Bargain hunt - Chapter 2
While equity markets as a whole are undergoing a so called ‘correction’, the brutal ‘sell-off’ in the oil price continues unabated with Brent Crude now standing at US$43.80, some 6% below the lows reached at the beginning of 2015 and a price last seen in the dark days of 2009. Not surprisingly oil equipment and services stocks are finding little support, although there are some pockets of value appearing which could offer material upside to patient long term investors. We consider some of the more appealing candidates, all of which possess the desired sturdy balance sheets to weather the current tough conditions.
Getech Group (AIM:GTC) We issued a blog on the AIM quoted geoscience services business on 7th August 2015 suggesting at the time (Share price 50p) that, with the shares trading at around 8x forecast earnings estimates for 2016 and forecast earnings growth of over 20%, the business is surely worth a glance at current levels. The share price subsequently leaped to over 60p but has since come tumbling back with the rest of the market. We appreciate this business currently operates in a very tricky environment, but generating operating margins and returns on equity of 20%+, not to mention a…