It Hit Its 2028 Targets Two Years Early. The Stock Fell.
Two weeks after I bought it, this company printed an all-time record, raised guidance for the second time this year, and hit its 2028 targets two years early. The market marked it down.
On 15 July I sent a trade alert on a business I described as a corpse that nobody had bothered to re-examine. The next day I published the deep dive for the company.
Ten years ago it had negative book equity, leverage above 5x and a share price down more than 70% from its listing. A decade of quiet repair later, it was earning records that the market was still refusing to price into the share price.
Two weeks after that alert, the company reported. The quarter was the best in its history on every measure that matters. Group profitability set an all-time record. Both of its two largest divisions set their own quarterly records at the same time, which had never happened before. Management raised full-year guidance for the second time in 2026, and the new range delivers the profit and cash flow targets it had promised for 2028, two full years ahead of schedule. Leverage fell again. It kept buying back its own shares. It repaid debt early.
The stock fell 6% on the earnings results, and it is now trading below where I bought it by 1.9%.
That gap between what the business did and what the share price did is the entire subject of this update. There is a real argument on the other side, and I take it seriously below: management’s own guidance implies a second half flat against last year, and part of this year’s profit is borrowed from a competitor’s misfortune.