Today’s “in line” FY23 trading update from Vp reiterates that it had made “good progress within its core markets” since the interims in Nov’22. It has benefitted from strength in civil engineering (eg highways) and infrastructure (eg water, rail & energy), alongside successfully lifting prices to cover input inflation as well as rightsizing some parts of the group to further reduce costs.
Elsewhere, the international energy & testing divisions also performed well, while residential housing has stabilised at lower levels - partly supported by robust RMI activity where millions of properties need modernisation.
As such, we retain our projections and £11.30/share valuation. Based on forecasted FY’23 revenues, adjusted PBTA and EPS of £365.5m, £40.2m & 75.9p (+6.5% YoY) respectively - climbing to £376.5m, £43.3m and 81.3p (7.2%) in FY’24. This in turn puts the stock (at 670p) on attractive FY’24 EV/EBITDA, EV/EBIT & PE multiples of 4.2x, 8.2x and 8.2x – whilst paying a 6.0% dividend yield. We believe this is simply far too cheap for a best-in-class, economically resilient business with a proven track record through thick & thin.
