Victrex rallies on Barclays upgrade
Victrex got a boost on Wednesday as Barclays upgraded its stance on shares of the provider of high-performance polymer solutions to 'equalweight' from 'underweight', lifting the price target to 2,020p from 1,990p and highlighting 20% upside to consensus estimates for 2021 earnings per share.
Chemicals
9,147.27
08:09 26/04/24
FTSE 250
19,718.00
08:25 26/04/24
FTSE 350
4,461.46
08:25 26/04/24
FTSE All-Share
4,414.48
08:25 26/04/24
Victrex plc
1,226.00p
08:20 26/04/24
Barclays noted that over the last year, consensus EPS has fallen by almost 20% in both 2019 and 2020.
"The combination of an optically high valuation with leverage into some of the toughest cyclical markets triggered a 44% share price correction," it said.
It said that while Victrex is still at the mercy of volatile market conditions, especially in autos and electronics, the bank's new no-deal base case for Brexit introduces "powerful mitigating forces in the form of a weaker GBP".
"We're loathe to pick stocks based on binary macro events but, equally, Victrex is a pure UK exporter so we can't ignore them either," it said.
At 1330 BST, the shares were up 4.9% at 1,989p.