JP Morgan raises target price on Vodafone

(Sharecast News) - Analysts at JP Morgan raised their price target on telco giant Vodafone to 225p from 209p on Tuesday, pointing to the group's move to begin monetising its towers and the approval of its Liberty Global deal as their key reasoning.
Whilst JP Morgan acknowledged that Vodafone had "fast become a popular hedge fund long", it reiterated its 'overweight' rating on the firm given a "plentiful catalyst pipeline".

JP Morgan expects Vodafone's second-quarter results to deliver a second sequential revenue trend improvement, a constructive message around mid-term growth outlook and further evidence of ongoing tower monetisation efforts.

As a result, JPM raised its second-quarter organic services revenue estimates to 0.1% for 2019 and 2020, noting it sees risks "skewed to the upside".

"We expect easing comps to support ongoing q/q improvements through H2 and believe Europe will approach stabilisation in Q4," added JP Morgan, which also forecast first-half organic underlying earnings to grow 0.5% year-on-year.

Separately, JP Morgan also made major forecast changes to include Vodafone's Liberty acquisition and the adoption of IFRS 15/16.

"Whilst underlying forecast changes are negligible, these parameter changes raise mid-term revenues 1% pa, EBITDA 8% pa, EFCF 10% pa," said JPM. "This, twinned with rolling forward to Mar-21, raises our TP from 209p to 225p."