A dust-cheap FTSE 250 progress AND dividend share to think about in February!

In search of low-cost FTSE 250 progress and revenue shares to purchase? Residential landlord Grainger (LSE:GRI) is likely to be simply the ticket.

Right here’s why I believe it deserves severe consideration right now.

Sturdy situations

A persistent property scarcity has pushed residential rents skywards in recent times. As Britain’s largest listed rental lodging supplier, Grainger has been an enormous beneficiary of this upswing.

It’s quickly grown its property portfolio to capitalise on this, and now has greater than 11,000 properties on its books. That compares with round 5,600 properties 5 years in the past.

The massive query for buyers right now is whether or not this development can proceed. Falling demand extra lately has induced some room for doubt: in keeping with Rightmove, common marketed UK rents exterior London dropped 0.2% within the final quarter of 2024.

With elevated rental prices squeezing the variety of potential tenants, marketed rents (excluding the capital) dropped for the primary time since 2019.

This could possibly be the start of a development that threatens earnings at Grainger and its friends. The federal government’s plans to construct 1.5m new properties throughout the 5 years to 2029 may additionally dent earnings progress.

However I’m not so certain. At first, it is because Britain’s inhabitants is booming and tipped to proceed doing so, driving demand for residential house considerably increased.

The Workplace for Nationwide Statistics (ONS), as an example, predicts the UK inhabitants will develop by round 5m between 2022 and 2032, to 72.5m.

On the identical time, the variety of buy-to-let buyers is falling as a consequence of rising prices and regulatory hoops. Property agent Hamptons has predicted 113,630 new buy-to-let purchases throughout the UK in 2024, down a whopping 40% in lower than a decade.

Development to speed up?

Grainger isn’t with out threat, particularly given the specter of rate of interest pressures persisting that crimp asset values.

However on steadiness, I believe the earnings image right here is essentially very vivid. That is backed up by present dealer forecasts: Metropolis analysts suppose earnings will rise 2% throughout the monetary 12 months to September 2025 earlier than progress accelerates to 10% in fiscal 2026.

Now, Grainger shares don’t look low cost primarily based on these figures. For this monetary 12 months, they commerce on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of twenty-two.1 occasions.

Nonetheless, primarily based on one other well-liked worth metric — the price-to-book (P/B) ratio — the FTSE 250 share really seems exceptionally low cost.

With a studying beneath 1, at 0.8, the owner trades at a reduction to the worth of its property.

Rising dividends

Pleasingly for Grainger buyers, the prospect of stable earnings progress means Metropolis analysts anticipate dividends to proceed rising sharply over the forecasted interval.

For monetary 2025 and 2026, whole dividends are tipped to soar 12% and 9%, respectively. To place that in context, shareholder payouts throughout the broader inventory market are anticipated to develop between 4% and 4.5%.

What’s extra, these predictions push Grainger’s dividend yields to 4% for 2025 and 4.4% for 2026. Each figures comfortably beat the three.3% common for FTSE 250 shares.

For buyers searching for a mix of progress, revenue, and worth, I believe Grainger shares are price an in depth look.