Will investors be willing to lock-up their money in Safestore Holdings following Thursday’s half year results?
The FTSE 250 stock has had a fantastic 18 months. After shooting up from £3.45 to £4.95 across 2017, the company has carried that momentum over into 2018, briefly hitting an all-time high of £5.79 at the start of June. Safestore Holdings PLC now sits at a current trading price of £5.57 – that’s a 61% rise since the start of 2017.
The firm’s last update came in February, when it revealed its first quarter results. For the 3 months to the end of revenue at constant exchange rates rose 9.8% to £35.1 million despite the average storage rate dropping 4.8% to £25.95. Safestore compensated for the decline in average storage rate by hiking its maximum lettable area by 11.2%.
As for its like-for-like performance, revenue was up 4.5% at constant exchange rates to £32.8 million, with a 2.8% increase in closing occupancy as percentage of maximum lettable area to 71.5%. The comparable decline in average storage rate was also less severe, slipping 1.3% to £26.82.
In terms of Thursday’s half year results, investors are going to want Safestore to continue to post the same kind of solid revenue growth, ideally getting it up to double digits on a constant currency basis. That would require extra growth in Paris, which saw a 5.5% rise in revenue in Q1 against the 10.8% increase across the UK.
Safestore Holdings Plc (LON:SAFE) has a consensus rating of ‘Buy’ alongside a consensus target price of £5.15.
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