By Roland Head, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
LONDON — The last five years have been tough for those in retirement. Portfolio valuations have been hammered, and annuity rates have plunged. There’s no sign of things improving anytime soon, either, as the eurozone and the U.K. economy look set to muddle through, at best, for some years to come.
A great way of protecting yourself from the downturn, however, is by building your retirement fund with shares of large, well-run companies that should grow their earnings steadily over the coming decades. Over time, such investments ought to result in rising dividends and inflation-beating capital growth.
In this series, I’m tracking down the U.K. large-caps that have the potential to beat the FTSE 100 over the long term, and support a lower-risk income-generating retirement fund. (You can see the companies I’ve covered so far on this page).
Today, I’m going to take a look at TUI Travel , the travel company whose U.K.-focused brands include Thomson, Crystal Ski, and LateRooms.com.
TUI Travel vs. FTSE 100
Let’s start with a look at how TUI Travel has performed against the FTSE 100 over the last 10 years:
|
Total Returns |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
10 yr trailing avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
TUI Travel |
(18.5%) |
13.5% |
0.8% |
(28.2%) |
77.3% |
16.1% |
|
FTSE 100 |
(28.3%) |
27.3% |
12.6% |
(2.2%) |
10% |
9.3% |
Source: Morningstar. (Total return includes both changes to the share price and reinvested dividends. These two ingredients combined are what make it possible for equity portfolios to regularly outperform cash and bonds over the long term.)
TUI Travel’s share price nearly doubled last year, helping it to an index-beating 10-year average total return of 16.1%. Prior to that, the firm’s performance had been rather middling, as you might expect from a European travel company during a Europe-wide recession.
What’s the score?
To help me pinpoint suitable investments, I like to score companies on key financial metrics that highlight the characteristics I look for in a retirement share. Let’s see how TUI Travel shapes up:
|
Item |
Value |
|---|---|
|
Year founded |
2007 |
|
Market cap (billion pounds) |
3.6 |
|
Net debt (million pounds) |
89 |
|
3.6% |
|
|
5-year average financials |
|
|
Operating margin |
0.6% |
|
Interest cover |
3.9x |
|
EPS growth |
83.7% |
|
Dividend growth |
14.7% |
|
Dividend cover |
2.7 times |
Here’s how I’ve scored TUI Travel on each of these criteria:
|
Criteria |
Comment |
Score |
|---|---|---|
|
Longevity |
Too early to say. |
2/5 |
|
Performance vs. FTSE |
Decent enough, so far. |
4/5 |
|
Financial strength |
Very little debt, but thin profit margins. |
3/5 |
|
EPS growth |
Earnings have improved post-recession. |
3/5 |
|
Dividend growth |
The dividend has grown steadily. |
4/5 |
|
Total: 16/25 |
||
TUI Travel was formed when First Choice and TUI Tourism merged in 2007. It’s too early to say whether the company will prove to be a long-term survivor in its current form, and it’s already been the subject of failed merger talks with TUI AG, the German company that was previously the parent of TUI Tourism. So far, TUI Travel’s trading has been characterised by wafer-thin profit margins that have seen the company hover between profit and loss.
TUI‘s winter holiday business is a particular weakness, and in its most recent trading update, TUI confirmed that its winter losses had been reduced, but not eliminated, by the higher margins and improved average selling prices it had achieved this year. The company expects to deliver a full-year operating profit, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance