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| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costain Group Plc | COST | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 0.00% | 75.60 | 12:04:13 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 75.60 | 75.00 | 75.80 | 75.60 |
| Industry Sector |
|---|
| CONSTRUCTION & MATERIALS |
| Announcement Date | Type | Currency | Dividend Amount | Ex Date | Record Date | Payment Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12/03/2024 | Final | GBP | 0.008 | 18/04/2024 | 19/04/2024 | 28/05/2024 |
| 05/09/2023 | Interim | GBP | 0.004 | 21/09/2023 | 22/09/2023 | 27/10/2023 |
| 06/03/2019 | Interim | GBP | 0.038 | 12/09/2019 | 13/09/2019 | 18/10/2019 |
| Top Posts |
|---|
Posted at 15/4/2024 08:29 by someuwin 20 dirt-cheap British stocks experts say could make you a fortune... COSTAIN (FTSE ALL-SHARE) Infrastructure company Costain made losses from 2019 to 2021, but it is now in better business shape, buoyed by a strong order book. AJ Bell's Russ Mould says the business is seriously undervalued, with a market capitalisation little above the amount of cash it had on its balance sheet at the end of last year. This, he says, provides investors with protection should anything go wrong in the future – and plenty of upside if it can improve the returns it makes on sales. With a new management team in place and the opportunity to be part of big infrastructure projects such as the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk and Network Rail's £40billion spending plans between now and 2029, the company has the potential to grow its profits (£30.9million last year). Its shares trade at around 77p, and encouragingly it returned to paying shareholders a small dividend last year of 1.2p a share. |
Posted at 14/3/2024 17:52 by boystown A bit from Master Investor fwiw:Costain (LON:COST) – Better Margin Expected Growth This group shapes, creates and delivers pioneering solutions that transform the performance of the infrastructure ecosystem across the UK’s transport, energy, water, and defence markets. The year to end December reported revenues lower at £1.33bn (£1.42bn) while adjusted pre-tax profits were up at £44.2m (£34.2m), leaving basic earnings better at 12.2p (9.9p) and paying out an unchanged 1.2p dividend per share. Impressively the group ended its year with a net cash balance 32.8% higher at £164.4m (£123.8m). For the current year and going forward the group has a strong opportunities pipeline as well as having in excess of £1bn of revenue secured for 2024 at its year-end, representing more than 80% of expected revenue. CEO Alex Vaughan stated that: “The quality and balance of our forward work across our two divisions gives us good visibility on future revenue and margin. We have more than 80% of expected revenue secured for 2024 and our forward work stands at around three times 2023 revenue. We see continuing momentum in the business and remain confident in the Group’s growth prospects.” Analyst Andrew Nussey at Peel Hunt considers that the company is an undervalued stock in an undervalued sector, with its shares trading on just 5.6 times forecast earnings. Nussey reiterated his Buy recommendation while increasing his Price Objective from 80p to 95p. Over at Liberum Capital its analysts Joe Brent, Alex O’Hanlon and Sanjay Vidyarthi also rate the group’s shares as a Buy, looking for 100p in due course. They estimate that current year sales will be £1.22bn, with £46.5m pre-tax profits of £46.5m, generating 12.3p of earnings and covering 1.2p per share of dividend. For the group’s 2025 trading the analysts go for £1.22bn sales, £52.1m profits, earnings of 13.8p and a 1.4p dividend per share. The shares touched 72.45p on Tuesday in response to these results, before drifting back to an almost unchanged 66p. At that level the £190m capitalised group’s shares certainly are an undervalued stock, trading at 5.5 times current year price-to-earnings and just 4.9 times its 2025 hopes. |
Posted at 14/3/2024 14:28 by catabrit Stdyeddy - thank you. I try my best to be objective.Rougemale1 - my rant is about Costain pre and post Alex. In Alex’s defence he would point to zero contract issues (albeit the problems tend to be back ended so if there are provisions on contracts signed during his reign we won’t know for another few years). But if he was in charge of consulting and digital pre becoming CEO why have we gone from smart infra company to just infra? Why are we re-structuring digital? Does that mean he got the strategy wrong? And why are we not breaking out the consulting revenue and income line? I don’t care if it is bundled or hard to figure out - just do it. Don’t tell us - show us. Show us your revenue and income pie is safer / better than peers. Why should we investors do the hard work? If he wants his LTIP then he better break it out AND hit margins AND sort out the derisory capital return. Yes he’s handcuffed by the pension trustees and yes the wording has changed to allow him to return cash to shareholders if it’s in surplus but for God’s sake, bang the bloody drum as CEO. The Balfour CEO clearly articulated the value proposition in his shares during the presentation yesterday. He said here are our infrastructure investments, here’s our net cash and here’s our market cap. Oh and here’s all the cash we plan to generate