A terrific set of interims sent Air Partner’s (LSE: AIR) share price soaring above the clouds in Thursday trade, the stock last 8% higher on the day.
The company – which provides a wide range of aviation services – declared that underlying profit before tax rose 34.4% during the six months ending July, to £4.1m.
Its Broking division traded particularly strongly in the period, within which Commercial Jets enjoyed a monumental uptick in underlying profits, jumping 44.3% to £2.7m. The company reported “pleasing performances” across all its territories, from both new and existing customers, and added a contract with yet another Premier League football team and renewed an existing deal with a major German carbuilder in the period.
Celebrating the results, chief executive Mark Briffa said: “Our Customer First programme continues to be a key differentiator for us, and has played an important role in both customer retention and new business wins in the period under review. We continue to progress organic and acquisition opportunities that enable us to extend the services and capabilities we offer our global clients.”
Indeed, Air Partner’s appetite to seek out hot growth opportunities was illustrated by news today that it had snapped up SafeSkys, a provider of environmental and air traffic control services to British and international airports. The firm reported revenues of £1.8m during the 12 months to July 2016.
Flying high
Today’s impressive release gives plenty of legitimacy to the City’s perky earnings estimates for Air Partner.
In the year ending January 2018 the aviation ace is expected to deliver a 20% year-on-year earnings improvement, and to follow this up with an 8% advance in fiscal 2019.
Not only do these forecasts create staggering value for money – while Air Partner deals on a middling forward P/E rating of 17.4 times, a corresponding PEG reading of 0.9 suggests it’s a total bargain relative to its growth potential – but predictions of storming profits growth feeds through to predictions of further hefty dividend expansion.
Last year’s payment of 5.2p per share is expected to march to 5.5p in the present period, and again to 5.6p in fiscal 2018. As a result Air Partner carries large yields of 4% and 4.1% for this year and next.
A juicy selection
While Britvic (LSE: BVIC) may not be packing yields as impressive as Air Partner, I am convinced the company’s bright profits outlook should keep delivering impressive payout growth.
Earnings are only expected to rise fractionally in the year to September 2017, according to City analysts, but the beverages star is still expected to hike the dividend to 25.5p per share from 24.5p last year. Consequently the yield clocks in at a very tasty 3.5%.
And the good news does not end here… a 6% earnings rise predicted for fiscal 2018 is expected to feed into a 26.5p dividend, yielding 3.6%. On top of this, profits projections for the forthcoming year leave Britvic dealing on a very attractive P/E rating of 14.8 times.
The J2O and Fruit Shoot maker advised that revenues stomped 6.5% higher at constant currencies in the last fiscal quarter, to £384.6m. And I am convinced the company’s exciting international expansion programme should keep on delivering the goods, pushing both earnings and dividends steadily higher.
