained pretty much unchanged, but adjusted pre-tax profit rose by 19% to £6.5m to give adjusted earnings per share a 19% boost to 2.42p, and the interim dividend was lifted 10% to 0.81p per share. Free cash flow of £6.1m helped to get the company’s net debt down by £4.5m to £34.9m, for a reduction of 10%. So is it time to buy?
Well, full-year forecasts for a 21% EPS rise put the shares on a P/E of just under six — and there’s a whopping 6.5% dividend yield on the cards. And based on 2017 forecasts, we’d be looking at the same P/E and a dividend yielding 6.8%. The debt figure doesn’t look too bad for a £78m company, though it’s in a low-margin business and I’d like to see it reduced further — but on first inspection, Communisis looks good value to me.
