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28 Sep 2020
Informa : Baseline rally - Buy

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Informa : Baseline rally - Buy
Informa Plc (INF:LON) | 890 0 0.0% | Mkt Cap: 11,549m
- Published:
28 Sep 2020 -
Author:
Alastair Reid | Ross Broadfoot -
Pages:
7 -
Finding a floor: Informa’s new FY20 revenue guidance of £1.7bn is now a baseline floor for the group without any physical exhibitions running outside of mainland China (where operating capability and activity has returned, with events running at 80-90% of normalised revenues). At a more granular level, the subscription revenues of Taylor & Francis / Informa Intelligence continue to prove robust, monetisation of virtual events is accelerating and despite the crisis, there are some very early green shoots in exhibitions (Japanese market re-opening, government support in Germany / Australia etc). With £300-400m of events shifted later in 2021 (meaningful activity starting late Spring), we now assume Markets reaches 70% of FY19 in 2021E (and 85% in 2022E) – based on c.50% of normalised North America / EMEA physical events revenue.
Putting cash concerns to bed: Management are implementing further plans to ensure the business emerges robustly from the crisis regardless of the pace of event re-starting – from an operational standpoint, targeting £600m of cost savings by YE (£200m indirect) to reach a cash-flow positive position by January, and noting these savings could increase if necessary. With a new bond issue adding to the £2.8bn of liquidity at the end of June (and low levels of customer refund requests), Informa will pay down the £1.1bn US private placement if a suitable waiver is not provided for the one covenant it has.
Risk-reward skewed to the upside: We cut revenue/PBT by 8%/27% in FY20E, by 6%/14% in FY21E and profits by a more modest 5% long-term. The stock trades on 10x FY22E PE, with an 11% FCF yield in that year – as consensus estimates potentially start to trough, confidence in the basis of the depressed valuation should increase. This should allow investors to shift their focus to the fundamental value & scope for re-rating as demand, eventually, restarts.