Will investors be up for shopping at Findel following Wednesday’s full year results?
The home shopping and education company has had a strong start to 2018, rising from an opening price of £1.99 to a near 4 year peak of £2.64 by mid-April. Since then it has pulled back somewhat, with Findel now sitting at a current trading price of £2.34.
The stock struck that aforementioned high thanks to April’s pre-close trading statement. In it Findel claimed that it expects its annual performance to be ‘at the upper end of market expectations’, with pre-tax profit forecast to come in somewhere between £26 million and £26.5 million. This is thanks to a ‘strong growth in customers and sales at Express Gifts’, particularly during the peak pre-Christmas period.
It also highlighted that operating profit was up 20% for the full year, as the company ‘benefited from stronger collections’ and ‘recoveries from its credit receivables’, while net debt shrank £7 million year-on-year to £74 million ‘in part due to favourable timing differences’.
As for its Education division, things vastly improved between the first and second halves of the financial year, with a 10% plunge in sales at its core UK brands in the former reduced to a comparatively manageable 2% decline in the latter.
In terms of Findel’s full year statement on Wednesday, investors will be most concerned with those pre-tax profit promises coming true, as well as an update on any further signs of recovery in Education.
Findel (LON:FDL) has a consensus rating of ‘Hold’ alongside an average target price of £2.00.
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