Companies: HBR   

Holiday operator Holidaybreak (HBR) is poised to reveal pre-tax profits up from £23.8 million to £27 million on Monday, when the fully-listed group unveils its results for the year to September. James Crux.

Holidaybreak (HBR), which recently broke into the FTSE 250 after a year of stealthy share price growth, operates camping and mobile home holidays in Europe and world-wide adventure holidays. It also sells short break holidays to domestic UK punters.

In the year to September 2001, the leisure-listed outfit made a 'clean' £23.8 million pre-tax on sales of £192.5 million and earnings were 38.1p a share. Analysts at house broker Teather & Greenwood expect earnings for 2001-02 of 42.1p a share and pre-tax profits of £27 million on a higher turnover of £218.8 million.

That suggests the shares at 572.5p are trading at 13.6 times earnings, falling to an undemanding 11.2 for 2003. T&G analyst Nigel Popham says 'Holidaybreak looks set for strong earnings growth in 2003 from each of its three businesses through organic growth (some 10 per cent a year) and acquisitions', including September's £29.9 million purchase of rival Eurosites.

Eurosites was Holidaybreaks' only competitor in the UK, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Ireland, and the deal will also allow it to control industry capacity and pricing. One slight worry for shareholders, however, was a statement in October from the Office of Fair Trading that it was checking to see whether the deal warranted investigation under the Fair Trading Act 1973.

At 572.5p, the business has a market value of £269 million. If the analysts' forecasts are right, expect the shares at 572.5p to move higher on Monday.