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LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
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COMPANIES
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UK travel operator TUI Travel said its full-year underlying operating profit will come in at the top end of its growth guidance, boosted by strong trading in the UK and growing demand for its tailored holidays and all-inclusive package holidays to the Caribbean. The travel operator, which owns Thomson and First Choice and is in the process of merging with German parent company TUI AG, said it is confident of achieving underlying operating profit growth of at least 9% on a constant currency basis for the financial year ended September 30. TUI Travel made an underlying operating profit of GBP589 million in its last financial year, up from GBP490 million in fiscal 2012.
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British Sky Broadcasting Group said it has made a further USD0.7 million equity investment in streaming technology company Roku, topping up the combined USD12.2 million investment the pay-TV company had made in July 2012 and May 2013. In a statement, Sky said the latest investment is to provide Roku with financing for its operations and activities. It added that 21st Century Fox also made a further equity investment in Roku, but didn't disclose how much.
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Virgin Money Holdings (UK) became the fourth bank this year to seek a London listing, saying it is seeking to raise about GBP150.0 million before expenses in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange main market later this month. The UK retail bank will use the money to support its growth plans, improve its capital position, and give it access to a wider range of capital-raising options. It also thinks that going public will improve its ability to recruit and retain key management and employees.
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Pizza delivery chain Domino's Pizza Group said strong sales growth in the third quarter continued to be driven by its UK business, online sales, and its meal-deal promotions, but the chain warned of tougher trading comparatives in the final quarter. "We face more challenging comparatives for the final quarter, but we remain confident of a satisfactory outcome for the year and are planning to build on this success in 2015," said Chief Executive David Wild. Domino's Pizza reported like-for-like UK sales growth of 12.9% in its 13 week third quarter ended September 28. System sales, which are total sales made by all the company's franchisee and corporate stores, rose 17.6% to GBP165.7 million.
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Electrocomponents said underlying sales in the first half rose year-on-year, but said it expects its profits to be impacted by fewer trading days, the strength of sterling and restructuring costs. The electronic and maintenance product distributor said group underlying sales in the first half to September 30 were up 3% overall. International sales have increased 5% in the period, but UK sales are down 2%.
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Ophir Energy said it has discovered gas at its Kamba-1 well in Tanzania. The company said it has discovered 1.03 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Kamba and Fulusi prospects from its Kamba-1 well. The gas discovery is comprised of 650 billion cubic feet of gas in Kamba prospect and 360 billion cubic feet in Fulusi prospect. The Kamba-1 well is in the Block 4 license, which is operated by BG Group, with Ophir holding a 20% interest in the license. Ophir, meanwhile, will rise its interest in Block 3 to 80%, from 20%, after BG decided to pull out of that block.
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Struggling infrastructure company Balfour Beatty said it has sold its stake in a UK hospitals project for more than it expected, and had reached financial close in a US housing project as well as being made preferred bidder in two student accommodation projects in the US and Australia. The company said it has sold it 50% interest in the Pinderfields and Pontefract hospitals public-private partnership project to a subsidiary of HICL Infrastructure Co Ltd for GBP61.5 million, exceeding Balfour's expectations and generating a gain on disposal of GBP42.2 million. The proceeds exceed the revised directors' valuation by GBP13.5 million, representing an uplift of 28%, it said.
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Carillion said trading remains in line with its own expectations and the guidance it gave when it put out its interim results in August. The company, which recently failed to tempt peer Balfour Beatty into a merger, said it is focused on mobilising the new contracts it won in the first half of the year, particularly the support services deals. It won about GBP3.2 billion of new orders and probable orders in the first half of the year.
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Galliford Try said it has been appointed as a selected panel member for the Greenwich, Lewisham and Croydon Priority School Building Programme batch by the Education Funding Agency. Galliford said the contract is worth over GBP45 million and marks the company's third appointment to one of the school building batches.
