SRV - Upgrade to BUY

Strong operational profitability eases the burden for Q4

With the operative EBIT of EUR 4.6m for Q3, SRV’s YTD operative EBIT is at EUR -1.3m. The company kept its outlook unchanged and expects that operative EBIT is positive, but lower than in 2022. With the robust backlog that consists mostly of lower risk cooperative business premises contracts, we now see the risk of falling short of the guidance low. We also see that the strong, lower risk backlog, EUR 995.6m at the end of Q3, supports the development in the coming years, especially during FY 2024.

Business construction continues to drive the growth

We have made positive estimate adjustment for both Q4 2023 and the coming years. We now estimate that the business construction revenue growth will be even stronger than earlier expected in Q4 2023 and in 2024E driven by the solid order backlog. Our estimates for housing construction have been reduced due to the lack of an immediate market upturn, which aligns with the current forecasts for Finnish housing construction volumes for both 2023 and 2024. With the increase in group-level revenue growth, our operative EBIT estimate for FY 2023 has been increased to EUR 5.2m (previously EUR 1.1m), and for FY 2024E to EUR 18.7m (previously EUR 15.5m), implying an operative EBIT margin of 2.5% (previously 2.2%).

BUY (HOLD) with a TP of 4.0 (4.3)

SRV remains in a strong position to navigate the challenging construction market. Several positive factors support the case including a healthy balance sheet, low amount of unsold developer contracted units, a solid backlog of lower-risk business construction projects and a positive operative profitability for Q3 that also decreases the risk for falling short of the current guidance. We have adjusted our target price to EUR 4.0 (down from EUR 4.3) in response to lower peer group multiples. Following a roughly 15% decrease in share price since our last report, we upgrade our rating to BUY (prev. HOLD).