Should You Investigate Ascential plc (LON:ASCL) At UK£3.58?

Simply Wall St

While Ascential plc (LON:ASCL) might not be the most widely known stock at the moment, it received a lot of attention from a substantial price increase on the LSE over the last few months. With many analysts covering the stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stock’s share price. But what if there is still an opportunity to buy? Today I will analyse the most recent data on Ascential’s outlook and valuation to see if the opportunity still exists.

Check out our latest analysis for Ascential

Is Ascential still cheap?

According to my valuation model, Ascential seems to be fairly priced at around 7.38% above my intrinsic value, which means if you buy Ascential today, you’d be paying a relatively reasonable price for it. And if you believe that the stock is really worth £3.34, then there isn’t really any room for the share price grow beyond what it’s currently trading. What's more, Ascential’s share price may be more stable over time (relative to the market), as indicated by its low beta.

What does the future of Ascential look like?

earnings-and-revenue-growth
earnings-and-revenue-growth

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so let’s also take a look at the company's future expectations. In the upcoming year, Ascential's earnings are expected to increase by 70%, indicating a highly optimistic future ahead. This should lead to more robust cash flows, feeding into a higher share value.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in ASCL’s positive outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value?

Are you a potential investor? If you’ve been keeping an eye on ASCL, now may not be the most optimal time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the optimistic prospect is encouraging for the company, which means it’s worth further examining other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

If you want to dive deeper into Ascential, you'd also look into what risks it is currently facing. For example, Ascential has 2 warning signs (and 1 which is a bit unpleasant) we think you should know about.

If you are no longer interested in Ascential, you can use our free platform to see our list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

Latest Stories

  • Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin turns from his son's funeral to managing Trump's impeachment

    Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin was grieving on the morning of Jan. 6, having just experienced the most painful of tragedies: burying his 25 year-old-son, Tommy, a gifted student at Harvard Law School, who had taken his own life on New Year’s Eve after a bout of deep depression. Raskin was insistent. “We wanted to be together,” Raskin said in an interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.

  • Biden to visit UK first as he plans to work closely with PM

    Joe Biden believes a patched-up relationship with Boris Johnson will help to decide the "destiny of the world" as the president-elect is set to head to the UK for his first foreign visit outside of North America, sources have told the Telegraph. A close friend of Mr Biden said the leaders will bury differences over Brexit as British officials said they expected the UK to be one of the first foreign destinations, in what would be a major diplomatic coup for Mr Johnson. Mr Biden is due to be sworn in on Wednesday. Sources who would be closely involved in any visit have circled the G7 summit in June, hosted in the UK, as the potential date for the new president’s trip across the Atlantic. Mr Biden opposed Brexit, and feels strong loyalties to his ancestral home in Ireland. He warned repeatedly last year, including directly to Mr Johnson, that the Good Friday Agreement must not become a "casualty of Brexit". But a friend of Mr Biden told The Telegraph: "Boris is a conservative, Joe's a moderate [Democrat] so I think they can get over it. I think they'll end up getting along. "Joe's view will be that they'll have the destiny of the world on their shoulders so he'll want to overcome any political differences. "I think there'll be more empathy than there was between Boris and Donald Trump. Boris seemed to get along with Trump, but I don't know if he really did."

  • Kayleigh McEnany leaves White House after final two-minute press briefing following deadly Capitol riot

    Trump’s press secretary refused to take questions following the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol earlier this month

  • Fort Bliss Soldier Charged with Raping Fellow Soldier a Year Before Her New Year's Eve Death

    A 1st Armored Division soldier at Fort Bliss, Texas has been charged with sexually assaulting three women over the past year, including a fellow soldier who was found dead a year on New Year's Eve.

  • Wuhan lab staff were first victims of coronavirus, says US

    The US claimed on Saturday that staff at a Chinese virology laboratory became sick with a Covid-like illness in autumn 2019, months before the coronavirus spread widely from Wuhan. In a long-awaited document from the state department, the Trump administration called for an investigation as it published dubious accusations that a possible "laboratory accident" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) may be the source of the global pandemic. The claims were dismissed by analysts who insist the disease came from a naturally occurring event. In a statement late on Friday claiming to reveal "undisclosed information", the state department said it "has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses." The statement also said that the lab had been carrying out research on a bat coronavirus similar to the Sars-CoV-2 strain that spread globally and that the lab had collaborated with China's military on publications and secret projects. Some experts were nonplussed by the announcement. "Zero details given," noted Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research, rating the statement as "an F". The fact that Wuhan was home to the world's leading coronavirus research facility before it became known as ground zero for the pandemic has led to speculation that the virus could have originated in the lab.

