Invest Securities confirms its 'neutral' rating on Alten shares, with a price target lowered from 136 to 118 euros. There's no drama, but confirmation of a downturn", stresses the broker.
After a long period of hyper-growth (7 quarters of organic growth >+10%), the trend reversal observed at the end of July is confirmed, with a slowdown in Q3 (in line with our expectations), but above all a slight warning on 2023 results and cautious talk of 2024", continues the analyst.
Against this backdrop, Invest is more cautious than the consensus (notably on 2024 growth), and has revised its 2023-25 EPS to -3.6%/-7.4%/-2.1%.
'However, given the short-term momentum, we feel it would be premature to raise our opinion, even if the quality of the management, the solid business model and the M&A leverage are solid assets', concludes the analyst.
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Alten is European's No. 1 high-technology consulting and engineering group. The group's services are supplied to technical departments and IT system departments at large industrial, telecom, and utility companies. The activity is organized into 3 areas:
- technology engineering and consulting services: studies, design, and execution of research and development projects for new products/systems, consulting services, project management assistance, etc.;
- development of network architectures: design of terminals and network equipment, deployment and operation of networks;
- development of information systems: implementation or redesign of information systems and development of specific applications.
Net sales break down by market into automotive and rail (20.9%), trade/services/media/public sector (18.4%), aeronautics and space (14.8%), industries (9.4%), banking/finance/insurance (9.1%), life sciences (8.3%), energy (7.3%), defense/security/maritime (6.5%) and telecoms (5.4%),
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (31.9%), North America (11.9%), Germany (9%), Spain (9.1%), Asia-Pacific (7.9%), United Kingdom (7.7%) , Italy (7.7%), Benelux (5.6%), Scandinavia (4.4%), Eastern Europe (2.8%), Switzerland (1.5%) and others (0.5%).
ALTEN 
