Wesfarmers (WES.AX) initiation

Retail hangover

Published: 06 August 2021

We initiate coverage on Wesfarmers. While Wesfarmers retail businesses are well positioned, they have seen significant benefits to sales and earnings over past two years, which will partly reverse. As a result, retail earnings could drop over the next two years. A special dividend is possible near-term. Wesfarmers has over $10 billion in acquisition capacity on our estimates, but in recent times has only made smaller adjacent acquisitions within existing businesses. The creation of a Health segment is one logical extension for the company with an Australian healthcare industry EBITDA profit pool of over $28 billion.

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