Shares in Taylor Wimpey (LSE: TW) crashed by more than 40% on the day after the Brexit vote, and while the shares have regained some of their losses over the past month, it still looks as if the company is undervalued compared to both its peers and the wider market.
Indeed, Taylor’s shares currently trade at a forward P/E of 8.9. According to current City estimates the company’s earnings per share are set to grow by 14% this year, indicating that the shares trade at a PEG ratio of 0.6. A PEG ratio of less than one implies that the shares offer growth at a reasonable price. Further, the wider FTSE 100 currently trades at a P/E ratio of 38.67 so compared to the UK’s leading index, shares in Taylor look exceptionally cheap.
An attractive long-term investment
Even after Brexit Taylor remains an extremely attractive investment. The UK is facing a structural housing shortage and this deficit won’t disappear following the country’s decision to leave the EU.
The country needs hundreds of thousands of new houses every year, and Taylor is one of the few large homebuilders that can be relied on to contribute significantly to this growth. The Bank of England’s decision to ease credit conditions further last week, lowering interest rates and increasing the volume of funds available for lending by banks, should only increase the demand for new homes.
In a trading statement published on 27 July, Taylor’s management announced that one month after the EU referendum, trading conditions remained in line with normal seasonal patterns. In other words, it seems as if Taylor’s sales are unlikely to be impacted by Brexit in the near term. For the first half of 2016 pre-tax profit increased 12.1%.
So overall, shares in Taylor look undervalued at current levels, and the company’s trading performance is still going strong.
Rapid growth
Shares in Staffline (LSE: STAF) have risen by more than 17% after the company published a highly upbeat set of interim results on 27 July and there could be further gains to come as the company still trades at a discount to the wider market.
City analysts expect the company to report earnings per share of 114p for the year ending 31 December 2016, a forecast that implies that the firm’s shares are currently trading at a forward P/E of 9.2.
Over the past 12 months, Staffline has chalked up some impressive growth. Revenues during the first half of 2016 grew by 39.5%, and gross profit jumped 48.6%. To celebrate this impressive performance management hiked the interim dividend by 40% to 10.5p per share.
Staffline is a leading outsourcing organisation providing staffing services to companies around the UK and to some extent this is a defensive business. The trend of outsourcing operations to specialist companies is unlikely to go away anytime soon and unless there’s a severe recession in the UK, Staffline’s services should see robust demand as firms look to the company to provide their staffing needs.
Staffline’s rapid growth over the past year is a testament to how large the demand for its services is and a valuation of 9.2 times forward earnings seems too cheap to pass up. Management appears to agree with Staffline’s CFO, and the company’s managing director for Ireland both buying shares in the group at the end of July.
