What a difference in two years. Debt has been paid down through asset sales and rights issue. Profit margin is running at over 3%; latest trading update shows a 26% increase in turnover - business will hit at least £4.5bn in full-year report which will be released in September 2022. No reported shorts on Kier. The business remains the largest UK regional construction business and has slimmed down its workforce to 12,000 staff from 18,000 at huge cost over the last three years. It is now lean and mean and making money. Dividends will not be too far away now. Shareprice is incredibly low due to inflation fears, but CEO's inflation strategy is reportedly working and has enabled the business to maintain profits.
Courtesy of Belroe on another site: I think it is time for the hedge funds shorting Kier to recognise that they are now betting against the public interest in this time of national emergency. Kier employs 18,000 people and is building the UK's infrastructure. The business has substantially changed its approach and has raised cash, sold, assets and cut costs in order to make itself financially sound. The hedge funds involved should accept that they've made their profit, and now withdraw gracefully before people like Vikram Kumar at Kuvari become widely known as people hoping for corporate disaster at this very difficult time for the UK economy and its people. The video in the attached link appears to me to show a suppressed smile from Kumar as he recounts how Carillion failed and he made money. We do not need that kind of chaos from avoidable corporate collapse today, and the 'art of shorting' which Kumar mentions, seems to be taken by some people to include dirty tricks like newspaper articles which aim to sow doubt through unsubstantiated rumours. It's time for all of the hedge funds shorting Kier to cash in their chips and perhaps support the UK's recovery. [link]
As predicted, a big rise for the Kier share price. This should continue into next week. Last high was around 150p when there was some excitement around HS2, but Kier hadn't released any results for six months. Now the numbers are known and it's clear that the business is not going to fail. We will possibly see 180p by Monday.
Kier half year results are out tomorrow morning. Shares priced today at about a p/e of 1. If the business isn't terminal, that should be about 6. Will be a big day for the kier share price tomorrow.
I'm hearing rumours that Aster Group UK have bought Kier Living and Aster's board advisor, Andrew Bridges has been made chief executive of the Kier Living business. That will be transformational for Kier's debt, and it's likely that KL was sold for more than the entire value of parent Kier's entire market capitalisation this morning. We should see a massive bull-run to £2 and beyond when the news gets out.
Zippy, the Motley Fool writers are not familiar with Kier. They haven't done detailed assessment; instead they look at a few metrics and then spout an opinion. Their articles are riddled with mistakes and misconceptions. For example, they don't seem to understand the difference between the group's net debt and its average monthly debt. They don't understand what brought the Kier share price down in the first place, and they certainly don't understand where Kier is now in terms of its volume of business, ranking and capability in UK construction, nor the sector as a whole. My view is that the business isn't even severely damaged, despite the fact that the last finance director allowed accounting schemes to give the impression of greater cash availability, and consequently far too much was paid out in dividends, and not enough done to maintain a healthy cash balance. The CFO has gone; money has been raised through a rights issue; cancelling the dividend altogether (saving about £60m in payouts); cutting costs and selling assets (property, a business in Australia). My view is that Kier will get back to about £6 by the end of this year, and much higher next year when they start talking about reinstating a dividend (a very small one, I hope). I'm not saying what you should do; I'm just saying that I've got my own plan and it involves holding Kier at least for the medium term and maybe even longer. My target is £12, but that could be some way off.
Kier up 8% so far today and has broken through the six-month high of 148p. Looks like the market is re-rating Kier ahead of its results in a a little over a fortnight from now. HS" greenlight, record houseprices (great for Kier Living) and hundreds of contract wins make Kier a bargain. P/e is still less that 2. Ridiculously low. A 5-bagger from here by the end of the year.
Kier is up 9% today and has broken out from the recent trading range. A full scale bull-run is in progress. Nothing much to stop this going through to 150p. The market is making up its mind about Kier; hundreds of contract wins are making people realise that this is vibrant successful business, and one that's likely to grow now that Brexit uncertainty has fallen away, HS2 is going ahead and the business continues to win and complete projects. Results out in three weeks for Andrew Davies' first six months results. Prospects for a big re-rating are looking good.
Bottom line is a business with over £4bn in turnover, the largest regional construction firm in the UK. Earnings will probably be well over £100m and will likely deserve a p/e of at least 6 in the short term (about 5 times the current share price) and perhaps 10+ in the medium term. And in case you're wondering again about how that could be likely, let me remind you that Kier is winning a massive amount of work compared to its rivals. Kier signed a new construction contract on every single working day of 2019, on average, according to market data gathered by the Builders Conference. During 2019 Kier signed up as contractor on 256 different construction projects; during 253 working days in 2019. The total value of the work won by Kier in 2019 was just over £3bn or £3,012.5m to be precise, according to the Builders Conference. By contrast, Balfour Beatty won less than £2bn of new construction business in 2019; it signed 55 contracts with a total value of £1,976.4m, according to the Builders Conference categorisation system, although it won a further £500m-worth of work in a £1bn joint venture with Vinci for HS2. Morgan Sindall signed 182 contracts with a total value of £1,961.8m. Info comes from this article in the construction index: [link]