Away from the worries about Greece, the Tunisian attacks and a slump on the Chinese stock market, one of the UK market’s biggest fallers is HSS Hire.
The tool hire business, which floated at 210p a share in February, has fallen 41.5p or nearly 23% to 141p after a downbeat trading statement. It said second quarter trading was marginally below expectations, with reduced customer activity across a number of sectors in April and May, and reduced demand for cooling equipment during the period. It said business had being picking up since then, and it expected first half adjusted earnings to be similar to the same time last year.
Numis analyst Julian Cater said:
HSS’ pre-close trading statement indicates that it experienced what management believes was general market softness in late April and May, consistent with the much weaker services PMI figure in May.
Though June trading is returning to more normalised levels, the second quarter has been a little behind management’s expectations, and we have reduced our full year revenue and EBITDA expectations by 4%-5%, though this equates to an 18% reduction at the earnings per share level. We lower our price target to 200p (previously 235p) and recommendation from buy to add.
