LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Moonpig surged on Wednesday as RBC Capital Markets initiated coverage of the stock with an 'outperform' rating and 310p price target.
RBC noted that Moonpig is the dominant platform in a greeting card market moving online, with the group's hard-to-replicate data and AI-led capability set to augment gifting revenue.

"The group's leading proposition and category dominance (circa 70% share of the online specialists) confer a right to win as it continues to drive the circa £1.8bn single card market online," it said. "The group's growing subscription service alongside personalised occasion reminders will drive order frequency for the c.90% of card-giving occasions that repeat on the same day each year."

RBC forecasts estimates customer and order frequency compound annual growth rates of about 2.4%/3.5% across its forecast period.

The bank also said that a data-driven platform will accelerate card-attached gifting revenue.

"Customer purchase history is increasingly being used alongside contextual data to make better gifting recommendations," RBC said.

"Each purchase further augments the efficacy of the group's AI-driven recommendation algorithm, providing an increasingly personalised offering and increasing the rate of opportunistic gift purchasing (the attach rate).

"Attached gifting (a circa £24bn market) can be scaled with limited incremental spend or working capital build, whilst the group leverages category partner expertise to select product ranges."

The bank estimates a CAGR of 3.6% for average order value across its forecast period, driven by growth in attach rate, gift bundling and card upsell.

RBC said it believes this strategy will drive a FY25-27e revenue CAGR of 9.1% and an EBITDA CAGR of 10.2% - at a margin of 27.1% in FY27e - versus consensus at 8.4% for both revenue and EBITDA.

"The group is highly cash generative, at its targeted 1.0x leverage we forecast a buyback of circa £50m (c.6% of the market cap) in FY26e and flag a £70m buyback in FY27e would maintain the same leverage."

RBC said that on a one-year forward EV/EBITDA basis, the group is trading 1.6x below its recent peak and at a 1.2x discount to lower margin eCommerce peers.

"With the group currently trading at 6.8x FY27e adjusted EBITDA, we believe c.9.0x is more reflective, driving an equity value of 290p, underpinning our discounted cash flow based valuation."

At 1030 GMT, the shares were up 5.2% at 218.89p.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE