Broker tips: Judges Scientific, Quilter, NatWest
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Monday 28 Jul 2025
(Sharecast News) - Analysts at Berenberg slashed their target price on Judges Scientific from 10,600.00p to 7,900.00p on Monday following the trading update last week.
In Berenberg's view, Judges Scientific's profit warning contained within the update was not "wholly unexpected" given the outlook statement from its FY24 results release, uncertainty caused by proposed US research funding changes and peer commentary on the state of key end-markets.
With that said, in addition to the end-market challenges, Judges Scientific also highlighted internal operational issues, which Berenberg expects will raise some concerns among investors and could put near-term pressure on the stock.
However, the German bank highlighted that it backs Judges' management team to take the necessary steps to rectify this and retained its 'buy' rating on the shares.
Berenberg added that at a 22.6x 2025 price-to-earnings ratio and 16.9x enterprise value/underlying earnings, it still sees value but acknowledges that it "could take time to play out".
Deutsche Bank upgraded Quilter to 'hold' from 'sell' on Monday and hiked its price target on the stock to 165.00p from 110.00p as it re-evaluated the investment case.
The bank said it had previously been its view that insufficient risk was priced into the shares, with one of the key reasons being that Quilter - unlike St James's Place - had not made any substantive changes to its business model since Consumer Duty became effective in July 2023.
"We note that two years have passed since then, the regulator does not appear to have raised any concerns, the board have now attested twice to the FCA that Consumer Duty is embedded and the company recently stated that they 'vehemently disagree' that Consumer Duty is a negative to the Quilter investment case," DB said.
NatWest shares were pulling back slightly on Monday following a set of stronger-than-expected H1 results last week, but it wasn't enough to change Shore Capital's 'hold' rating on the stock.
NatWest reported that its RoTE in the second quarter was 17.7%, with pre-tax profit of £1.77bn up 4% and around 8% ahead of consensus forecasts, Shore Capital highlighted. Earnings per share were up 12% at 15.3p and 1.5p (11%) ahead of consensus.
The broker raised its fair-value estimate for the stock from 495p to 500p, after the bank upgraded its full-year guidance for both income (from the previous £15.2-15.7bn range to >£16.0bn) and return on tangible equity (from 15-16% to >16%).
However, Shore Capital said that the company "may find it difficult to sustain such high returns over the long term".
Shore Capital estimates that near-term RoTE will be higher than guidance at around 17.0%, but noted that returns will be limited by competitive pressures (such as tightening mortgage spreads) and the risk for higher taxes on such high returns - speculation has been building that Labour may reverse the cut in the surcharge on bank profits made by the last government.
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