Barclays Share News (BARC)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Friday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Royal Bank of Scotland, up 14%. Shares in RBS have jumped after it said it expects to report a near doubling in first-half pretax profit, driven by better credit conditions and the performance of the part of the bank tasked with running down non-core assets. It published its results a week ahead of schedule, though they are still being finalised, because of better-than-anticipated operating performance. The state-backed bank said it expects to report GBP2.65 billion in pretax profit in the first six months of 2014, compared with GBP1.37 billion in the corresponding period last year. Total income, made up of net interest income and non-interest income, fell by 5.9% to GBP9.98 billion, but operating expenses fell to GBP7.11 billion from GBP7.75 billion. The bank also reported a significant improvement in impairment losses, which fell to GBP269.0 million from GBP2.15 billion.

Anglo American, up 2.9%. The mining company said its pretax profit jumped in its first half, despite falls in profit at its Anglo American Platinum and Kumba Iron Ore subsidiaries, as improved performance, particularly at its copper operations, helped the company. It said its pretax profit increased by 48% to USD2.95 billion for the six months to end-June from USD1.99 billion the previous year with production volumes up across its portfolio except platinum, with particular development at its copper division due to lower unit costs and increased sales volumes.

Pearson, up 2.7%. The publisher said it has retained its outlook for the full-year as first-half revenues rose marginally and its pretax loss widened in the first-half as the company was hit by increased restructuring charges and adverse currency movements. In a trading update for the first half, the company proposed an increased interim dividend of 17 pence, up 6% on the 16 pence per share paid last year, which the company said reflects its confidence in its prospects.

Barclays, up 2.3% and Lloyds Banking Group, up 1.7%. The banks are all benefiting from RBS' trading update. Additionally, Lloyds has confirmed it is in settlement discussions with government regulators with regards to their investigations into the setting of Interbank offered rates and other benchmarks, and said that it expects to incur penalties as a result. The statement comes after the Financial Times reported that the bank is preparing to disclose it will pay GBP200 million to GBP300 million to regulators in order to settle allegations that it manipulated Libor rates.

Vodafone Group, up 2.1%. The company has confirmed its outlook for the 2015 financial year, as it saw trading in line with expectations in the first quarter to end-June. Revenue fell 4.4% on an organic basis, meaning at actual exchange rates and including costs for mergers and acquisitions, during the quarter. Excluding these costs and at constant currency, revenue rose 6.2%. Vodafone said that its GBP19 billion Project Spring investment programme has taken off quickly, with capital expenditure nearly doubling year on year, and its 4G coverage in Europe up 20% to 52% in the last nine months. As a result of this increased coverage, data traffic growth in Europe rose to 53% year-on-year in the first quarter from 42% in the fourth quarter of the previous year. It also said that it was beginning to see its performance stabilise quarter on quarter in several of its European markets as the take up of new 4G services grows.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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British Sky Broadcasting Group, down 4.5%. The broadcaster said it will acquire 21st Century Fox Inc's holdings in Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland for a total of GBP4.9 billion in cash, plus BSkyB's 21% stake in the National Geographic Channel, to form a new enlarged business, as it also reported a fall in pretax profit in the year to end-June. To part fund the acquisitions, BSkyB announced plans to place 156.1 million new shares, around 9.99% of its existing issued share capital. The placing price will be decided at the close of the book-building process, it said. Fox, which has a 39.14% shareholder in BSkyB, will subscribe for 61.1 million shares to maintain its existing shareholding in the company. Meanwhile, the company posted a pretax profit of GBP1.08 billion for the recent financial year, down from GBP1.26 billion in the previous year, as revenue, which was adjusted to exclude revenue from BSkyB's discontinued retailing of the ESPN channel, but included revenue from broadband customers acquired from Telefónica O2 UK, rose to GBP7.63 billion from GBP7.24 billion. Despite the revenue increase, profit was hampered by a step-up in Premier League costs and continued investment into BSkyB's connected services.

GlaxoSmithKline, down 1.7%. The pharmaceuticals giant is facing new allegations of corruption in Syria, where it has been accused of paying bribes to secure business, Reuters has reported, citing an email from a whistle-blower. The allegations related to its former consumer healthcare operations in Syria which were closed in 2012 due to the worsening civil war in the country, the report said. Glaxo has been weathering investigations from Chinese authorities over allegations that it paid up to USD500 million to doctors and hospital executives over the past six years. A series of other smaller bribery claims have since surfaced, in Poland, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.

United Utilities Group, down 1%. The company has announced that trading in its second quarter was in line with group expectations as a rise in revenue was offset by higher depreciation and other operating costs, as anticipated. In a trading update for the period April 1 to July 24, the company said that trading remains in line with expectations. Revenue rose in the period, reflecting the regulated price rise for 2014/2015, it said, but this was partially offset by the special customer discount of around GBP20 million which has been applied to this year's bills, as previously announced.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Carillion, up 9.8%, and Balfour Beatty, up 7%. The construction companies are the two biggest gainers in the mid-cap index following the confirmation that they are in preliminary talks for the creation of a construction services powerhouse via a GBP3 billion merger, which would put them on track to enter into the FTSE 100 index as a joint entity. Analysts are broadly positive about the potential deal and the cost savings that could arise for it. Liberum Capital estimates that GBP250 million of cash synergies could be achieved. Additionally, Balfour said it has been awarded a USD136 million contract to build an office block in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina.

African Barrick Gold, up 4.8%. The gold production company's shares have moved higher after it increased its interim dividend, as it said it swung to a pretax profit in its first half, despite a fall in revenues. It said it recovered from major impairment charges in the year-earlier period and also had reduced costs. Pretax profit of USD62.2 million for the six months to end-June were compared with a pretax loss of USD857.3 million the previous year. It declared an interim dividend of USD1.4 cents per share, an increase of 40% on its previous interim dividend, as the company changed its dividend policy to be linked to its operational cash flow. However, revenue fell 8.6% to USD445.5 million from USD487.4 million, as a 13% increase in gold production to 346,581 ounces was more than offset by a fall in the company's average realised gold price to USD1,290 per ounce from USD1,480 per ounce. The company said that as a result of its strong first-half performance, it also is revising its production guidance upwards for the year to in excess of 700,000 ounces of gold from a range of 650,000 to 690,000 ounces.

Bodycote, up 4.3%. Berenberg has upgraded the engineering company to Buy from Hold, increasing its price target on the company to 776 pence from 759p, saying that now is an "attractive entry point." The company's shares have fallen sharply since Berenberg's initiation of coverage on the stock in early May, and the bank now sees an "attractive entry point into this high-quality name, which is clearly showing an uptick in organic growth." Bodycote posted a 0.5% decline in organic growth in the second half of 2013, but a 2.8% increase in the first quarter of 2014, the bank said.

Lonmin, up 3.7%. The company's shares have jumped after it said it expects to return to normal production rates by the end of the year following major strike action by platinum miners in South Africa, which ended in June. It said that, due to the strike, it lost production of 192,700 platinum saleable ounces in its third quarter ended June 30 but it did manage to return to some production following the re-start of its processing division in May, achieving platinum metal in concentrate production of 23,618 ounces and refined platinum production of 36,255 ounces in June. It added that, following employees return to work, a ramp up to full production at all of its shafts has started, and it is currently achieving roughly 30% of normal monthly production. Lonmin said it expects to be achieving 80% of normal production by the end of its financial year at the end of September and be at its normal steady rate of production by end of 2014.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Spectris, down 6.4%. The company has reported a drop in pretax profit and revenue in its first-half after a weaker-than-expected performance by its divisions in its Material Analysis sector and lower shipments in the second quarter. In its half-year results for the six months to end-June, the instrumentation and controls company said revenue declined 5% to GBP539.8 million from GBP566.2 million, while pretax profit dropped 10% to GBP67.3 million from GBP75.0 million last year. Operating profit declined 12% to GBP70.1 million, down from GBP80.1 million in the comparable period.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - WINNERS
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Accsys Technologies, up 7.7%. Shares in the chemical technology company are up, even though an arbitration tribunal has ruled that terminating Diamond Wood China Ltd's Accoya Wood exclusive licence was invalid, as the tribunal said that Diamond Wood can only claim for limited damages, if any, up to a maximum of EUR250,000. Last year, Accsys terminated its license with Diamond Wood, alleging that the company had failed to comply with contractual obligations. Diamond Wood subsequently served a notice of arbitration challenging Accsys and sought damages of over EUR140 million. Accsys said it is "disappointed to announce that the tribunal has ruled that the Licence Agreement is to continue in full force and effect."

Belgravium Technologies, up 5.9%. The software and services company said it has seen trading in line with its expectations in the first half of 2014, as trading picked up significantly in the second quarter after a slow start. It said it now expects its half year results to show an increase in revenue, and a significant improvement in profits compared with the previous year. For the year as a whole, Belgravium expects to see weighting towards the second half, as in previous years.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - LOSERS
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Cyan Holdings, off 20%. The company said it has raised GBP3.5 million before expenses via a share placing of 1 billion shares at 0.35 pence each, and 500 million warrants at 0.60 pence each. It will use the proceeds from the placing for general working capital, business development, customer deployments and further product development work. The company cited several uses of the funds, including building further production samples of its Cyan retrofit smart-metering solution, deploying and supporting its India Smart Grid pilot opportunities, and developing its commercial opportunities into additional emerging markets amongst others. Shares in the company are currently quoted at 0.37 pence.
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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp

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