Are you looking for multibaggers that haven’t yet run out of steam? See what you think of these two.
New growth star
Sanne Group (LSE: SNN) is one of those rare companies whose IPO price turned out to be a terrific bargain. As soon as shares in the asset and administration services firm hit the market on April Fools’ day in 2015, they headed upwards.
By the end of January 2017 they’d trebled in value. At 632.5p as I write they’ve fallen back a little from that peak, but they’re still worth 2.8 times their original price after just 2 years!
Results for 2016 show the reason for investors’ enthusiasm. With revenue up 40% to £63.8m, underlying pre-tax profit climbed by 37% to £22m and underlying earnings per share gained 25% to 17.4p. The full-year dividend was lifted by 37% to 9.6p per share — that’s only a 1.5% yield, but at this early stage it’s a welcome sign.
The big question is, how long will this early rate of growth continue? If we can believe the City forecasters, then there should be another year in 2017 with a similar level of earnings growth. That would slow to a rise of 15% by 2018, putting the shares on a P/E of around 23 — and I’m always wary of the slowdown after an initial spurt from new growth companies, as that can drive early buyers away and keep the share price in check.
But the firm made a couple of key acquisitions during the year, expanding its range of services to include a ‘hedge’ offering, and it’s moving into North America — which chief executive Dean Godwin described as “one of the world’s largest and fastest growing markets“.
I see attractive long-term growth potential here.
Long-term multibagger
I’ve been bullish about the oil services industry since the market started to creep back up again, and today I’m looking at multibagger Hunting (LSE: HTG), which put in what I saw as a real turnaround year in 2016.
With spending by the major oil companies cut back severely, the focus was on debt reduction. Inventory reduction, tax refunds, conservative capital expenditure, and a new share placing all contributed to reducing its net debt figure to just $1.9m by 31 December.
The trick now will be to turn a couple of years of losses back into profit, and analysts are expecting to see positive earnings per share in 2018 once again — and chief executive Dennis Proctor told us that “management anticipate moving back to monthly profitability later in the year“.
Mr Proctor also said that “towards the end of 2016 optimism was seen across the energy market“, pointing to OPEC reductions and improving US activity as indicators.
The institutional investors are turning back towards Hunting shares, with the price having more than doubled since early 2016, to 559p. And that shows Hunting’s strength over the long term. If you’d held in since early 2003 you’d have enjoyed an eight-bagger so far, even after the worst of the oil pice crisis — and that’s down from a 14-bagger peak in April 2012.
Is Hunting back on another multi-year bull run? Well, I don’t see any quick return to $100 and more for a barrel of oil, but I can easily see a sustainable level of around $75 in the medium term — and I reckon that would do Hunting a lot of good.
