James Gard: Welcome to Morningstar. Our latest stock of the week is Rolls Royce, which announced its full year results on Thursday. Given that the stock market was already highly volatile and nervous about the Ukraine situation, this was a bad day to release anything unexpected. The surprise that Rolls unveiled was that chief executive, Warren East, is leaving after six years. He's credited with turning the engine maker around after years of profit warnings and scandals.
The company's shares fell nearly 20% on early trading Thursday as investors digested the news of East's departure and some weaker guidance for the coming year. This bout of turbulence took the emphasis away from the company's return to profitability and a rise in the number of hours flown with its engines.
Morningstar analyst Joachim Kotze says Rolls has done a good job of restructuring and cost cutting. He thinks the company may be being too cautious about the recovery in long haul travel, which is key to Rolls Royce as it makes engines for airliners like the Airbus A350. Still, Kotze thinks that many of the company plans for new markets are like to bear fruit towards the end of this decade rather than the immediate years. Morningstar analysts assign the shares a fair value of £1.15, but they are trading around £1 after the latest share price fall.
For Morningstar, I'm James Gard.