Long term financial targets do not surprise us

Joel Westerström 2016-05-04 08:54 TODAY

Redeye Rating på Fingerprint Cards

Ledning: 6.0

Ägarskap: 7.0

Vinstutsikt: 7.0

Lönsamhet: 4.5

Finans.styrk.: 7.0

Fingerprint cards today communicated its financial targets for the period 2016-2018. The company targets a revenue growth at a 3-year CAGR of around 60 percent, arriving at revenues of close to SEK 12 billion in 2018. The targets differ significantly from market consensus where average and median revenue in 2018 stand at SEK 8.5/9.8 billion respectively.

Fingerprint Cards had previously announced that it would communicate its long term financial targets in connection to the AGM taking place today. The long term financial targets are rather mid-term targets in our view, nonetheless we see it as positive that the company is now communicating financial targets for the next three years rather than for the next 12 months or less.

Apart from the growth target of a 60 percent CAGR 2015-2018, the target is to have an operating margin of at least 35 percent for each of the three years 2016-2018 and a strong balance sheet typically involving a net cash position. Excess cash will be returned to shareholders via share buy-backs and/or dividends.

The financial targets did not come as a surprise to us, in our latest estimates we had revenue growth at a CAGR of 55 percent for the period 2015-2018 and EBIT margins between 36 and 40 percent. We believe the targets are not the expression of faint hopes and dreams, but rather very reasonable goals that the company are confident (probably even highly confident) in achieving - given the scepticism in the market, it is wiser of FPC to set goals it is confident in achieving, or even exceeding, rather than setting the bar too high for itself.

We will come back with our updated estimates following the Q1 2016 report and elaborate further on today's announcement(s) in our coming update.