Insurance claims outsourcer Quindell (QPP:AIM) seems to have finally won over many of its past sceptics, doing it the hard way with sheer hard graft that has resulted in a deluge of new contracts.
Today's third quarter update flags an extra £100 million-plus worth of work confirmed since November's equally-upbeat newsflash. A record pipeline to boot raises the likelihood that the near-£940 million cap will surpass 4p per share of earnings next year. That's against market estimates currently sat between 2.8p and 3.1p.
The backcloth for Quindell's collaboration model seems to get better and better. Just this week a Competition Commission investigation into the motor insurance industry flagged plans to find ways to cut car policy premiums. Quindell provides outsourced cradle-to-grave services for drivers and vehicles alike, and helps weed out many of the costly fake claims that dog the industry.
We at Shares are not surprised one bit by Quindell's progress this year. We've been consistent fans of the company and its straight-talking chief executive and founder Rob Terry, interviewing him in the magazine in October.
In fact, we've written supportive editorial in Shares several times this year (most recently 26 Sep and again 31 Oct), in addition to website stories in April and August. It was also one of our picks for 2013 at 13.75p, and although that trade dipped below our stop-loss in the summer, the shares price today sits at a 23.6% premium after edging up 0.25p this morning to 17p.
Quindell is set to join London's main market in March, a switch that should see the company catapulted into the FTSE 250 index. That looks an increasingly-likely catalyst for the share price to begin the sort of run City analysts, and Shares, have been flagging for ages.
Price targets currently stand between 41p and 50p. That's something for investors to mull, as have organisations such as Prudential's M&G investment, a participant in Quindell's recent £200 million fund raising that leaves it as a 7.7% shareholder. As for Rob Terry, he's likely to be too busy striking new business deals in the UK and overseas to have much time for idle speculation over the share price.
