Broker tips: SSP, Relx, Jupiter Fund Management

(Sharecast News) - SSP was under the cosh on Friday after a downgrade to 'sell' from 'neutral' at UBS, which said that mid-term consensus screens as stretched in light of upcoming headwinds. The Swiss bank said weak volumes and lower near-term capacity put consensus at risk.

It noted that the share price has risen by around 12% since the company's first-half results presentation in May, in part owing to the market's positive reaction to the recent pricing of the group's Indian IPO.

"However, UBS Evidence Lab data indicates a step down in airline capacity growth in 3Q, with industry data indicating a further significant reduction in capacity growth in 4Q," it said. "With the slower pace of growth and combined with a stronger GBP we see downside risk to consensus estimates with our FY26 EBIT and EPS forecasts now 7% and 10% below consensus respectively.

UBS noted that it now considers it unlikely that consensus estimates will be achieved but lifted its price target on the stock to 170.0p from 165.0p.

Analysts at JPMorgan upgraded their legal growth expectations for Relx to 10% per year in order to reflect a bigger total addressable market for Agentic AI.

JPMorgan said it had previously interpreted Relx's expectation for legal growth "to accelerate over the next decade" as growth accelerating from 7% to roughly 8-8.5% over the next three years.

However, JPM now believes the market opportunity to be "much more profound" than it had first anticipated, noting that it may have captured the upside from AI helping customers get more value from Lexis' existing information and tools, and the enhanced value from Protege's personalisation, but failed to capture the opportunity for Lexis to leverage Agentic AI to provide legal execution and drive a multiplication of its addressable market.

"We believe we have also underestimated the scope for AI to drive internal efficiencies and improve the return on product investment - AI not only expands the TAM but makes it easier for Lexis to address it with the faster and cheaper development of new products," said JPM.

"We upgrade our 10-year legal growth to 10% - and would be surprised if Lexis does not see periods of faster growth. An initial transactional model for Protégé modules could pull forward the acceleration."

JPM upgraded its legal valuation by another 20-25% and Relx's overall group valuation from 4,630.0p to 4,890.0p as it reiterated its 'overweight' rating on the stock.

Deutsche Bank lifted its price target on Jupiter Fund Management on Friday to 110.0p from 90.0p after it agreed to buy British asset manager CCLA for £100.0m.

The German bank, which has a 'hold' rating on the stock, said it had updated its forecast and price target to reflect the "financially and strategically sensible deal".

"Assuming the material cost synergies targeted can be realised, and without significant revenue dissynergy (which looks plausible in this case, given limited client/product overlap), we consider the acquisition inexpensive and a sensible use of part of the current substantial surplus capital," DB said.

"In addition to the financial attractions, we believe the deal will improve diversification (and therefore resilience) of the group across both client (notably adding non-profit and local authority clients) and product (notably multi-asset, money market and property), and increase scale."

In turn, this should help to underpin a more stable group operating profit trajectory and consequently an improved/more resilient ordinary dividend outlook, DB added.