The ‘red lanterns’ of the Ibex 35 gain momentum. The ‘rally’ of the selective during the first two weeks of the year has served the ‘dogs’ of the stock market in 2022 to come back and position themselves among the best this year. Investors rely on statistics to follow this strategy, which already gives signs of fulfillment in the Spanish parquet. Fluidra is one of the most representative examples. The company dedicated to swimming pools and wellness capped last year with almost 60% less capitalization. Fifteen days after the start of 2023, it appears as the sixth value that stands out the most on the Ibex.
The Catalan firm comes from reaping large profits in the last three years. To the revaluation of 24.62% in 2019, the increases of 71.72% and 68.02% were added in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The confinements derived from the pandemic and the restrictions on outdoor spaces caused an increase in demand for products related to leisure at home, in which Fluidra fared well.
After the 2022 coup, it is rebounding more than 16% with market closing data this Tuesday. Although analysts give it a run of more than 14% over twelve months, up to 19.24 euros per title, its valuation has been revised downward by the ‘Bloomberg’ consensus in recent weeks from the almost 30 euros they projected. analysts at the end of December.
Jordi Rubiralta Giralt, one of Fluidra’s main shareholders, has reduced his stake in the company in light of this rise. The eldest of the four brothers in the family saga, owner together with his brothers of the medical technology company Werfen, has gotten rid of 0.13% of its titles, so he now holds 4.97%. The also president of Yukon Capital undoes part of his percentage after “coming to the rescue” of the group with an injection of 150 million with the aim of scaring off bearish funds when the action was at historical lows.
Tourism steps on the accelerator in the park
The tourism sector has been one of the hardest hit by the market in the last 36 months. First because of the coronavirus and then the prospect that economic clouds are coming before the war, the rise in rates and inflation (the stock market is ahead of events) have conditioned the stock market course of IAG, Meliá, Amadeus or Aena. These are cyclical activities, very subject to the economic course, so any threat to the evolution of GDP has a direct impact on them.
Ibex The ‘holding’ registers an advance of almost 28% in the first twelve sessions of the year and leads the push of 8% of the main index of the Spanish stock market so far in 2023. The fine print is that the owner of airlines such as British Airways and Iberia have practically exhausted almost all of their travel and their shares, which are listed at 156.04 euros, are less than 5% of their target price (164.68 euros).
It is followed by Meliá, which, with an increase of 23% since last January 2, is only 40 cents from its maximum, after closing this Tuesday at 5.67 euros. Also playing against him is the analysts’ target price cut for the company led by Gabriel Escarrer from the 7.84 euros they gave him in September. Right now, only 40% of analysts advise buying, in a sign that the latest rally may be exhausting its potential.
A similar trend is recorded by Amadeus. Although it marks some distance and is placed in fifth place by revaluation in 2023 after experiencing an advance of 16.54%. The market expects a growth of 8.69% on the firm dedicated to the management of tourist reservations, motivated precisely by the rebound since the end of 2022, a year that sealed with a decline of 18%. Despite this, the purchase recommendations are high, with six out of ten analysts advising to include it in investment portfolios.
Aena also stands out, whose increase of 15.22% serves to offset the annual losses of the previous year (-15.49%) and is advancing towards the target price of 145 euros granted by consensus. The airport manager has managed to get close to the activity levels of 2019 (last full year without Covid), which has awakened the appeal among investors and has ‘eaten’ up to twelve points of growth in just two weeks. The question now lies in whether they will be able to beat market expectations or, on the contrary, they will reverse the ‘rally’ harvested at the start of the year.
