Analysts at Canaccord Genuity upgraded their recommendation for stock of International Personal Finance to ‘buy’, on the back of recent news-flow pointing to a reduced risk that a “financially-damaging” rate cap might be imposed in its largest market, Poland.
They also revised their target price for the shares higher from 160.0p to 191.0p.
Indeed, a temporary rate cap implemented in the wake of the pandemic was due to lapse on 30 June and the country’s Minister of Justice had publicly hinted that Warsaw’s goals had been met.
They also judged that the fragmented parliament meant that the hurdles to passing new laws were significant.
On the flip-side, they conceded that “we are nonetheless cognizant that this is finely balanced, as potential instability presents the risk of rapid change.”
In Hungary on the other hand, a temporary debt repayment moratorium was extended on 30 September and may yet be prolonged further.
“Overall, while ever-present, we believe that the regulatory threats in IPF’s territories are currently less intense than they have previously been.
“We continue to believe it’s appropriate to assign a risk premium in our valuation approach for regulatory challenges, but for now, at a reduced level. We upgrade IPF to BUY from Speculative BUY.”
Analysts at Berenberg cut their target price for shares of IWG, citing an overoptimistic consensus on the outlook for 2022/23 after downgrading their estimates for the workspace specialist for a fifth time in a row.
True, occupancy and pricing appeared to have hit bottom, they conceded.
IWG had also booked £190m of costs savings in the first half of the year and the switch to a ‘capital light’ model was a “source of medium-term” optimism.
Nonetheless, they went on to add that the business remained heavily in the red and as IWG reinvested to drive growth “occupancy and client spend will need to recover materially before a recovery even close to pre-crisis levels of profits can be achieved.”
Hence, the target price was reduced from 370.0p to 310.0p with the recommendation unchanged at ‘hold’.
