12 Stocks of Christmas: MONY

MONY (LON:MONY) - Comparing the comparers, this looks like a good deal

Market cap at the time of writing: £1.1bn, at a share price of 190p.

This is another stock that was a strong contender for my 2025 watchlist. Ultimately I decided that my fresh picks should be companies with smaller market caps, as my goal is really to provide a “small-cap watchlist” rather than a more general watchlist.

Even so, the temptation to include Moneysupermarket was strong.

I am a former shareholder of Gocompare (GOCO) which in the end got taken out by Future plc (FUTR) for nearly £600m in 2020.

For context, Gocompare’s results in FY December 2019 showed revenues of £152m and adjusted operating profit of £26.5m, although that was sharply lower than the prior year due to investment in automatic switching software.

A more representative figure for operating profit might therefore be 2018’s £44m. Applying the then-tax rate of about 20% to that, I get a P/E multiple paid by Future of c. 17x, and Future also took on Gocompare’s net debt (over £70m). Future may have overpaid but it shows what sort of valuation was achievable in a bull market.

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