The strong rise they showed Aluar and Black Hill At Merval he left a tempting photo for any investor who looks at the green screen and thinks there is still room to get on. However, when this market improvement intersects with the roadmap of Allaria, enthusiasm begins to moderate. The important broker of the City maintains over both recommendation to keep and not to buy, a difference that in practice suggests that a good part of the expected path would have already been absorbed by prices.
The warning does not mean saying that these are bad companies or papers doomed to fail. The point is that Allaria still sees value in both stories, but understands that the relationship between reward and risk no longer warrants a purchase recommendationespecially after the jump they showed in the last round.
According to Allaria’s valuation table as of March 30, 2026, Aluar appeared with a price of $809, a target of $1,160 by the end of 2026, a dividend yield of 3% and a total return of 46.4%. In the case of Loma Negra, the brokerage company showed a price of $2,963, a target of $4,260, a dividend yield of 5.9% and an expected total return of 49.7%. In both cases, the recommendation was keep.
That point gains even more relevance when looking at the updated price after the day’s rise. Aluar closed in $937, with a daily progress of 6.4%, while Black Hill ended in $3,252.50, with an improvement of 5.6%. In other words, the market pushed both stocks closer to their target prices and concretely reduced the upside that Allaria saw when putting together his roadmap.
Aluar showed an operational improvement
In Aluar, the recommendation to hold appears for a reason much more linked to the current market price. When Allaria put together his chart, the stock was listed at $809. With the closing at $937, the journey to the target of $1,160 visibly narrowed. The pure upside is now around 23.8% and, if the projected dividend of 3% is added, the theoretical total return is located near 26.8%.
The paper still has upside marginbut it no longer offers the same cushion as when the broker prepared its valuation, That’s why the recommendation is not to sell either. The recent rise did an important part of the work and left the stock in an area where the potential still exists, although much more compressed. There appears the logic of maintaining. Allaria is not saying that the role has run out of story, but rather that the additional prize no longer looks generous enough to justify a buy recommendation.
That reading gains even more consistency when the latest results are observed. In its preview of the second fiscal quarter of 2026, Aluar reported a profit of $51,147 million, in front of the loss of $3,135 million of the same period of the previous year. The turnaround was marked and was explained by an operational improvement, a recovery of margins and a higher than expected level of shipments.
In fact, the result exceeded the forecast of $32,582 million that controlled the market and the main reason was a stronger sales volume than expected, especially on the external side. The income they reached $689,096 million, against $534,873 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2025, which implied an interannual increase of 29%. The main driving force was the growth of offices, which advanced 19% compared to the same period of the previous year, driven above all by exports, which climbed 30% year-on-year.
The improvement was also strongly reflected in the profitability since he EBITDA was from $123,089 million, with a EBITDA margin of 17.9%, far above the $59,949 million and from the margin of 11.2% registered a year earlier. Also at this point the performance exceeded expectations, since previous projections pointed to a EBITDA of $76,742 million with a margin of 16.1%.
Loma Negra improved compared to the previous quarter
In Black Hill, The stock also rose strongly and is now trading well above the value taken by Allaria’s spreadsheet, but it also has an operating history that has not yet fully consolidated a robust recovery.
With the closure $3,252.50 for your shares, the upside to the target $4,260 is located near 31%. If you add the dividend yield of 5.9%, he expected total return round 36.9%. It is still an interesting figure in absolute terms, although clearly lower than the 49.7% shown in the original valuation. The price improvement, once again, cut a significant portion of the potential.
But in the case of Loma Negra the latest operating numbers also weigh since, in the fourth quarter the cement company recorded sales for $225,233 million, which implied a year-on-year drop of 1.7%. Cement dispatches fell 1.2%, until 1.29 million tons, while the average sales price advanced 27% nominal, to $145,353 per ton. The problem is that this improvement was just below inflation, which was not enough to completely restore profitability.
He cost of sale per ton was located at $133,554, with a rise of just 5.8% compared to the previous quarter, and this dynamic allowed the gross margin to improve 618 basis points compared to the third quarter, to 23.5%, after having been left in a weak 17.3%.
He adjusted EBITDA was from $52,617 million, with a margin of 23.4%, below the $65,932 million and of margin of 29% of the same quarter of 2024. In year-on-year terms, the fall in EBITDA was from 24%, a number that makes it clear that the operational recomposition still seems incomplete. He net result was from $6,245 million, very far from the $29,489 million of the fourth quarter of the previous year, while the financial results worsened until -$9,801 million, from a positive balance of $1,126 million.
With that photo on the table, the position of maintaining begins to be understood without too many twists and turns. Loma Negra showed an improvement compared to the immediately previous quarter, but still did not validate a sufficiently firm change in margins, profitability and demand to merit a buy recommendation.
What is Allaria saying with this posture?
The most favorable part of the report appears in the projections given that for Black Hill, Allaria expects a gradual improvement in shipments and profitability as the domestic market gains traction. In this framework, it projects for 2026 income by $1.16 billion, EBITDA by $268,304 million and a EBITDA margin of 23.2%, while for 2027 it foresees sales of $1.49 billion, EBITDA of $377,625 million and a margin expansion of up to 25.4%.
Even so, the broker does not make the leap towards a purchase recommendation. The reason is that, when the thesis depends on a recovery that has yet to materialize, the market usually demands that the stock retain a valuation attractive enough to offset that risk. Allaria estimates that Loma Negra quote to 7.7 times EV/EBITDA 2026 already 5.5 times EV/EBITDA 2027, in addition to a P/E of 19.3 times for 2026 and of 11.5 times by 2027, multiples that They don’t leave much room for mistakes.
In Aluar, The phenomenon is similar, although in a different way. There is no recent weakness in the business, but rather the opposite, the quarter was good, even better than expected. But precisely for this reason the action is also recalibrated upwards and left a less comfortable risk-return ratio than the one offered before. When the upside declines so sharply after a recent recovery, the recommendation to keep It works almost as an elegant warning that the market has already come part of the way.
