Thursday 25 Apr 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 27):  CIMB Research has maintained its Hold rating on Axiata Group Bhd at RM7.05 with an unchanged target price of RM7.20 and said that with rebounds at Celcom and XL, the research house sees stronger earnings for Axiata in FY15 but consensus numbers appear to have factored this in.

In a note Oct 26, the research house however said that on the negative side, Axiata was likely to keep its capex high in FY15 to improve its data network quality, which could surprise the market

CIMB Research said with the higher capex, it forecasts free cash flow per share to come in at only 14 sen to 17 sen in FY14-15, before rising to 30 sen in FY16.

“Despite that, we believe Axiata will still be able to raise its dividend payout ratio gradually to 80-90%, translating into DPS of RM0.26-0.32 (yield: 3.6-4.5%) in FY14-16.

“This is because it has RM3.2 billion cash sitting at the holding company/Celcom level at end-June 2014, with sufficient room in the balance sheet to gear up.

“Based on our DPS forecast, Axiata’s net debt/EBITDA is set to rise from 0.97x at end-FY13 to a still-manageable 1.07x/1.13x at end-FY14/FY15, before easing to 1.07x by end-FY16,” it said.

At 9.32am, Axiata shed 0.43% or three sen to RM7.02 with 98,600 shares done.

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