Dalata Hotel (DAL) shareholders should look forward to the half-year results in September this year: the group has just announced that it will start paying dividends from that point onwards. Deputy chief executive Dermot Crowley said the time "feels right" now that the company has made good progress developing new rooms and cash flows are strong enough to support regular payments. The policy will be to pay out between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of after-tax profits.
Mr Crowley is confident that initiating dividend payments won't come at the expense of the group's ambitious growth plans. Dalata currently has 2,200 new rooms in its development pipeline, and wants to add a further 1,200 new rooms to that pipeline per annum over the next five years. So far, extra capacity hasn’t hurt the group’s results: revenue per available room (RevPAR) increased 10 per cent to €88.51 in 2017, compared with a 7 per cent market average, as customers managed to stomach a 9 per cent increase in average room rates to €106.48.
Analysts at Goodbody expect adjusted EPS of 40¢ in 2018, compared with 37.9¢ in 2017.
DALATA HOTEL GROUP (DAL) | ||||
ORD PRICE: | 520p | MARKET VALUE: | £955m | |
TOUCH: | 500-520p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 560p | LOW: 365p |
DIVIDEND YIELD: | NIL | PE RATIO: | 16 | |
NET ASSET VALUE: | 401¢ | NET DEBT: | 33% |
Year to 31 Dec | Turnover (€m) | Pre-tax profit (€m) | Earnings per share (¢) | Dividend per share (¢) |
2013 | 60.6 | 0.0 | -6074 | nil |
2014 | 79.1 | 4.0 | 3.7 | nil |
2015 | 226 | 28.5 | 14.6 | nil |
2016 | 291 | 44.1 | 19.1 | nil |
2017 | 348 | 77.3 | 37.2 | nil |
% change | +20 | +75 | +95 | - |
Ex-div: | na | |||
Payment: | na | |||
£1=€1.13 |