2017 been a year to remember for Schroders (LSE: SDR), its share price having leapt 17% since the start of January and seeing it take out the record levels set way back in mid-2015.
The financial asset manager’s all-time high now stands at £35.27 per share, set just before Christmas, and I can easily see it continuing to surge in the new year.
Business keeps on tearing higher at Schroders, the FTSE 100 giant reporting a 9% uptick in assets under management and administration during January-September, to £430bn. And I am confident that expansion into hot growth territories should keep inflows moving northwards.
City analysts share my bullish take, and they expect Schroders’ long-running growth story to continue, with bottom line rises of 11% and 6% pencilled in for 2017 and 2018.
What’s more, there is plenty for income chasers to get their teeth into over at Schroders. The business has lifted dividends by 116% over the past five years, and with earnings predicted to keep sprinting and the firm boasting a robust balance sheet, dividends are expected to jump from 93p in 2016 to 104.1p this year and 110.5p in 2018.
As a consequence yields clock in a healthy 3.1% and 3.2% for 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Despite its rapid share price ascent Schroders can still be picked up on an undemanding prospective P/E ratio of 16.8 times and a corresponding PEG reading of 1.5. I reckon this is a steal given the company’s impressive momentum.
Take a bite
I reckon those seeking delicious earnings growth should also give Patisserie Holdings (LSE: CAKE) a close look today.
Thanks to its ongoing expansion programme (it opened 20 new stores in the year to September, taking the total to just shy of 200) the AIM-quoted firm saw revenues shoot 9.7% higher in the period, to £114.2m.
Patisserie Holdings aims to open a similar number of stores in the current fiscal period, a drive that is seeing it look beyond the borders of England to generate sales growth. The company opened two new stores in the Republic of Ireland last year, two in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland.
But rampant sales growth is only one side of the story as, thanks to its tight grip on costs, Patisserie Holdings is also managing to deal with an environment of rising labour and ingredient costs. As a consequence the business saw pre-tax profit explode 17.1% last year to £20.2m.
So City analysts are expecting the Birmingham business to keep doling out bright double-digit earnings growth, and they are forecasting a 12% earnings improvement in the year to September 2018.
While a subsequent forward P/E ratio of 20 times may look a tad toppy on paper, a corresponding PEG readout of 1.7 can hardly be considered unreasonable.
What’s more, Patisserie Holdings is also giving the impression of being a future cash cow given the rate at which it is raising dividends. The business hiked the full-year dividend 19.8% in fiscal 2017, to 2.4p, and another hefty hike — to 4.1p — is forecast for the present period. As a consequence investors can also enjoy a handy 1.1% yield.
