Barclays upgrades Victrex to 'equalweight'

Barclays upgraded Victrex to ‘equalweight’ from ‘underweight’ on Thursday, hiking the price target to 1,980p from 1,710p, arguing that Croda is a better ‘underweight’ idea.

The bank noted that consensus 2021 earnings per share has fallen 40% in two years but said that it believes the downgrade cycle is over and EPS troughed in 2020.

"Yesterday's presentation uncovered a £4mn inventory provision which impacted Industrial gross margins in 2H20," Barclays said. "Taking that into account alongside a smaller de-stock and delay to the debottlenecking means our new 2021 profit before tax estimate is £82mn, broadly in line with consensus and now +5% higher."

Barclays said that trading at 22x Bloomberg consensus 2022 price-to-earnings estimates, the stock is already pricing in a recovery but it's held onto a more than 20x multiple through the downgrades so, without further cuts to consensus, there is little reason to think it will underperform.

At 1330 GMT, the shares were up 1.4% at 2,122p.