Sunday share tips: Worldpay, Paddy Power Betfair, Healthcare Royalty Trust
Updated : 15:02
Worldpay shares were a 'buy' for the Sunday Times' Inside the City column. The UK-based payment processing company, which floated in October and joined the FTSE 100 two months later, exists in a world where card payment is used for everything from sub-£1 purchases from your corner shop to major household items, while contactless payment makes it even easier. Debut annual results as a listed company on Tuesday are forecast to show revenues almost touching £1bn and perhaps breakeven at the profit level.
Worldpay is a market leader but in the fast-moving payments subsector of the world of financial technology, or fintech, it does not want to be overtaken and left behind. In this country, for example there are already more than a hundred payment methods available, from blockchains to Paypal. Mergers and acquisitions are one way of keeping up, and the company has dabbled and may continue to do so, including building up its niche position in the US and branching out into services like analysis and fraud protection.
Buy shares in Paddy Power Betfair, the newly merged online bookmaker, said Questor in the Sunday Telegraph. Fresh from its promotion to the FTSE 100, the world's largest online bookie's shares have been hurdling new heights but can jump even higher. The merger comes as regulation forces gambling companies to expand to cope with these pressures, which has seen other rivals join hands of late too. The creation of PPB has produced a massive customer bases with a wide sprinkling of customers around the world and Betfair's unique betting exchange system.
Annual results on Tuesday will show the merged group, which is helmed by a CEO who has worked at both companies for several years, turns over around £1.3bn annually. Although Betfair's founding fathers took the opportunity to sell a chunk of their shares, which trade at 33 times earnings, this should be among the leading pack in the next leg of the gambling industry race, with synergies to come from the merger and Euro 2016 football a boost in June and July.
Shares in HealthCare Royalty Trust are an interesting bet for income hunters, wrote Midas in the Mail on Sunday. The investment trust is pencilled in for a flotation on London's main market later in March, with a £200m-plus fundraising to invest in biotech firms. As more of the blockbuster drugs developed by the Big Pharma groups near the end of their patent protection and are challenged by cheaper generic drugs, so their attention has moved to smaller biotechs which are developing the new generation of drugs.
When a biotech licences out a drug to a big group they will receive an initial lump sum with agreed royalties to follow as the drug nears and begins commercial sales. HealthCare Royalty Trust plans to buy the rights to these royalties. Initial agreements have been made for treatments for HIV, prostate cancer and gout, a fertility drug, a flu inhaler and Pfizer's pain relief drug Lyrica. Initially royalties, secured by the fund's US-based manager Healthcare Royalty Management, of around £55m a year will lead to a dividend yield of around 6%.
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