Summerset one that got away from NZX tipsters

“Yeah, I think it has been overlooked,” conceded an investment research head on one listed business missing from brokers’ annual share market picks for 2021.

Yet the company he was referring to has piled a spectacular 300 per cent on to its share price in the last 10 months.

In fact, this NZX -listed company operates in a sector popular with investors, is about to get new management, is New Zealand’s biggest by one measure and is expanding into Australia.

So why did brokers seemingly overlook Summerset Group whose price rocketed from just over $3 last March to more than $12 now?

Instead, they picked the seemingly sure sitters like Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, a2 and Mainfreight.

Greg Smith, Fat Prophets’ research head, acknowledged Summerset was missing from that list. Yet he also acknowledged the massive share price rise and said if you’d had the foresight to put in $10,000 last March, today you could be banking $40,000. Why so Cinderella?

“Ryman [Healthcare] is the market darling and in the brokers’ picks,” he said referring to a Herald article published on December 27 by Liam Dann. “Ryman is the family favourite. Yeah, I think it has been overlooked,” he said of Summerset.

He expects its share price to keep rising this year, although not perhaps by that 300 per cent mark again.

“There will be scope of further gains due to low interest rates and the property market which can’t keep going to the extent it is, but there’s no reason why it can’t remain strong,” Smith said.

Mark Lister of Craigs Investment Partners praised the retirement giant whose chairman, Rob Campbell, leaves in April along with chief executive Julian Cook, soon to be replaced by chief financial officer Scott Scoullar.

“We really like Summerset. It is a great business which is executing very well and provides an excellent exposure to the strong housing market,” Lister said.

“Summerset clearly has some strong momentum operationally, and even though it has performed very well in recent months I think it has a bright future over the next two to three years.”

Summerset says it has 31 villages completed or under development and a further nine sites here in its land bank plus two sites in Victoria, Australia, bringing the total number of properties to 42.