Fresh trading details on Monday could not provide respite for embattled LED lighting manufacturer Dialight (LSE: DIA).
The London-based business sank to 500p per share at one point in start-of-week trading before coming off that low, although it still remains 3% down on the day. Dialight’s market value has halved during the past year, including a double-digit percentage fall after a painful profit warning in November on the back of manufacturing issues that hampered customer deliveries.
Lighting up
But today’s release suggests that it could be turning the corner, even if some additional near-term pressure can be expected.
Chief executive Marty Rapp commented: “We are taking corrective action and in the near term are wholly focused on the manufacturing challenges which will continue to impact our results in the first half. As a consequence our results for 2018 will be heavily weighted to the second half reflecting the successful resolution of these issues.”
Revenues at Dialight slipped fractionally in 2017 to £81m, a result that caused underlying pre-tax profit to fall 25% to £9.4m.
But City analysts are expecting it to bounce back from last year’s troubles straight away, and they are forecasting earnings growth of 75% this year and then 31%.
Not only do these forecasts make the business brilliant value for money — an undemanding forward P/E ratio of 16.1 times and a bargain corresponding sub-1 PEG of 0.2 — but these bubbly forecasts support expectations of explosive dividend growth.
Dialight, which hasn’t paid any dividends for the past three years, is finally expected to delight shareholders this year with a 5.3p per share reward, and then to hike the payment to 9p. Yields of 1% and 1.8% respectively may not be ‘beat skippers’ but I am confident that dividend expansion should keep ripping higher along with earnings as the environmental and cost benefits of its products drives demand.
Cruising higher
Those still fearful over Dialight’s bounce-back ability may want to take a look at Wizz Air Holdings (LSE: WIZZ) instead.
With air travellers demanding more and more bang for their buck, the FTSE 250 flyer has a larger and larger pie to exploit. Competition is a problem, of course, but this is not expected to prove a barrier to breakneck earnings growth in the near term and beyond. Bottom-line rises of 25% and 19% are forecast for the years to March 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Wizz Air’s route expansion programme lays the groundwork for strong and sustained profits growth in the years ahead, as does its focus on the fast-growing emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe.
Despite its bright profits prospects, the airline can be picked up on a prospective P/E ratio of just 14.9 times (and a corresponding PEG reading of 0.8) for the upcoming fiscal year. This provides plenty of potential upside for investors to exploit.
