Could you comment on PET quarterly results?
Expenses are up, eps down. Apparently market not happy.
Thank you very much.
Stephane
PET is now trading at 20.4x times' Forward P/E. In the 1Q, PET’s revenue grew 17.4% to $250M (excluding recent acquisitions, revenue grew by 16.1%, beating estimates of $245M and EPS was $0.32 missing estimates of $0.35, driven by costs that grew faster than revenue during the quarter. The balance sheet is leveraged, with net debt of $560M. Total debt is around 4.6x times trailing twelve-month cash flow of $119M, and cash flow remains flat compared to last year. The recent guidance for 2023 is quite weak, and PET expects sales to be in the range of $1.05B – $1.08B, or up around 10% compared to last year, a deceleration from Q1’s growth. Although the leverage ratio has gone down recently, it is still quite high. We think the slowdown in the guidance is likely due to an expected recession, not necessarily from intense competition. Trading at 20x Forward P/E it has a good reasonable valuation given the company’s same-store growth. Not a perfect situation, but not really as bad as the stock decline might suggest.