LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Analysts at Berenberg reiterated their 'buy' rating on speciality chemicals maker Synthomer on Thursday following the group's "robust" second-quarter results.
Berenberg praised Synthomer for its "pleasingly uneventful" first-half results in what it labelled a "difficult period" for the chemicals sector.

"Shares are now well into their fifth year of continued improvement in PBT, and the valuation would imply a magnitude of downgrades that are simply not materialising," said Berenberg.

The German bank said Synthomer's adjusted pre-tax profits of £70.0m appeared to have been "broadly in line with expectations" and highlighted that "robust margins" in nitrile latex seemed to have offset the impact of recent insolvencies in the paper industry, a key user of styrene-butadiene.



However, the broker lowered its target price on the group's shares to 360.0p from its previous 470.0p mark on the back of Synthomer's recently announced rights issue, higher pensions liability and lower estimates for its core business.

Their lower estimates for the company's sales and earnings mainly reflected the purchase of Omnova and assumed a 1 December transaction close.

The analysts "substantially" reduced their margin and volume estimates for Synthomer's styrene-butadiene rubber latex business to reflect the ongoing weakness in the paper industry and also trimmed their volumes forecasts for the coatings-orientated functional solutions segment, with the net underlying downgrade equating to roughly 4% of underlying earnings.

Nonetheless, said Berenberg: "This pales into insignificance compared with some of the cuts to heftier estimates for industrial chemicals and is clearly at odds with robust, synergy-driven earnings growth and a single-digit P/E."

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