Photo-Me International

Summary

• Stock: Photo-Me International PLC (LON: PHTM) common equity

• Date: June 22, 2022

• Market cap: £290m

• Rating: Buy

• Price: £0.77

• Target: £1.39

Setting the stage

Photo-Me is a British vending machine business. It operates photo booths, printing kiosks, launderettes, and vending machines. The company has almost 44,000 machines across the UK, continental Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Before the pandemic, the global photo booth market was expanding at the same pace as the global GDP—3% per year, according to the World Bank, a large lender of money to developing countries. Increasingly affordable travel and population growth drove growing demand for passports and supported this market. But global revenues, which had climbed to $759bn by 2019, halved in 2020 before recovering to just two-thirds of their pre-pandemic level in 2021. With fewer people travelling, demand for passport photos collapsed.