Inbox: Berenberg Bank mit Doppel-Upgrade für den Verbund

Die Analysten der Berenberg Bank haben die Verbund -Aktie in einem Sektorreport von Sell auf Buy gestuft und das Kursziel von 9,50 Euro auf 23,50 Euro erhöht. Die Analysten gehen davon aus, dass die Energiepreise deutlich steigen werden. Zudem wird sich nach Meinung der Analysten die Dividende bis 2021 auf 1,08 Euro je Aktie mehr als verdreifachen. Hier die Original-Worte der Analysten:

Pure play on carbon; upgrade to Buy

●  We expect power prices to rally a further 15%, possibly as much as 30%: Verbund’s share price is highly correlated with the German/Austrian power price. It is well known that Verbund is one of the most highly sensitive utilities to the power price. We now forecast EPS 16%/31%/65% above consensus for 2019/2020/2021, respectively. Our DPS forecasts are even more bullish at 23%/85%/101%, respectively. We raise our price target to €23.50/share (which implies 15% upside and 17% total shareholder return) and we double upgrade our recommendation from Sell to Buy.

 

●  Risk/reward skewed to the upside: Our blue-sky /black-sky scenarios yield 42% upside and 12% downside respectively – crucially, our blue-sky has more than double the upside than the corresponding downside for our black-sky. The largest driver of our blue-/black-sky scenarios is a €5/t movement in C02 prices which has a +/-15% impact on valuation.

 

●  Austrian/German power prices are set to rally a further 15%: As discussed in detail in our sector section, we expect the carbon price to triple by 2020 to €21/t. Under our blue-sky scenario of carbon prices as high as €40/t, this could imply a 30% increase in power prices.

 

●  Very sensitive to power prices: We expect a €5/MWh move in the power price will impact net income by 17% once its hedges roll off in 2019. 98% of Verbund’s output is geared to a power price hike; it is hydro which is low fixed-cost and completely CO2 free. Generation itself accounts for 65% of EBITDA (retail 19% and networks 16%). Verbund typically hedges for 18 months in advance. It is currently hedged at 74% for 2018 at €25/MWh and 43% for 2019 at €28/MWh. We expect its achieved power price to reach €42/MWh by 2021 from €30/MWh in 2017. Since hydro output should be in the region of 30 TWh, that implies an EBITDA boost of €360m, 40% of 2016’s level.

 

●  We expect dividends to triple: Verbund target a 40%-45% dividend payout ratio for 2017. We expect DPS to more than triple from €0.29 in 2016 to €1.08 by 2021. This assumes a payout ratio of 40%-45% is maintained through 2019; from 2020 we assume a normalised 60%, reflecting an improvement in credit metrics. Accompanying the doubling in EPS from 2017 to 2021 should be a DPS tripling. In our view, the balance sheet will be able to take it.

 

●  Balance sheet improvement: The cash flow boost from higher power prices should feed through into reducing net debt by 41% from 2017E to 2021. This, coupled with the 45% growth in EBITDA, will reduce gearing from 3.6x in 2016 to 1.4x in 2021.