  • ‘It was my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection’: DC officer injured in Capitol riot speaks out

    Daniel Hodges recounted pro-Trump mob’s attempt to crush him inside a doorway during siege on 6 January

  • Rand Paul Warns One-Third of Republicans Will Leave Party if GOP Senators Back Impeachment

    Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) warned Friday that one-third of Republican voters could leave the party if GOP senators vote in impeachment proceedings to convict President Trump. Paul made the comments in an interview on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle. The senator’s remarks come amid an increasing divide between congressional Republicans who oppose impeaching the president and a smaller number who support the measure following the riots at the Capitol on January 6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is reportedly hopeful that Republicans can use impeachment to purge Trump from the GOP, although he would need the support of at least 16 additional Republican senators to vote to convict. “Look, I didn’t agree with the [Capitol] fight that happened last week, and I voted against overturning the election, but at the same time, the impeachment is a wrongheaded, partisan notion, [and] if Republicans go along with it, it’ll destroy the party,” Paul said during the interview. “A third of the Republicans will leave the party,” Paul continued. “This isn’t about, anymore, the Electoral College, this is about the future of the party, and whether you’re going to ostracize and excommunicate President Trump from the party. Well, guess what? Millions of his fans will leave as well.” While a majority of Americans believe Trump should be removed from office immediately, just 17 percent of Republicans support expelling Trump from the presidency, according to an Axios–Ipsos poll released on Thursday. Support for Trump among Republicans has fallen since the Capitol riots; however, 60 percent believe the party should continue to follow Trump once he leaves office, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found.

  • GOP Sen. Ben Sasse warns "QAnon is destroying" the Republican Party "from within"

    Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) called on his Republican Party to rebuild itself and "repudiate the nonsense that has set our party on fire" in an in an op-ed for The Atlantic Saturday on the QAnon conspiracy theory.Why it matters: Many of the mob involved in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots wore items signaling their support for the far-right QAnon and a prominent member of the cult was among those arrested following the siege.Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here. * Several Republicans who ran for Congress last year publicly supported or defended the QAnon movement or some of its tenets — something Sasee noted in his op-ed, headlined "QAnon is Destroying the GOP From Within." * Sasse blames the violence on "the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice."Driving the news: Sasse wrote in his op-ed that "until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon." * "They can't," he added. "The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about." * Sasse criticized House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for not denouncing QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) when she was running for Congress in 2020. * "She's already announced plans to try to impeach Joe Biden on his first full day as president," Sasse wrote. "She'll keep making fools out of herself, her constituents, and the Republican Party."Worth noting: Sasse said before the House impeached President Trump for a second time he'd consider "definitely consider" any articles of impeachment against him over his conduct and comments at a rally before the riots. * The Nebraska senator criticized Trump's embrace of QAnon supporters last August, warning that Democrats could "take the Senate" this "will be a big part of why they won." * Months later, the Democrats went on to win control of the Senate.The bottom line: Sasse wrote that his party faces a choice when Trump leaves office: "We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories."Go deeper: * The Capitol siege's QAnon roots * House freshmen at war after Capitol siegeSupport safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.

  • Government must 'get a grip' of what is now a full-blown crisis in the fishing industry, say fishermen

    Scotland's fishermen have told Boris Johnson his Brexit trade deal leaves them with the "worst of both worlds" amid export delays and collapsing market prices. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Scottish Fishermen's Federation (SFF) said the industry was facing "mounting financial losses" and the only way to ensure a fair price was a 72-hour round trip to land catch in Denmark. Elspeth Macdonald, the trade group's chief executive, said there was "huge disappointment and a great deal of anger about your failure to deliver on promises made repeatedly to this industry." She accused him of having "spun a line" about a 25 per cent uplift in the UK's quota and demanded urgent details of promised compensation for the disruption. Her concerns were echoed by Scotland's seafood processors, who said ministers in both London and Edinburgh need to "get a grip" of the long delays exporters are facing. A third of fishing boats in Scotland are tied up at harbours and the industry is estimated to be losing £1 million per day. Exporters warned they face possible bankruptcy amid a suspension of road deliveries due to border delays. Transport company DFDS stopped exports last week after delays in getting new paperwork introduced following the expiry of the Brexit transition period for EU border posts in France. It aims to resume the service on Monday. Paperwork has to be approved before consignments can be sent to DFDS's warehouse in South Lanarkshire and then on to English Channel ports. In her letter to the Prime Minister, Ms McDonald said: "Many fishing vessels are tied to the quay wall.” She added: "This industry now finds itself in the worst of both worlds. Your deal leaves us with shares that not only fall very far short of zonal attachment, but in many cases fail to ‘bridge the gap’ compared to historic catches, and with no ability to leverage more fish from the EU, as they have full access to our waters. "This, coupled with the chaos experienced since 1st January in getting fish to market means that many in our industry now fear for their future, rather than look forward to it with optimism and ambition."

  • MAGA protester punched by Black woman security guard fired by UMass Hospital

    The white woman caught on tape getting into a physical altercation with a Black female security guard the evening before the Capitol riots lost her job at UMass Hospital. The termination occurred after her daughter went viral for exposing her identity on social media. On January 5th, Therese Duke and a group of pro-Trump protesters that included other family members were filmed harassing Ashanti Smith, a security guard working at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C.

