The share price of Thai Union Public Company Limited (SET: TU) shows weak performance so far this year, pressured by high material costs and the slowdown of overall global demand.
The recent data cements market speculations for Thailand’s leading tuna-canned producer and the world’s third leader to see a bumpy road ahead as tuna price continued to increase in March at $1980/ton (+10% MoM). The average tuna price in the first quarter of 2023 is $1820/ton (+6% YoY and +9.6% QoQ), compared to TU’s comfortable level of $1400-1700/ton.
Still, the management expected to see a better outlook in the second quarter this year from a drop in tuna price in late 2Q.
Analysts in Refinitiv have been downgrading TU’s target price since the beginning of this year. Consensus target price has been trimmed down from THB 22.55, THB 21.99, THB 21.28 and THB 18.14 per share from January to April.
Although target prices got trimmed down, the majority of analysts still recommended “BUY” on TU with 9 recommendations for “BUY”, 3 for “Hold” and 1 for “Sell”.
