The world’s largest travel and tourism group TUI (LSE: TUI) reported a very encouraging set of Q3 results this morning as both sales and profits took off during the late spring/early summer period.
Easter boost
During the three months to the end of June, the Anglo-German travel group saw turnover rise 12.6% to €4.8bn (16.4% at constant currency), with a late Easter helping to boost underlying earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) by 38% to €222m.
Excluding the effects of Easter and exchange rate fluctuations, the figures were still very strong with 19% growth in like-for-like underlying earnings to €191m. This year’s timing of Easter had a positive impact of €38m, with foreign currency movements having a negative impact of €7m. The company also said that current trading for Summer 2017 remains in line with expectations, with good demand for hotels, cruises and holidays.
UK remains resilient
I was both surprised and encouraged to hear that demand for holidays in the UK remains resilient, despite the impact on pricing from cost inflation, and in particular as a result of the weaker pound. Based on these results and the high levels of demand for the rest of the summer, management reiterated its guidance of at least 10% growth in underlying earnings for the full year to September.
TUI’s shares have performed well over the past 12 months, trading a fifth higher than a year ago, but I still see plenty of value. A near-5% yield should be enough to keep dividend investors happy, while a forward P/E rating of 13 leaves plenty of room for further capital growth.
Lower footfall
While TUI’s share price remained largely unaffected by this morning’s update, the same couldn’t be said for one of today’s other news stories, namely DFS Furniture (LSE: DFS). The UK’s market leader in living room furniture saw its share price fall 7% by mid-afternoon as significant declines in store footfall and customer orders across April, May and June took their toll on overall sales.
In a pre-close trading update for the year to 29 July, the Doncaster-based group revealed that following on from an encouraging first half where revenues increased by 7%, the second half was an altogether different story, with a 4% fall year-on-year.
Uncertain economic environment
Consequently, the company now expects full-year earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) to be at the lower end of the £82m-£87m previous guidance. Management maintains that the business has suffered from industry-wide issues brought on by an uncertain economic environment, and an unexpected general election.
I think the continued economic uncertainty brought on by Brexit will continue to dampen demand for DFS’s furniture offerings, but there is still an investment case for income seekers. The estimated 11.89p full-year dividend for FY2017 is comfortably covered by forecast earnings of 19.73p per share, meaning the shares now offer a monster yield of 5.6%.