  • Jessie Schuster Transforms a Spacious SoHo Loft Inside an Old Factory Building

    The Manhattan-based interior designer preserved the element of gritty New York through a “raw but elevated” renovationOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Trump reportedly began 'choreographing' premature victory speech weeks before election

    President Trump is known for going off script, but his premature presidential election victory declaration in the early hours of the morning on Nov. 4 wasn't a completely spur-of-the-moment decision, Axios' Jonathan Swan reports.In the first installment of a reported series on Trump's final two months in office, Swan writes that Trump began "choreographing election night in earnest" during the second week of October following a "toxic" debate with President-elect Joe Biden on Sept. 29 and a bout with COVID-19 that led to his hospitalization. At that point, Trump's internal poll numbers had reportedly taken a tumble, Swan notes.With that in mind, he reportedly called his first White House chief of staff, a stunned Reince Priebus, and "acted out his script, including walking up to a podium and prematurely declaring victory on election night if it looked like he was ahead." Indeed, in the lead up to Election Day, Trump reportedly kept his focus on the so-called "red mirage," the early vote counts that would show many swing states leaning red because mail-in ballots had yet to be counted. Trump, Swan reports, intended to "weaponize it for his vast base of followers," who would go to bed thinking he had secured a second-term, likely planting the seeds of a stolen election. Read more at Axios. > As I've been writing, the plan was to steal the election all along. Fantastic reporting here. https://t.co/k8C73o8vH7> > -- Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) January 16, 2021More stories from theweek.com 5 more scathing cartoons about Trump's 2nd impeachment Here's what Biden reportedly plans to do his 1st day in office Trump's vaccine delay is getting suspicious

  • Abbas decrees first Palestinian elections in 15 years

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday decreed parliamentary and presidential elections for later this year in what would be the first vote of its kind since 2006, when the Islamic militant group Hamas won a landslide victory. Elections would pose a major risk for Abbas' Fatah party and also for Hamas, which welcomed the decree. Fatah and Hamas have been publicly calling for elections for more than a decade but have never been able to mend their rift or agree on a process for holding them, and despite Friday's decree, it remained far from clear whether the voting would actually be held.

  • Rep. Lou Correa tests positive for COVID-19

    Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) announced on Saturday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus.Why it matters: Correa is the latest Democratic lawmaker to share his positive test results after sheltering with maskless colleagues during last week's deadly Capitol riot. But he did not specify whether his diagnosis was connected to the siege.Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America.What they're saying: "Yesterday, I tested positive for COVID-19. I will be responsible & self-quarantine, away from my family, for the recommended time," Correa tweeted. * "While I’ll miss the much-anticipated inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, I look forward to working with the new Admin to unite our country!"The U.S. Capitol's attending physician reportedly warned lawmakers last week that they may have been exposed to someone with a coronavirus infection as they hid from a pro-Trump mob breaching the building on Wednesday.The big picture: At least three Democratic lawmakers have announced they've tested positive for COVID-19 after locking down during the Jan. 6 riot.Support safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.

  • White veteran charged in shooting Black girl at Trump rally

    A white military veteran shot and wounded a 15-year-old girl when he fired his gun into a car carrying four Black teens during a tense confrontation at a Trump rally near the Iowa Capitol last month.

  • Photojournalist who made famed Vietnam War image attacked

    The Pulitzer Prize-winner had received the National Medal of Arts at the White House the day before.

  • Coronavirus latest news: New Zealand's policy of hotel quarantine being considered by UK officials

    New Zealand's policy of hotel quarantine being considered by UK officials All over 18s could have vaccine by 'end of June' New £158m super-factory will vaccinate against new strains Ministers accused of wasting jabs by vaccinating people with immunity Subscribe to The Telegraph for a month-long free trial New Zealand's policy of placing new arrivals in hotels to complete their quarantine is being looked at by UK officials as an option to control the spread of new coronavirus variants. Ministers have instructed staff to study a wide range of policies to crackdown on quarantine, reports on Saturday night suggested, with facial-recognition technology and GPS to check that people are staying in isolation may also under consideration. The Government has already issued travel bans on arrivals from South America, Portugal and Cape Verde due to the emergence of a new coronavirus variant in Brazil. According to The Sunday Times officials were last week ordered to study New Zealand’s policy of “directed isolation”, where everyone arriving is charged for a stay at an airport hotel and forced to remain in isolation for two weeks. Follow the latest updates below.

  • Iranian Guard holds anti-warship ballistic missile drill

    Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard conducted a drill Saturday launching anti-warship ballistic missiles at a simulated target in the Indian Ocean, state television reported, amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program and a U.S. pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic. Footage showed two missiles smash into a target that Iranian state television described as “hypothetical hostile enemy ships” at a distance of 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles). Iranian state television described the drill as taking place in the country’s vast central desert, the latest in a series of snap exercises called amid the escalating tensions over its nuclear program.

  • Suspect seen crushing police officer during Capitol riot is wanted by the FBI

    “I thought, ‘This could be the end,’” the D.C. police officer said.

  • Morocco Jews 'already packing' for direct Israel flights

    Fanny Mergui has no doubt: Moroccan Jews "are already packing their suitcases" to board direct flights to Israel after the kingdom normalised ties with the Jewish state.