Thales gains more than 1% and outperforms the trend in Paris, on the back of positive comments from Bank of America, which reaffirms its 'buy' recommendation with a new price target of 168 euros and 2024-25 estimates raised from 3.7% to 4.6% for the group.
Commenting on the memorandum of understanding to acquire Cobham Aerospace Communications for $1.1 billion announced the previous day, the broker sees this as 'a good use of capital' on the part of the French group.
'We believe Thales is well positioned for growth, at an attractive valuation of around 10x EV/EBIT for 2024 and 8.5x for 2025', adds the broker in its research note.
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Thales is one of the European leaders in manufacturing and marketing of electronic equipment and systems for the defense and security, aerospace, and transportation sectors. Net sales break down by product group as follows:
- defense and security systems (53.4%): C4I defense and security systems (control and monitoring systems, communication, protection, cyber-security, and other systems), defense mission systems, naval systems, electronic war systems, drones, air operation systems (air defense, air surveillance), ground defense systems and missiles;
- aerospace systems (28.4%): avionics equipment (cockpit, cabin multimedia, and simulation equipment), space systems (satellites, payloads, etc.);
- digital identification and security solutions (18.2%).
Besides, the group owns a 35% stake in Naval Group (manufacture of naval equipment for defense and nuclear energy sectors).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (29.5%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), Europe (24.8%), the United States and Canada (14%), Asia (9.4%), Near and Middle East (6%), Australia and New Zealand (4.4%) and other (5.3%).
THALES 
