Whitbread Share News (WTB)

(Sharecast News) - Future surged on Wednesday as Jefferies upgraded the shares to 'buy' from 'underperform' and hiked the price target to 1,280p from 635p.

The bank said "signs of inflection and Growth Acceleration Strategy (GAS) progress provide us with confidence to double upgrade".

Jefferies said it was confident of a strong return to growth in revenue, supported by macro inflection, positive audience trends, content quality improvements, and further upside from higher yielding US direct ad sales.

The bank said peaking macro pressure skews risk to the upside. It said macro improvement should result in a strong return to revenue growth, especially for digital ads & affiliate product.

"We expect Future to outperform peers, due to its highly cyclical Tech & Gaming portfolio (66% of audience), monetised largely via digital Ads (30% of revenue) and affiliate product (10%)," it said.

It also noted that importantly, the top 12 websites (around 70% of traffic) show positive momentum.

"Our analysis, suggests that the core online audience will continue to recover and support a continued recovery in the overall audience which will enable a return to growth in digital ad and affiliate product revenue with the macro," it said.

Analysts at Berenberg kept their recommendation for Whitbread at 'buy', arguing that markets were wrong to price in a continued drop in demand.

The supply/demand balance in the UK continued to be favourable and the company's Accelerating Growth Plan was capable of driving "strong" growth in profit before tax into the medium-term.

So too, the German operations were headed towards breakeven and the Euro 2024 championships would help to raise the brand awareness of Premier Inn.

The shares' valuation was also supportive.

Berenberg judged the 13.9 price-to-earnings multiple that the shares were trading on to be "too cheap" given the quality of its outlook.

The broker kept its target price at 4,000.0p.