WOW share price
Founded in 1924, Woolworths is a retail operator in Australia and New Zealand with over 3,000 stores and over 100,000 employees. It is currently the Australia’s largest company in terms of revenue and market share.
Woolworths’ main operations include supermarkets (under the Woolworths brand in Australia and Countdown in New Zealand), retailing through its discount department stores under the Big W brand, and business-to-business (B2B) brands like PFD. Overwhelmingly, it’s 35%+ share of Australian supermarkets is its crown jewel.
Woolworths is a very popular choice for many ASX investors seeking dividend income. It consistently pays a fully franked dividend, usually at a yield of over 3%, and offers a very defensive earnings stream. It’s competitive advantage is probably best summarised as scale (distribution, low costs, etc.) and proximity (most shoppers still shop based on distance to the supermarket).
Since we consider Woolworths Group Ltd to be a blue chip stock, or a mature business, we like to look at things like return on invested capital (ROIC) and revenue growth as signs of sustainability. In FY23, Woolworths Group Ltd had an ROIC of 13.20% and revenue has compounded at 6.6% in recent years. Anything over 10% ROIC is pretty strong for a mature-style business, since its cost of capital is likely below that level, so Woolworths Group Ltd crosses this hurdle.
PLS share price
Pilbara Minerals is a leading ASX-listed lithium company, owning 100% of the world’s largest, independent hard-rock lithium operation, Pilgangoora, which it acquired in 2014.
Pilbara’s primary business is to, put simply, find, dig up and sell spodumene concentrate. It sells its concentrate through “offtake” agreements and spot sales on the Battery Material Exchange (BMX) platform. A good example of an offtake partner is Great Wall (the Chinese car company) or POSCO, a South Korean company.
Pilbara has overcome significant hurdles to become a leader in lithium mining in Australia. However, as a commodities producer, its revenue is still at the mercy of (sometimes dramatic) fluctuations in the price of spodumene in the global market. Even still, bulls would say it’s a ‘pure play’ investment on demand for electric vehicles and battery tech.
Share price valuation
One way to have a ‘speedy read’ of where the WOW share price is, is to study something like dividend yield thru time. Remember, the dividend yield is effectively the ‘cash flow’ to a share holder, but it can be influenced by yearly or bi-yearly fluctuations. Currently, Woolworths Group Ltd shares have a dividend yield of around 2.97%, which compares to its 5-year average of 2.66%. Put simply, WOW shares are trading below their historical average dividend yield.
The PLS share price trades at a price-sales ratio of 2.24x, which compares to its 5-year long-term average of 6.53x. So, PLS shares are trading below their historical average. However, please do more investigating than a simple multiple like this. Our websites explain Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Dividend Discount Models (DDM), and many different ways to value a share, like Pilbara Minerals Ltd.
