Stock of the day 03/07/2015 – Galliford Try PLC

2015 has been a good year for the housing and construction sector, and Galliford Try (topically the builder of Wimbledon’s retractable roof) has been no exception; the company announces its full year 2015 trading statement next Wednesday.

Galliford’s growth across 2014 was quite as robust as the company would have hoped, especially after strong gains between 2011 and 2013. After starting 2014 at £11.73, and hitting a peak of £13.80 at the start of April and a low of £10.75 at the end of June, a fairly quiet second half of the year saw Galliford Try enter 2015 at £12.69. However, the relative flatness of last year has been replaced with muscular growth that sees Galliford regularly hitting record highs.


(Source: IT-Finance.com 03/07/2015)

A low of £12 towards the end of January is now a distant memory; the company surged over February, with a half year update in the middle of that month showing an 18% jump in revenue to £803.5 million. The main thrust of this impressive growth was a 20% surge in revenue in its housebuilding division Linden Homes, with the sector being one of the major market beneficiaries of the current Tory government. This news saw Galliford keep up its strong start to the year, reaching a then-record of £15.31 by the start of March.

The stock remained rather flat for the following 2 and a half months, recovering from a dip to £14 at the start of April to maintain a £14.80 to £15.20 trading bracket between the middle of April and the middle of May, with a little boost from the UK election result in the interim. The news that Galliford had acquired 11 Yorkshire housing sites from Shepard Homes continued to boost the stock’s price, with the focus on its rapidly expanding housebuilding division pleasing investors.

Galliford didn’t slow down across the rest of May and the start of June, and by June 10th touched a high of £17.53. Securing the £360 million Silvertown Way development London with rumours circulating that the company might also nab a deal to build the Birmingham Conservatoire have kept Galliford Try near these highs (briefly touching an all-time record of £17.85 at the end of June); it has a current trading price of £17.27 with a consensus rating of ‘hold’ and an average target price of £17.19.

Friday’s stock news:

Auto Trader jumped by 4.6% this Friday to £3.20 after Exane BNP Paribas gave the stock an ‘outperform’ rating with a target price of £3.75 due to its growing, and industry leading, engagement with smartphone technology. The company has had an impressive few months since its IPO back in March, and is just below the intraday peak of £3.27 it reached on June 19th.

Engineering company Keller Group continued to rise this Friday, following Thursday’s news that it had purchased Austral Construction for £30.3 million. This led to the reaffirmation of Keller’s ‘buy’ rating from Investec, a 2.5% surge on Thursday and a 1.7% jump today leaving the company at a current trading price of £10.84.