Needs to lock in 2026

Offshore Drilling (DNB Markets) (, ) - (39 pages)

Well positioned for increased contract activity

Valaris (Buy, TP: USD40.00) - 2027 confidence building

With ARO Drilling extensions and two West Africa jobs (DS-10 and DS-15), Valaris is progressing well in building visibility for 2027, the first year set to have proper earnings as 2025–2026e will likely be affected by rig market challenges and idle time. On top of the recently announced drillship jobs, Valaris seems well placed to build additional backlog in Nigeria and Egypt, for deepwater opportunities with startup in 2026/27. In sum, we believe its cash flow story remains on the horizon, while we consider earnings improvements key to closing the NAV gap and for intrinsic values to crystalli...

Airthings (No_rec, TP: NOK) - Recommendation and target price withdrawn

As a result of DNB Markets acting as financial advisor in conjunction with the company’s announcement (link) of a strategic review prompted by a non-binding letter of intent from Firda AS to explore a potential sale of its business segment assets, we have withdrawn our target price and recommendation.

SpareBank 1 Helgeland (Hold, TP: NOK167.00) - Softer margin, but lower costs

Helped by still-solid core revenues, cost reduction YOY and moderate loan losses, HELG reported a Q1 ROE of 12.3%, despite some margin pressure. With solid earnings generation, the bank increased its CET1 ratio by ~20bp to 18.0% and still guides for a 0.8%-point benefit from the implementation of Basel IV, boding well for meaningful distributions. We have lowered our 2026–2027e EPS by 0–1%, That said, we reiterate our target price of NOK167. With the stock trading at a 2026e P/E of ~12.4x, we continue to find the valuation fair and reiterate our HOLD.

Smartoptics (Buy, TP: NOK27.00) - We remain optimistic

Smartoptics’ Q1 results marked a slower start to the year than we forecast, primarily owing to weaker sales in Devices, which seems to be back to near-term tariff-induced uncertainty. On the flip side, we understand the slowdown seen towards end-Q1 has already caught up again in order inflow, and thus we remain upbeat for the quarters ahead. Following an estimate reduction, we have lowered our target price to NOK27 (30) but reiterate our BUY.