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Afren said it has started the process of returning to normal staffing levels at the Barda Rash field in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq following an improvement in the security situation in the region. Afren had said on August 8 it would temporarily suspend operations at Barda Rash due to the heightened tensions in the region, though it said it did not expect the move to have a significant impact on its cash flow.
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Xaar said it now expects revenue for the full year to be 5%-10% below the bottom of its previously guided range of GBP115-125 million, citing further reduced orders from its original equipment manufacturer partners in the ceramic tile market in China. In a statement, the digital inkjet printing technology group said that monitoring of the ceramic tile market in China has indicated a further decline in activity, prompting the revision of its revenue guidance for 2014.
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MARKETS
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Stock markets are lower across the UK following heavy losses suffered in both the US and Asian markets. Investors remain apprehensive over the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.
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FTSE 100: down 0.4% at 6,534.51
FTSE 250: down 0.5% at 15,137.51
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.7% at 738.99
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The euro trades higher against the dollar ahead of the latest policy decision of the European Central Bank scheduled at 1245 BST. The ECB President Mario Draghi is scheduled at 1330 BST to announce much awaited details of its asset purchase programme at its meeting in Italy, after cutting rates unexpectedly last month.
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GBP-USD: down at USD1.6170
EUR-USD: up at USD1.2638
GOLD: down at USD1213.07 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD92.04 a barrel
(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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U.K 's construction activity growth quickened unexpectedly in September, results of a survey by Markit Economics and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, or CIPS, showed. The Markit/CIPS construction purchasing managers' index, or PMI, edged up to 64.2 in September from 64 in August. Economists had expected the index to decrease to 63.5. This marked the fastest rate of increase since January and the second fastest rate in seven years.
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Eurozone producer prices declined at a faster than expected rate in August, a report from Eurostat showed. Producer prices dropped 1.4% year-over-year in August, which was more than the 1.2% fall expected by economists. In July, producer prices had decreased at a revised 1.3%. Excluding energy prices, producer prices fell 0.2% in August, which was faster than the 0.1% drop in July.
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The partial withdrawal of British aid to two of the world's poorest countries may have contributed to the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa, parliamentarians warned at a donors' conference. Liberal Democrat lawmaker Sir Malcolm Bruce, who is chairing the conference, said the scale of the crisis may well be connected to declining levels of international support for health system improvements in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The government also came under fire for failing to prevent West African governments from holding back EU-channelled aid from their respective health sectors, which have reached a breaking point since the crisis, exacting a heavy death toll on patients and health workers.
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The World Health Organization has at least 1,500 experimental Ebola vaccine doses ready to be given to medical staff who are fighting the disease in West Africa, the UN health agency said Wednesday in Geneva. WHO has been working to speed up testing of two experimental-stage vaccines - chimpanzee adenovirus developed by British company GlaxoSmithKline and a US government laboratory, and VSV, developed by Canada's health agency.
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Hundreds of student protesters were blocking exits from the office of Hong Kong's leader early Thursday, as part of mass pro-democracy demonstrations in the Chinese territory. Hundreds of police were guarding the office of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Student leaders had called for Leung to resign by Thursday or they would occupy and "paralyze the functioning" of important government offices.
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The fight for the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane geared up early Thursday as Islamic State militants advanced, a monitoring group said. "Fighting intensified at dawn Thursday between Islamic State militants and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) at western outskirts of the city of Kobane, prompting the YPG to withdraw from the area to the outskirts of the city, while militants advanced," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The watchdog said the YPG and other Kurdish fighters were preparing for street battles amid fears that the Islamic State militants might commit massacres if they take the city.
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A Palestinian-Arab United Nations draft resolution sets a two-year deadline to ending the Israeli occupation of the territories it captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem, al-Arabiya reported Wednesday. The Israeli withdrawal must begin "as rapidly as possible and to be fully completed" no later than November 2016, the Dubai-based Arabic channel quoted the text as saying. In Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he hoped the Security Council would vote on the resolution within three weeks.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun
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