The 2021 outlook for the global economy remains highly uncertain today. But it hasn’t stopped me from buying UK shares in my Stocks and Shares ISA.
This is partly because I buy shares with a view to how they’ll perform over the long term, not simply on a 12-month time horizon. It’s also because there are plenty of stocks out there that should thrive irrespective of broader economic conditions.
Trifast (LSE: TRI) is one dirt-cheap UK share whose profits City analysts expect to bounce strongly in the next few years. The business manufactures screws, bolts and other types of industrial fastenings for a variety of cyclical applications. This will allow it to ride the upswing in consumer spending that accompanies the early stage of the new economic cycle.
Car production set to boom
I’m particularly excited by Trifast’s critical role in the global automobile industry. This isn’t just because car demand is one of the quickest to recover during economic upturns. It’s because this UK stock is a major supplier to Tier 1 car manufacturers the world over. Consequently, its market share continues to grow and grow. It stands to win big as auto production rates are set to soar over the next decade.
The experts at Statista, for instance, reckon that 110m vehicles will be produced each year by 2025. This compares with the 93m cars the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association says were created in 2019. And Statista also reckons 117m new motors will roll off the production lines each year by 2030.
A UK share that’s too cheap to miss?
The soaring popularity of electric cars is one reason why car production rates are set to steadily rise. And this bodes particularly well for Trifast. The batteries in these cars require high levels of fastenings. The charging points needed to keep them running, both at home and on the road, also require elevated loadings.
All this explains why City analysts expect this UK stock’s earnings to balloon during the next few years. They expect Trifast to move back into earnings in this financial year (to March 2021). Then annual profit rises of 26% and 12% are predicted for financial 2022 and 2023 respectively.
A price-to-earnings growth (PEG) reading below 1 is broadly considered excellent value. And Trifast, at current prices, boasts a reading of 0.8 for fiscal 2022, making it to good to miss, in my opinion. But this isn’t the only reason I think it’s an exciting buy following the 2020 stock market crash. I think its share price could go gangbusters during the new bull market.
Trifast’s share price collapsed in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis. But after slumping to below 9p in March 2009 it rocketed to around 190p in the following 10 years. This marked a staggering 2,000-plus-percentage rise in that period.
And the factors I describe above make me think that it’ll explode again in the next decade too.