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24 Jul 2024
Wilmington PLC : Streamlined platform for growth - Buy

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Wilmington PLC : Streamlined platform for growth - Buy
Wilmington plc (WIL:LON) | 350 -7 (-0.6%) | Mkt Cap: 313.5m
- Published:
24 Jul 2024 -
Author:
Alastair Reid -
Pages:
6 -
Impressive FY trading update: Wilmington has reported 9% organic growth for FY24, leaving revenues at £126.0m, and expects PBT of £27.6m (up 13% yoy), modestly ahead of consensus. We believe the robust growth was seen across all businesses, and expect it to continue.
Portfolio positioned for the future: In recent months, Wilmington has announced the disposal of both its French and UK Healthcare businesses for a combined upfront consideration of c.£43m, or 10x profits. The disposal will improve the organic growth profile of the group and focus it further on the GRC markets. Although initially mechanically dilutive, it will leave Wilmington with net cash of c.£68m that can be redeployed on strategically attractive acquisitions that can be bolted onto the platform – if we assumed re-leveraging to 0.5x net debt to EBITDA, deploying nearly £100m could be >20% accretive (but more leverage could be feasible temporarily). At a much smaller scale, management have also shut the loss-making Singaporean training & education business.
Fundamentally mis-priced: Overall, the impact of portfolio pruning leaves revenues cut c.26% over the medium-term, albeit the profit impact is more limited (given the margin profile of, and proceeds from, the disposals), with PBT falling 13%. For now, we assume dividend payments remain flat from FY25E onwards. Wilmington currently trades at c.9x CY25E EBITDA – from a fundamental standpoint we believe this is too cheap for a business offering resilient and accelerating organic growth, with meaningful cash to deploy and significant structural growth opportunities ahead. In addition, it remains well below other industry transaction valuation benchmarks.