over the next 5-yrs. Very simple math. Even IR should be breaking this out in their presentations. There should be an entire page in the deck about the market cap vs the net cash and the 30m of annual free cash flow they think they can generate I.e. we are aware of the past guys and we are sorry but here is the future and it is going to be rosy. Alex talks about the business and customers and mega trends and that’s great. It’s part of the job. But it’s only one part. The other is to be a steward of our capital and to send the tanks in when there is blood on the streets. I will likely sell my shares regardless if the buyback isn’t a very meaningful one as it shows he does not get it. Or I will go activist and put it up for a vote. We know they need at least 100m for banking purposes. Make that 120m. Does 160m in the bank vs 120m really move the needle order book wise? I doubt it. But a 30-40m buyback meaningfully moves the needle in terms of market cap. So divi at level of FTSE all share and buy back as much as the business will allow. If he refuses to do it, it either means he cannot because of business purposes which means the cash is a value trap or he does not get how capital allocation works. Nigelpm - I also bought in 2022 because of this and have done well as net cash has risen. But I believe that Costain spent a long time trading at net cash in the past. From 2010 to 2013 I believe. They only started to get a proper valuation on the core business from 2014 to 2018 when the order book was growing. I do think we will get there and we just need the actuarial surplus to be confirmed or not. And we probably need a few more years of zero contract issues. So I anticipate a good risk adjusted return from these levels but it might take longer than we all expect and I think that scepticism from the wider market is probably valid considering Costain’s prior promises and the general disdain towards contractors and contracting. Costain was openly telling shareholders that its target cost model was better than a fixed cost one (and 90 percent of its book was target cost as far back as 2013). Yet target cost can lead to issues if there is too much vagueness around scope and a high degree of complexity. So I think management need to be more open with us about what is in the order book and how they have dealt with target cost risk management and why they believe no major provisions will be forthcoming. Trust us is not enough considering the past. |
Posted at 13/3/2024 17:14 by catabrit In my opinion - and I hope I am wrong as I have a lot of money on the line here - the momentum has been lost and I do not anticipate these breaching the 70s again until we learn the results of the pension scheme which are a good 3-4 months' away. The results were solid if unspectacular but like a lot of small cap value stocks the only way to heaven (takeover aside which you can't underwrite) is through self-help i.e. buybacks, hitting margins, boosting free cash flow. If you believe (like the market does) that Costain isn't really that differentiated vs peers why buy it when you can buy the big gorilla (Balfour) which pays a higher dividend yield, is buying back a tonne of stock and offers downside protection via its infrastructure portfolio of investments (1.2bn) plus circa 800m of net cash vs a market cap of 2bn? I think it's going to be a frustrating couple of months. |
Posted at 12/1/2024 07:41 by mirabeau 23 AUg 2023Costain Group PLC (LSE:COST) is mulling restoring the dividend after a solid performance so far in 2023 and progress in boosting its financial position. In the six months to 30 June 2023, the construction and engineering firm reported flat revenue of £664.4 million, but a 20% jump in pre-tax profit to £15.9 million from £13.3 million the year before. The improved profit reflected robust growth in natural resources, resilience in transportation and continued positive cash generation. This has left Costain looking at restoring the interim dividend with an announcement expected “shortly” “The increase in operating performance and the positive outcomes regarding the pension review and refinancing, enables the board to consider the resumption of dividend payments, including the payment of an interim dividend in respect of the period to 30 June 2023,” the firm said. The transformation programme to create efficiencies is on track, with further benefits to come in the coming months and Costain expects the sectoral growth seen in natural resources together with the rephasing and rescoping of some infrastructure projects in rail and road to continue for the remainder of the year and into 2024. Expectations for the rest of the year remain unchanged, backed by more than 90% of revenue already being secured for the remainder of 2023. - 'Expectations for the rest of the year remain unchanged, backed by more than 90% of revenue already being secured for the remainder of 2023.'. It isn't going to take much to exceed expections on sales for 2023 All parameters pointing in the right direction with growth through improvemen to come |
