Senior PLC (LON:SNR) saw its shares jump higher on Friday as analysts at Peel Hunt upgraded their rating for the engineering group to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ as they believe it has sufficient liquidity to weather the coronavirus crisis storm.
The analysts also hiked their target price for the FTSE 250-listed stock to 80p from 70p, with the shares changing hands at 65.60p each on Friday morning, up 9.2% on Thursday’s closing price.
READ: Senior jettisons dividend to conserve cash as coronavirus hits end markets
In a note to clients, the Peel Hunt analysts said: “The outlook for Commercial Aerospace and Class 8 Truck production has deteriorated further in the past month, with Airbus cutting production rates and Boeing likely to follow suit.”
The analysts said they expect margins at Senior’s Aerospace and Flexonics businesses to trough this year at 5% and 6%, respectively, before recovering slowly through 2021 and 2022.
As a result, they have cut their full-year 2021 pre-tax profit estimates for Senior by around 50% to £15mln and their full-year 2022 forecast by around 30% to £37mln.
“However,” the analysts added, “we are confident the group has sufficient liquidity to weather the storm and with the shares now trading below tangible net book value and on a projected FY22 EV/EBITDA of sub-3.0x & 20% FCF yield, they are now attractive.”