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If we want to see a seriously bullish analyst take on a UK stock, we don’t need to look much further than Entain (LSE: ENT). It has one of the strongest consensus Buy ratings I can find for a FTSE 100 company, and broker price targets are through the roof.
The average mooted price tag right now stands at 1,028p, which is more than 55% ahead of the Entain share price, at the time of writing. And the most optimistic analyst has 1,200p marked in for the stock — more than 80% ahead of today. So why aren’t investors snapping up Entain shares? Let’s take a closer look.
Entain’s a global sports betting and gaming company. It owns Ladbrokes and Coral, among others, in the UK, BetMGM in the US as part of a joint venture, and a number of other operators internationally.
Regulated industry
It operates in an industry that’s highly regulated, and has to deal with different rules in different countries. And a look at the share price chart above suggests regulatory fears might have put a lot of investors off this UK stock.
In fact, the budget here in the UK raised gaming and betting taxation, to be phased in over this year and next. Still, Entain’s international nature means it’s less exposed to individual country legislation.
And that seems to show in the most recent broker recommendations. Deutsche Bank, for example, has just cut its Entain share price target… but it’s still at 1,029p, down from 1,158p. Maybe it shows the uncertainty surrounding a share price like this. But to me it also suggests a decent baseline of confidence.
Forecast performance
At first glance, Entain’s forecast price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 29 for the 2025 year might look a bit steep. And based on October’s full-year guidance, it’s probably a fairly accurate estimate. We’ll know more from a year-end update on 4 February, with full results due 5 March.
But that valuation suggests analysts expect some impressive profit growth from Entain in the next few years. And, in fact, they do. For 2024 we saw a loss per share, but there’s a return to positive earnings per share (EPS) on the cards for this year. After that, forecasters see EPS more than doubling by 2027. And that could slash the P/E to around 14.
They also have the dividend growing 19% between 2024 and 2027, and well covered by earnings. The dividend yield‘s only a modest 2.9%, but it would be a nice extra.
Share price growth?
A lot could still go wrong before Entain truly gets back to growth. Especially with rising borrowing pushing governments everywhere to look for new sources of tax revenue. And, erm, unpredictable US administration, anyone? The sector faces long-term risk.
But those forecasts make me think this could be the best time we’ve seen for a while to consider Entain shares.
