Today I ‘m running the rule over three recent Footsie risers.
Soaring higher
Budget flyer easyJet (LSE: EZJ) saw its share price advance 2% between last Monday and Friday in spite of a meaty drop in end-of-week trading.
I’ve long argued that the budget flyer is a terrific buy around current prices. easyJet has a long history of printing exceptional earnings growth as demand for cheap air seats has exploded. And with the company steadily expanding its footprint across the continent, I see no reason for this trend to cease.
This view is shared by the City, and expected earnings rises of 5% and 15% for the years to September 2016 and 2017, respectively, leave the London firm dealing on P/E ratios of 10 times and 8.6 times for these years. Such bargain-basement ratings leave plenty of room for easyJet’s share price to keep rising, in my opinion.
Crude clangers
Oil play Cairn Energy’s (LSE: CNE) share price performance in recent months has been nothing short of explosive.
The fossil fuel producer has seen its value explode 57% during the past three months alone, with a further advance during last week taking it to 14-month peaks above 230p per share.
Of course Cairn hasn’t been the only beneficiary of a resurgent crude price. Indeed, fellow driller Enquest (LSE: ENQ) has seen its stock price explode 160% since the end of January, a further 13% burst last week taking it to levels not seen since the summer.
But I remain convinced that such surges are grossly overcooked thanks to the murky supply/demand outlook washing over the oil sector. And latest production news on Monday gave my bearish stance further credibility.
Total output from OPEC — a group accountable for around 40% of global supply — rose to 32.64m barrels per day in April, the latest Reuters poll indicated. This is a whisker off recent record highs of 32.65m barrels and, as expected, reflects a huge uplift in Iranian and Iraqi production.
Hopes of a production cut by OPEC and Russia had been the initial driver behind Brent’s explosion back towards $50 per barrel earlier this year.
And although a falling rig count in the US has helped sustain the rally — latest Baker Hughes data showed the number of drilling units slip for the sixth consecutive week on Friday — rising output elsewhere is keeping the pressure on already-bloated global inventories.
The City expects Enquest and Cairn Energy to keep racking up losses until 2017 at the earliest. And while the latter may be more financially sound than its rival — Cairn boasted cash of $603m as of December, while Enquest carried net debt of $1.55bn — I reckon both firms’ share prices are in danger of colossal corrections should supply and demand indicators fail to substantially improve.