Posted at 05/9/2023 10:04 by catabrit Agreed but the current dividend yield is only one piece of the pie, right? I mean if you’ve got 200m of EV resting on a 2% dividend yield with 1.2x cover and absolutely nothing else going for you then yeah, you are going to struggle. But that’s not what we have. We have an EV of 65m so a divi yield to equity of 5% and a FCF yield of like 30%. And if management are to be believed and you follow the earnings / accounting / math, then both of those figures are going to grow significantly.The next catalysts are technical (clearing 61p) and operational (margins). So on the last point, we agree. If it was all about dividend yields everyone would have piled into $IEP or Steppe Cement and yeah, look how those have fared YTD… As I said previously, two of the biggest gainers YTD (Rolls Royce and M&S) don’t pay a dividend. In an environment where you can get close to 5-6% on your money in the bank, that defies logic until you get into the weeds and see that the market is forward looking and bidding those up based on improving fundamentals and starting valuation vs those fundamentals. The same is happening here. |
Posted at 05/9/2023 09:23 by catabrit What nonsense. The high single digit yields of Aviva, Legal and General, Phoenix, M&G, the house builders and multiple others were not enough to stop their share prices declining this year. Why? Because a). Since when did dividend yield = valuation? B). It’s the coverage ratio / sustainability of that dividend that matters c). The market looks forward, not backwards.Nobody is buying Costain at 60p for the dividend yield. You’re buying it for the capital growth, safety considering the net cash and progressive dividend yield which will very likely net close to 10% in the years to come and still with ample cover vs FCF. |
Posted at 05/9/2023 07:04 by hamhamham1 5 September 2023Resumption of Dividends and Interim Dividend Declared Further to the announcement of half year results on 23 August 2023, Costain Group PLC ("Costain") announces that it will resume dividend payments and has declared an interim dividend of 0.4p per ordinary share for the six months ended 30 June 2023. The interim dividend payment will be made on 27 October 2023 to shareholders on the register at the close of business on 22 September 2023. Payment of the interim dividend will be both as a cash dividend and scrip dividend alternative. Shareholders wishing to join the scrip dividend scheme should return a completed mandate form to the Registrar, Equiniti, by 6 October 2023. The scrip reference price will be announced on 28 September 2023. For more information regarding the scrip and to download the mandate form, see Costain scrip. |
Posted at 04/9/2023 13:22 by roguemale1 Divi/pensionsI have tabulated the history of this but it wont paste in here properly so will try and phrase my open question instead apologies. So when they were last paying dividends it was on basis of 2.5 cover. Now stated cover 3 times. Cost of divi used to be roughly av 15m over last 3 divi yrs. So now for 2023 with the numbers heading back to where they were then you could prob expect something like £12m as a cost of divi. But now of course we have the criteria of 3.3m to pension until 2027 and if they want to pay more than that in divis then they have to match it into the pension. Now the pension contributions were always separate and on top of the divi cost previously but how does that work now? Is the intent to limit divi to 3.3m? OR Is the intent to make the total of divi and pension contribution my 12m? OR Is the intent to make the divi 12m and pay the pension the same should numbers allow? (or somewhere in between) I assume they may shed some light on this if indeed they do announce the resumption of dividend. Feel free to tell me if I have missed the answer to my musings in reading the report.... |
Posted at 25/8/2023 14:57 by grahamburn Headline, first para, concluding 2 paras and final recommendation from Tempus in Times (plenty of known detail in between):Costain, the builders’ ugly duckling, may fly again There is nothing like the whiff of a dividend to set investors’ adrenaline pumping, even from, well, a mixed set of results. That is what the builder Costain delivered on Wednesday, and the package has been well received since. The shares jumped from 46½p on Tuesday — ahead of the official announcement — to nearly 53p at one stage yesterday. They are coming out of intensive care, where they have lain since the pandemic, so it may be time to examine the company anew. So there is plenty going on, and signs that the current management is getting to grips with the headaches that have plagued the group in recent years. However, the comparison with the near-rival Balfour Beatty is instructive: both are in HS2, but Balfour is valued by the stock market at ten times Costain, on revenues five times larger and much more widely spread, including to the US. Balfour has paid dividends through and since Covid. But this is a reverse beauty parade. It begins to look increasingly that Costain, the ugly duckling, has been shamefully neglected by the stock market, leaving the share price appearing anomalous and set for recovery. On the back of pre-tax profits rising from £40 million-or-so this year, they should get close to £50 million for 2025. At current levels, the shares are trading on less than four times earnings two years hence, while the dividend yield is set to rise to about 2.8 per cent. That p/e ratio must surely blossom. ADVICE Buy WHY Unjustifiably overlooked after a long period in the doldrums |
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