Poor Mark Lewis. The new boss at Moneysupermarket.com (MONY) has only been in the job for three months, but he’s already had to inform the market that second-half trading will be at the lower end of previous guidance. Credit Suisse has therefore cut its full-year pre-tax profit and EPS guidance to £112m and 16.8p respectively (from £109m and 16.4p in 2016).
The problems are due to dwindling demand in the energy market. In the first half of 2016, the group switched 138,000 customers amid a big push by energy suppliers to encourage collective switching. In the reported period, that number has fallen to just 25,000, sending revenue in the home services division down a third to £16.9m. Although home services contribute just a tenth of overall revenue, poor performance here has had a big impact on the wider group: if energy numbers matched those achieved last year, the overall top line would have risen by 12 per cent. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, to quote Beverley Knight.
The insurance, money and Travelsupermarket.com segments continue to plough forward, with revenue up 18 per cent, 4 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. But that growth has been driven by increased spending on Google adverts, thus gross margins fell 3 percentage points to 73 per cent as a result. Paid search grew as a proportion of revenue generated – as more customers used mobile devices – by five percentage points to 25 per cent.
*20 July 2017: The original version of the article referenced the full-year number of 300,000 switches. This has been corrected.
| MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM (MONY) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 336p | MARKET VALUE: | £1.82bn | |
| TOUCH: | 335.9-336.3p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 365p | LOW: 259p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 3.0% | PE RATIO: | 24 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 27.3p* | NET CASH: | £17.7m | |
| Half-year to Jun | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2016 | 158 | 47.1 | 6.9 | 2.75 |
| 2017 | 165 | 49.5 | 7.4 | 2.84 |
| % change | +5 | +5 | +7 | +3 |
| Ex-div: | 03 Aug | |||
| Payment: | 01 Sep | |||
| *Includes intangible assets of £154m, 28p a share | ||||
