On Tuesday, Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey released Australia's latest budget, and while the focus may have been on which sectors of the economy would be worse off, what specifically wasn't in it is exceptionally good news for two companies.
Mr Hockey has stuck to the Coalition's pre-election promise of not making any of the changes to Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) that the previous government had proposed. And that's great news for McMillan Shakespeare Limited (ASX: MMS) and SG Fleet Group Ltd (ASX: SGF).
SG Fleet only listed in March this year, so had not suffered the same fate as McMillan Shakespeare, which saw its shares lose 48.5% in just one day back in July 2013, after the Labor government announced it was changing FBT rules to claw back an estimated $1.8 billion a year.
Salary packaging companies like McMillan Shakespeare and Smartsalary derive a large portion of their revenues from helping employees lease cars as part of their salary package. And most of those employees are in the public sector, such as firemen (and women), police officers, hospital workers and public servants, with the FBT rules partially designed to compensate them for their lower salaries.
McMillan Shakespeare's share have already climbed 19.7% over the past month to $11.14, but still remain a long way below their 52-week high of $18.64.
SG Fleet appears to have been overlooked by the market, with its shares rising just 2.4% to $1.71, over the past month. That's even below the prospectus price of $1.85 per share, despite the company forecasting to pay a fully-franked dividend yield of more than 5% in the 2015 financial year (at the issue price).
Both companies are set to benefit from the government maintaining the existing FBT rules around car leasing, and their shares could be set to rocket ahead.
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