We’ve had a roller coaster few weeks for share prices as markets try to adjust to the new post-Brexit norm (without actually knowing what that norm will be), and that’s sure to have thrown up some bargains. Here are three of today’s big movers.
Storming gold miner
With market fears herding investors towards gold, the shiny stuff is up to $1,349 per ounce, giving gold miners a nice boost. As a result, Russia-based Petropavlovsk (LSE: POG) is one of today’s biggest climbers, with its shares up 6% to 7.7p.
The share price had been falling since early May, with the firm’s disappointing first-half fall in production exacerbating the slide — but a recovery in the past few weeks has resulted in an overall 48% boost since January’s low point. So is the share one to buy now?
Well, a rescue package in early 2015 effectively wiped out shareholders, and that left the company still with significant debt, which stood at $598m at the first-half stage. Debt’s falling, but only by $12m since December, and it’s a lot for a company with a market cap of around $335m. Petropavlovsk’s mines are high quality, but healthy finances do depend on gold strength continuing, and it all looks too risky to me.
Telecoms prospect
Shares in Spirent Communications (LSE: SPT) dipped sharply in morning trading, but they’ve picked up a bit to stand 1% down at 87.8p just after noon. Spirent, which provides analysis services to the telecoms industry, reported a 2.4% drop in first-half revenue to $213.5m, but it swung a $2.3m pre-tax loss at the same stage last year to a $2m profit. Adjusted earnings per share rose 64% to 1.13 cents and the interim dividend was maintained at 1.68 cents per share.
Spirent has suffered a few years of falling earnings, but there are modest rises predicted for this year and next (of 5% and 16% respectively), so we could be looking at a nice recovery pick. I’m a bit concerned that P/Es are a little high at around 20 and that the forecast dividends (yielding more than 3%) would only just be covered by earnings — but the company was sitting on net cash of $96.1m at the halfway stage, and that provides a nice safety net.
The delivery chain
We had full-year results from Clipper Logistics (LSE: CLG) today, and they gave the shares a 4.5% boost to 287p. The logistics firm reported a 23.7% rise in revenue to £290.3m, with adjusted earnings per share up 22.6% to 10.2p — enabling a 25% hike in the full-year dividend to 6p per share.
Clipper, which provides delivery management services to the retail business, has seen its shares climb by 144% since its stock market flotation in June 2014, but the price has been pretty flat over the past 12 months. We’ve now seen two years of strongly rising earnings per share, and analysts have a further 30% forecast for the year to April 2017, so we’re looking at a likely growth share here.
But a forward P/E of 21 now, together with a marginal PEG of 0.7, suggests to me that the early share price rise was a tad too optimistic. I’d say the shares are just about fair value now, and though it’s a good company, I see better medium-term opportunities out there.
