Raute’s environment showed considerable signs of improvement already in Q2. The company booked one large EUR 30m Lithuanian order back then and the flow continued in Q3 with two meaningful Russian orders worth a total of EUR 34m. It will be of interest to hear Raute’s comments on current Russian and Eastern European activity levels, not to mention the pace of potential recovery in other geographies, but the fact is Raute now has enough workload for the foreseeable future. The three mentioned orders will all be delivered next year and thus it’s very clear both top line and profitability will continue to improve.
We make only minor order intake updates to our estimates
Raute began Q3 with an already very high EUR 129m order book and we estimate the figure to have increased further to EUR 156m by the end of the quarter. We understand this would be a new record high (Raute had a EUR 142m order book at the end of Q1’18) and thus the company is in an excellent position to achieve steep earnings growth during the next few years. We expect Raute to post EUR 1.4m in Q3 EBIT; this level is still far below potential since in our view Raute should be able to reach at least EUR 2-3m EBIT per good quarter. The company was able to post some EUR 3-4m quarterly levels during its previous boom cycle (Q3’18 was a record with EUR 5.6m in EBIT). We expect profitability will continue to improve from here on and estimate FY ’22 EBIT at EUR 10.5m.
Valuation is modest at a point where figures are improving
In our view Raute is now valued at undemanding multiples after a period of few years during which both new orders and profitability came under pressure. There are still uncertainties e.g. to what extent the pandemic might bother business, but we reckon our steep earnings estimates for the coming years are reasonable considering Raute was able to achieve EUR 11-15m EBIT in FY ’17-18. On this basis next year’s multiples can be described on the low side, at around 7x EV/EBITDA and 9x EV/EBIT, and even more attractive beyond that point. We retain our EUR 26.5 TP and BUY rating.
Aktuellt
SENASTE
