London continues its gentle downward drift, with losses on properties and travel companies outweighing gains on miners. The market seems unlikely to get any sort of lift from Wall Street which is expected to open moderately weaker. Shocking figures from property giant Land Securities on Wednesday are still casting a shadow over the real estate investment trusts (REITs). LandSecs leads the sector lower but Hammerson nd British Land - the latter due to declare results next week – also nurse heavy losses.Travel companies are out of favour, with package tour specialists Thomas Cook, airline British Airways and cruise company Carnival all down in the dumps.While miners are generally in demand, silver miner Fresnillo defies the trend and is the day’s worst performing blue-chip. Elsewhere in the sector, Rio Tinto, the world’s third-largest miner, has received clearance from an American investment body that keeps its $19.5bn (£13bn) fundraising with China’s Chinalco on track. Rumours continue to circulate that it is looking at new alternatives, despite Rio insisting it is committed to the deal.Barclays is still going well on hopes it may backtrack on a deal to sell its iShares unit to CVC, the private equity group, and instead offload its entire asset management division for £6.5bn. Barclays agreed last month to sell its iShares unit to CVC Capital Partners for $4.2bn, but is now reportedly considering selling the whole of its Barclays Global Investors unit – of which iShares is a part. Credit checking firm Experian is wanted after JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank both issued positive notes on the company. JP Morgan recommends its clients should be overweight in the stock an has a price target of 600p, while Deutsche rates the stock a ‘buy’ upgrading it from ‘hold’, and has a price target of 540p.Petrofac has made a strong start to the year, chairman Rodney Chase will tell shareholders at today’s AGM, with the oil and gas facilities provider’s backlog doubling to $8.2bn at the end of April. Chase is confident 2009 will be another year of strong growth after its biggest business, engineering and construction, bagged $5bn of new contracts in the first quarter of the year.Punters did well at the Cheltenham Festival in March, but that was bad news for bookmaker Ladbrokes which saw profits plunge 34% in the first four months of 2009. It blamed the profit slump on abnormal gross win margin in March, increased free bets and unfavourable cost phasing in eGaming against the previous year.PV Crystalox Solar, which produces silicon wafers for use in solar power generation systems, expects first half revenues to take a 10% dive from last year’s half-yearly revenues. The company has seen a further decline in demand for its products since its preliminary results announcement at the end of March and has been helping out some customers with temporary discounts.Product tester Intertek has made good start to the first four months of the year, boosted by the weakness of the pound. Total revenue for the first four months of 2009 increased by 42% at actual exchange rates.IT services company Computacenter said it expects first half profit to be well ahead of the same period the previous year after seeing strong trading in the first four months of 2009.Revenues slumped in the first four months of 2009 at radio and TV broadcaster UTV, with the Ulster-based media group also cautious over the rest of the year.Book publisher Bloomsbury has issued a mixed trading statement, with the UK and US trading well but German operations experiencing difficulties. The company said that, while UK retailers are returning more books than anticipated trading is in line with expectations. The US business is in line with budget, Bloomsbury said,Coal miner UK Coal said production since the end of the first quarter has continued broadly in line with expectations. Poor weather hit surface mine production at the start of the year, as did a relatively increased focus on stripping overburden, but this production is expected to be recovered during the year.Engineer Morgan Crucible said it expects to see first half revenues of about £500m after sales in line with expectations over the first four months of the year. The shares are lower after broker KBC Peel Hunt downgraded the stock to ‘sell’ from ‘hold’, saying the company’s trading is likely to get worse before it gets better. The broker has trimmed its price target from 115p to 80p.Hansard Global is another FTSE 250 stock on the slide. The long-term savings provider warned that tough conditions will continue to restrain new business flows and European Embedded Value (EEV) growth in the near term.Scientific devices provider Renishaw says cost cutting will offset the impact of tough market conditions and claims an operating loss for the second half is expected to be "somewhat less" than the £10m flagged in March.Shareholders in AGI Therapeutics are feeling queasy after the company announced it is to scrap further development of its irritable bowel syndrome treatment Rezular after a phase 3 trial indicated no real benefits.
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