Guidance beaten in FY23 and unchanged for FY24

Hunting delivered EBITDA of US$103m, ahead of revised guidance and the inferred year-end expectation, representing a 98% y-o-y uplift (and 11.1% margin, +380bp). Significant contract awards boosted Subsea and OCTG activities in particular, but top line progress was also accompanied by good cost control to deliver the full year outturn. A record year-end order book position leaves the company well-placed to deliver further progress in FY24, where guidance is unchanged.

At the headline level, Hunting delivered group revenue growth of 28% and margin progress (ie gross +90bp to 24.5% and EBITDA +390bp to 11.1%), feeding into a fivefold increase in pre-tax profit with EPS up over four times in FY23. The full year dividend rose by 11% to 10c per share, covered twice by earnings.

Against our selected peer group average, Hunting’s P/E and EV/EBITDA multiples sit on discounts of 25-30% and 20-25% respectively. Taking a simple average of our P/E and DCF based analyses generates an unchanged fair value per share of 407p.