Wizz Air (LSE: WIZZ) is truly one of the most impressive growth stories in London today. At a time when airline firms such as Ryanair, EasyJet, Flybe and IAG are struggling with increased competition, tech glitches, price wars, and overcapacity, Wizz has been able to leapfrog its larger peers.
City analysts believe that the company is on track to report earnings per share growth of 19% for 2017, followed by growth of 15% for 2018 as the Eastern Europe-focused airline expands its fleet and enters new markets.
Today, the company issued yet another upbeat traffic report showing growth across the board for the firm.
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Rapid growth
According to today’s update, based on trading for August, Wizz’s capacity expanded by 21.3% year-on-year and the number of passengers flying with the airline rose 24.4%. Load factor for the period increased 2.4 percentage points, from 93% to 95.4%.
To help support growth, management recently won approval from shareholders to purchase 10 additional brand new A321ceo aircraft from Airbus to be delivered during 2018 and 2019. The airline desperately needs this new capacity as it opened 17 new routes during August and is planning more new routes over the next 12 months to meet growing customer needs.
Undervalued?
Despite Wizz’s rapid growth, shares in the company look relatively cheap, which is why, despite gains of nearly 100% since February, the company could still produce lucrative returns for investors.
At the time of writing, the shares trade at a forward P/E of 15.2 and after factoring-in projected earnings growth, the shares trade at a PEG ratio of 0.8, indicating that they offer growth at a reasonable price.
Digital champion
Kainos (LSE: KNOS) flies under the radar of most investors, but that does not mean you should ignore the company because it provides essential digital services. For example, its healthcare division, Kainos Evolve, recently has signed a deal with Health Service Executive of Ireland and Saolta University Health Care Group in Galway for the provision of its Kainos Evolve Electronic Medical Record product. This contract, which is set to run for three years, with provision for a further two-year extension, comes on top of the group’s existing contracts with 35 NHS Trusts to use the same software helping 33m patients.
There’s a high demand for Kainos’s software and services. For the period to the end of March, the company reported an order backlog of £76.4m, around one year of revenue. And today the company published a trading update noting that it continues to have “a very strong pipeline” and an “increasing pipeline of business in continental Europe.” Furthermore, the update reports that the company expects “results for the full year ending 31 March 2018 to be in line with current market expectations.” City analysts have pencilled in earnings per share growth of 5% for the year, followed by growth of 21% for the following fiscal period.
Unfortunately, the market has already realised Kainos’s potential and shares in the company trade at a relatively high forward P/E of 28.3. However, the business is highly cash generative and has grown book value at a compound annual rate of 31.6% for the past five years, justifying the high valuation. The firm is also earning a return on equity of 37.4%, making it one of the most productive companies in the UK. As growth continues, shareholders should be well rewarded.
