Recommendation2 Feb 2021 10:24
Rosenblatt enjoys record year.
Earnings upgrades for 2020 and 2021.
RBG (RBGP: 75p), a professional services group that owns law firm Rosenblatt, a nascent litigation funding arm and specialist finance boutique Convex Capital, has posted a 5 per cent earnings’ beat and declared a final dividend of 3p a share. Closing net cash of £3.5m was materially better than analysts’ net debt estimate of £1.1m.
Rosenblatt enjoyed its best year ever, increasing underlying revenue by 14 per cent to £20.7m and earning a gross margin above 40 per cent. Both its corporate and employment legal divisions enjoyed robust trading, so much so that house broker N+1 Singer predicts corporate revenues more than doubled to £4.4m. The trading backdrop remains favourable for Rosenblatt’s legal eagles, who specialise in litigious/contentious work. Furthermore, one consequence of the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic is increased white collar crime & fraud, another area of Rosenblatt’s expertise. Interestingly, although N+1 Singer have raised Rosenblatt’s 2021 revenue forecast by five per cent to £21.6m to acknowledge the momentum, analysts are “still keeping a level of conservatism in the numbers.”
RBG’s other two smaller divisions are starting to fire too. Convex completed three deals in 2020 which brought in fees of around £1.6m, but fee income could easily double in 2021. That’s because Convex is working on a pipeline of more than 20 corporate deals, and has already completed one in the past few weeks. RBG’s litigation finance arm LionFish concluded £3.2m of asset realisations and N+1 Singer expects a similar outcome this year.
On this basis, expect 2020 group cash profit of £7.1m (post a 5 per cent upgrade) to surge to £9.4m in 2021 on 10 per cent higher revenue of £28m to deliver a similar rise in pre-tax profit to £7.7m. Analysts also upgraded their 2021 EPS estimates by 7 per cent to 7.3p, up from 5.3p in 2020, and raised their 2021 pay-out forecast from 4.1p to 4.4p.
RBG’s shares are up 10 per cent on my 68p entry point (Alpha Report: ‘Back a winning legal team’, 2 June 2020), and still offer great value on a forward price/earnings (PE) ratio of 10. A prospective dividend yield of 5.9 per cent is attractive, too, and I maintain my 100p target price. Buy.