Kiatnakin Phatra Securities, or KKPS, has upgraded its recommendation on Thai Union Group, or TU, from Hold to Buy and raised its target price from 13.30 baht to 16.00 baht, seeing attractive upside from the current share price of 12.40 baht. TU shares last traded at 13.20 baht, up 0.50 baht or 3.94%, on turnover of 134.70 million baht. The research team noted that TU holds a 79.3% stake in i-Tail Corporation, or ITC, and that after subtracting the value of the ITC stake from TU's total market value, the remaining core business, excluding ITC, is worth about 7.0 billion baht, or a P/E of just 3.5 times for 2026. Although that business generated 42% of total profit in 2025, it is expected to rise to 47% in 2028. KKPS expects the net margin of the ex-ITC business to increase from 1.7% in 2026 to 2.3% in 2028, supporting average earnings per share growth of 18% a year over the next three years, while ROA rises from 2.6% in 2025 to 3.7% in 2028. It raised its normalized earnings forecasts for 2026 to 2028 by an average of 16%. On dividends, TU is expected to offer a yield of 5.9% in 2026 and 6.7% in 2027, while the estimated P/E falls from 10.02 times in 2026 to 7.73 times in 2028. KKPS also issued a research report on ITC in parallel and upgraded it to Buy as well, given the two companies' linked shareholding structure and operating results.
Thai Union Group PCLKKPS upgraded TU from Hold to Buy and raised its target price from 13.30 to 16.00 baht on higher normalized earnings forecasts.
i-Tail Corp. PCLKKPS upgraded ITC to Buy in parallel, citing the linked shareholding structure and operating results with TU.
