Liberum Capital added to the good news for Daily Mail & General Trust PLC (LON:DMGT) on Thursday by upgrading its rating for the newspaper publisher to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’ in the wake of today’s upbeat first-half results.
The City broker’s analyst made the move as they placed their target price for DMGT ‘under review’, with the shares jumping 9.6% higher to 740p in mid-morning trading.
READ: Daily Mail and General Trust surges as consumer media business has good first half
In a note to clients, the Liberum analysts said: “The highlight of DMGT's 1H results was their comment that FY19E Consumer Media revenues (46% of group revenues) should be better than expected, with a low single digit decline vs mid-single digit previously guided.”
They added: “Advertising, particularly at Mail Online, looks to be holding up better than expected, which is not what we expected when we downgraded DMGT to Sell in April, when we thought Brexit issues would impact advertising numbers and we had concerns over Mail Online's advertising growth.”
The analysts concluded: “Given this, and that we expect consensus numbers to rise slightly despite management's comments that they are comfortable with FY expectations, we upgrade from Sell to Hold.”
Target price hikes too
DMGT shares were also helped by target price hikes from two brokers.
JPMorgan Cazenove raised its target to 800p from 770p as it repeated an ‘overweight’ rating on the stock, while Credit Suisse moved up to 741p from 585p with a ‘neutral’ rating maintained.