Second wind boosts F&P shares
Investors enjoy 96 per cent gain in just 12 months — but should company be disclosing more?
Ninety-six per cent. That’s how much Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s share price has rallied in the last 12 months.
Since Covid-19 emerged in late January as a serious global threat, an already strengthening F&P Healthcare has gone from strength to strength.
Against the backdrop of the worst quarterly performance for the sharemarket so far this century, F&P Healthcare’s share price rallied by 39 per cent.
The respiratory products maker has been classed as an essential service and will function while most of the country is in Covid-19 lockdown.
Its most recent guidance was for year-to-March earnings of $275 million to $280m, up from a previous guidance of $260m to $270m, aided in no small part by a depreciating exchange rate.
But given recent events, and the meteoric rise in its share price, should the company be disclosing more?
Salt Funds managing director Matt Goodson doesn’t think so.
“FPH has delivered several small earnings upgrades in recent times that would normally be within the bounds of result forecast variability,” he says.
“Investors have flocked to it as a safe haven but there are some questions around whether the OSA (obstructive sleep apnoea) business has experienced any disruption,” he says.
“The respiratory humidification business is clearly a beneficiary of the Covid-19 crisis but there is a degree of one-off nature to this and there will be a significant expansion in future supply.”
Forsyth Barr senior analyst Chelsea Leadbetter says it is clear FPH will benefit from higher demand for its hospital products.
The company had the capacity currently to support this demand “and we know the company will be working hard behind the scenes in terms of prioritising scaling up to support the global need for hospital product”.
In terms of what it will mean for the business, Leadbetter says this is a challenging time for most companies.
“FPH — like most businesses — is working to better understand that themselves and various scenarios around the potential demand profile in particular,” she says.
The company typically reports its full-year results in late May when the market will expect a wider discussion, if not earlier.
F&P Healthcare is the NZX’s biggest listed entity in terms of market capitalisation ($17 billion), and also one of its most expensive, with a hefty price/earnings ratio of 76.
Clear as mud
Heartland shareholders hoping for clarity about whether they will receive a full-year dividend payment this year or how big it might be will be no wiser after yesterday’s Stock Exchange announcement.
The Reserve Bank has revealed it has reached an agreement with all New Zealand-registered banks not to pay a dividend while the country faces economic uncertainty from the Covid-19 coronavirus.
In a statement released shortly afterwards, Heartland said the distribution restriction applied to Heartland Bank, not to its listed entity, Heartland Group Holdings.
“Heartland’s bank will consider the impact (if any) of the restriction on its own, separate dividend policy, and when considering the dividends that it may wish to declare (if any) to its shareholders in due course.”
In February Heartland Group declared a half-year dividend of 4.5c per share — an increase of 1c per share on the same prior period, and last month it reiterated its financial forecast for the full year, saying it was still on track to make a full-year profit of $77m to $80m.
Heartland’s business includes both its bank and its Australian reverse mortgage business. Given that one part of the business will no longer be able to pay a dividend to the group, Stock Takes must assume there will be an impact on the overall dividend, but shareholders will have to wait and see.
Heartland shares fell 3 per cent on the announcement to 95c and closed on XXc yesterday.
Worst quarter this century
S&P Dow Jones Indices, in analysing the Australian and New Zealand markets for March, has noted that both markets posted their worst monthly and quarterly declines this century.
Australia’s Vix — an index that measures volatility — posted its highest close since October 2008.
“With Saudi Arabia flooding the market with cheap oil and a sharp drop off in demand for crude due to the broader global slowdown, Australia’s energy sector struggled, leading the way down for the S&P/ASX 200 this quarter,” noted Dow Jones.
While there have been relatively few confirmed cases of Covid-19 so far on either side of the Tasman, markets in Australia and New Zealand were swept up in a global sell-off as businesses and countries worldwide went into lockdown.
“Both the S&P/ASX 200 and the S&P/NZX 50 completed their worst monthly and quarterly declines this century, sliding 21 per cent and
17 per cent respectively in March,” it said.
Global markets were rocked by extreme levels of volatility as equities whipsawed into bear territory.
As governments and central banks, including Australia’s and New Zealand’s, rushed to offer support to the economy, the final week of March brought signs of a turnaround.
The S&P/ASX 200 recorded its largest ever single-day gain of 7 per cent on the penultimate day of trading and, at the close, is 12 per cent up from its 2020 lows.