Kier Group Forum

Yes, share price has doubled recently. Shorts still seem to be the same. Not sure what bad news they could be expecting; recent RNS confirms debt is coming down. Construction Enquirer shows Kier as the top firm for winning contracts: [link] I'm seeing an interesting debate on ADVFN, pointing out that the rights issue and cancelled dividend has put over £300m into Kier's bank account. That's presumably why debt is falling. So far, all the metrics that I can find look good. Let's see what the actual profit is when they publish the end of year report in September. But since this doesn't seem to be another Carillion, it looks like the share price fall has been way overdone. I bought at 110p. Some big hedge funds involved so expecting price moves, but the recent broker note says £1.50 is a realistic target if it's not broke. There are loads of Kier jobs advertised too. Doesn't look like a bankrupt business!

There'll be a contingency cost for 'dusruption' in the project's risk planning, so ultimately, the client pays. Kier has about 900 other projects too. No anti-prison campaigners on most of them.

Kier went up 15% today btw. Closed at £1.34. Been climbing for 4 days now.

I'm reposting this because of the spammer below filling this screen (jeromedo). Regarding Kier, shorts are closing and people are buying in. Volume is high today and yesterday. Share price represents about 1.5 year's earnings; way too low. Broker notes put 150p as near-term target. I'm invested and aiming for £4 before year-end. Debt is reducing, even without selling Kier Living, according to the numbers in the recent RNS. All seems good as far as I can see. Hedge-fund inspired hysteria through shorting, people comparing it to Carillion. Now returning to normal. Not like Carillion after all. Debt is under control, good contracts, seems to win new ones every other day.

Shorts are closing and people are buying in. Volume is high today and yesterday. Share price represents about 1.5 year's earnings; way too low. Broker notes put 150p as near-term target. I'm invested and aiming for £4 before year-end. Debt is reducing, even without selling Kier Living, according to the numbers in the recent RNS. All seems good as far as I can see. Hedge-fund inspired hysteria through shorting, people comparing it to Carillion. Now returning to normal. Not like Carillion after all. Debt is under control, good contracts, seems to win new ones every other day.

Do you have a link on Andrew Davies' quote about other contractors Ripley? Regarding patience, not an awful lot needed in my opinion. The share had been talked down and shorted hard and Davies kitchen-sinked all the issues in his review. The share price dropped steeply. There are loads of tip sheets and broker notes now talking about Kier. I reckon a p/e ration of about 6 would be conservative and on the earnings that will be reported in September, I think that will be over £4 a share. That's my medium term target and looking at the speed of the fall, I think it could get back there in a month or two.

Well, the market doesn't seem to agree with your opinion. Kier has jumped 20% this morning. No news that I can find to cause it. I'm guessing something positive has happened and hasn't been announced yet.

Probably not £10. I'm expecting maybe £4-5. None of Kier's business produce double digit margins. You might need a different industry if that's what you're looking for. 80p to 400p is good for me. Moving strong today. People talking about shorts closing.

[link] Are Kier and Thomas Cook share prices on the road to recovery? Investors have long speculated that the pair were on the road to ruin, however, Kier’s plan to offload its housing unit to strengthen its balance sheet and Thomas Cook’s talks with China-based Fosun could change their fortunes.

Arguably yes, but expectations for the price of Kier Living have already been marked down -- it was nominally on the books for around £180m and Davies put it up for sale at much less, maybe £120m, though it's not clear how much of the land he's already sold. Kier Living contributes a small amount to the overall group profit, so if he gets anything more than £100m (a bargain price, I imagine) it'll still make a massive dent in the debt, reducing it to around 50-60m for the group debt. I'll be happy with that. That level of debt seems very low for a business with turnover of £4.2bn and profits of around £90m without Kier Living (current profit is around £100m a year -- I've seen somewhere that KL contributes about £7m of that).