A bubbly half-year trading update from Cairn Homes (LSE: CRN) sent the building behemoth shooting to fresh record highs in Tuesday trading, the stock last dealing 1% higher on the day at €1.75 per share.
The Irish business announced that revenues detonated 157% during January-June, to €41.2m, a result that drove gross profit 191% higher to €7.7m.
And sales continue to perform “very well,” the construction firm noted. It enjoyed 94 sales completions in the first six months of 2017, and it boasts a strong and growing pipeline of forward sales of 474 units.
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Chief executive Michael Stanley said: “The quality of our land bank and range of houses and apartments are meeting the needs of distinct segments of the market from first time buyers to people trading up or down-sizing… our business model is designed to consistently deliver high quality homes in developments of scale and the market has been responding accordingly.” The company is currently building on nine sites which are on course to deliver 3,250 new homes.
Supply imbalance set to persist
Cairn Homes has seen its share value ascend 30% since the start of the year and, thanks to the vast housing market imbalance on the Emerald Isle, I fully expect it to continue striding northwards.
Indeed, it said today that “the severe supply/demand imbalance in the Irish housing market is more extreme and pronounced today than at the time of our IPO [in 2015].
It added: “While the housebuilding sector is reacting positively to the continually improving macro-economic landscape, the supply of new homes, particularly in Dublin, is still significantly lagging demand which continues to be driven by an ever improving labour market and improved affordability, in addition to a growing population.”
The business estimates that around 18,000 new homes are required in Dublin every year to meet booming buyer appetite and address the city’s long-running property shortage.
Against this backcloth, the City is predicting handsome earnings growth in the years to come — Cairn Homes is expected to flip back into the black with earnings of 1.5 euro cents per share in 2017, before striding to 6.9 cents in 2018.
I reckon growth hunters need to give the homebuilder serious attention right now.
Shining star
Petropavlovsk (LSE: POG) is another stock that has seen its share value surge in recent times, the gold digger rising 14% over the past fortnight as the escalating diplomatic crisis on the Korean peninsula has driven demand for precious metals.
Whilst bullion values have lost some of their lustre since the start of the week, I am confident gold should remain well bought as North Korea does not look likely to step back from the brink any time soon. And on top of this, enduring concerns over the dysfunctional Trump administration in Washington, and uncertainties over the ongoing Brexit saga in the UK, should also keep investor nerves jangling.
And thanks to the extra contribution of rising production levels, the abacus bashers expect Petropavlovsk to generate earnings expansion of 151% and 19% in 2017 and 2018 respectively. I reckon the mining ace is worthy of more than a cursory glance given its mega-cheap forward P/E ratio of 3.7 times.
