Don’t you just love it when all the signs come together and make a share look irresistible? Here are two that look like serious bargains to me, with a lot in common.
A downtrodden winner
I know it’s the housebuilding sector again, but I remain convinced it’s seriously oversold in the wake of the EU referendum result. Berkeley Group Holdings (LSE: BKG) is my pick today, as I reckon it’s looking one of the cheapest of all. Here are the things I like about it…
First up, there’s loads of lovely cash. Berkeley ended the year to April with £107m of the stuff on its books, with cash due on forward sales of £3.25bn. In fact, it’s so awash with cash that it’s engaged in a plan to return a further £10 per share over the next five years — and that alone is a return of 39% on shares priced at £25.70 today.
That brings me to forecast dividend yields of 7.5%, which should be well covered by earnings both this year and next — since resuming dividends with a 74p payment in 2013, Berkeley’s annual cash handout is predicted to rise to 200p this year.
Berkeley’s shares have, like the rest of the sector, been hit hard by the Brexit decision, and have fallen by 22% since the fateful day. But that now puts the shares on forward P/E multiples of under seven! And that’s with rising EPS forecasts on the cards, even after recent post-vote updates.
I see super bargains in Barratt Developments on a P/E of 10, Taylor Wimpey on 9 and Persimmon on 9.5, but right now Berkeley is looking like the pick of the bunch.
Still flying
Though it’s not the kind of business I’d normally invest in, easyJet (LSE: EZJ) shares a lot of similarities with the housebuilders. The budget airline ended its third quarter to 30 June with £1.12bn in cash and money market deposits, and with £378m in actual cash — up from the interim stage three months earlier. In these allegedly tough times, that looks very tempting to me, especially as the company’s planes were 95% full of passengers in August.
Then we have strong dividends too. Though not up to Berkeley’s 7.5% level, easyJet is expected to deliver a yield of 4.4% this year, upped to 4.7% next. The shares are on low P/E values too, of 10 for this year dropping to 9.5 on 2017 forecasts. The only possible fly in the ointment is a 22% fall in EPS predicted for this year, but I reckon that’s more than compensated for by today’s low share valuation.
That valuation is, once again, the result of a Brexit hit, with today’s 1,080p representing a fall of 29% since referendum day — there was a bit of a recovery taking shape, but that’s tailed off in the past week.
There will almost certainly be a Brexit effect to some degree, but since their downgrade right after the vote, the City’s analysts have been keeping their forecasts steady for both earnings and dividends and they’re suggesting a 6% EPS recovery in 2017.
I see easyJet shares as too cheap now even if the recent gloom turns out to be spot on — but I also see the worries as too pessimistic, which means it could be time to buy.
