BT Share News (BT.A)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Friday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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BT Group, up 1.7%. UBS upgraded the telecommunications giant to Neutral from Sell on a receding risk to its mobile operations. UBS said if the merger of Three and O2 in the UK is blocked by regulators, this will reduce the risk of an aggressive push into the mobile market by Sky, a major rival to BT on television and broadband services. In addition, the bank sees potential for upgrades on BT estimates when it updates on its acquisition of mobile company EE.

AstraZeneca, up 0.2%. The drugmaker reiterated its full-year guidance for 2016 at constant currency, as it said revenue rose 5% in the first quarter on a constant currency basis, driven by a significant increase in externalisation revenue. At actual exchange rates, revenue grew by 1.0% to USD6.12 billion in the first quarter of 2016 from USD6.06 billion a year before. AstraZeneca said it expects an adverse hit to its revenue of around 2% from currency movements based on average exchange rates in the full year 2016. The company reiterated expectations for its core earnings per share and total revenue both are for a low- to mid-single-digit percentage decline in 2016.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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International Consolidated Airlines Group, down 3.8%. The owner of British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus said it swung to a pretax profit in the first quarter of 2016, boosted by growth in traffic, passenger numbers and revenue. However, IAG warned that impact on travel of the Brussels terror attack has continued into the second quarter. IAG said it made a pretax profit of EUR124 million in the three months to March 31, having suffered a EUR37 million pretax loss in the first quarter of 2015. Revenue grew to EUR5.08 billion from EUR4.71 billion, boosted by 14% growth in traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres, and a 22% rise in passenger numbers.

Royal Bank of Scotland, down 2.2%. RBS said its first-quarter net loss widened after paying a fee to the UK government that will eventually allow the state-backed lender to resume dividends. RBS's net loss, which included a GBP1.19 billion payment to the government to retire the so-called dividend access share, amounted to GBP968 million in the three months ended March 31, the lender said in a statement, widening from the GBP459 million net loss the corresponding quarter a year earlier. First-quarter pretax profit jumped to GBP421 million from GBP37 million. The results come after RBS on Thursday warned there is a significant risk it will miss a deadline by which it must sell the UK retail branch network known as Williams & Glyn.

Pearson, down 1.5%. The education company reiterated its guidance for 2016, as it said it continued to trade in line with expectations in the first quarter of the year, seeing underlying sales decline by 4%. In a statement ahead of its annual general meeting, Pearson said it continues to expect an adjusted operating profit and adjusted earnings per share before restructuring costs of between GBP580 million and GBP620 million and between 50 pence and 55 pence, respectively, for the full year. The company said its sales were down 4% in the first quarter in underlying terms, hit by weakness in assessment revenues in the US and UK.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Rotork, up 6.5%. The actuators maker said favourable exchange rates and acquisition contributions drove up revenue and order intake in its first quarter, and announced the purchase of valve gearbox manufacturer Mastergear for USD25.0 million. Rotork said its order intake rose 2.5% over the period from the start of 2016 to April 3, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, whilst revenue rose 0.7%. Rotork said it benefited from favourable exchange rates, which contributed 3.1% to order intake and 3.0% to revenue, and its acquisitions contributed 8.4% to order intake and 9.2% to revenue. On an organic basis, order intake was down 9.0% and revenue down 12%.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Restaurant Group, down 22%. The company warned on profit for its full financial year after experiencing a "deterioration in trading conditions" which will lead to a fall in full-year like-for-like sales, as it revealed the resignation of its chief financial officer. The restaurant operator, which runs the Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito and Garfunkel's chains, said it is continuing to see a deterioration in trading conditions in financial 2016 so far, particularly in the leisure business, which it had warned on at the release of its financial 2015 results last month. In the 17 weeks to April 24, total sales grew by 4.7% but like-for-like sales fell by 2.7% as a result of the difficult trading.

Ophir Energy, down 18%. The oil and gas company said that talks with US oil services giant Schlumberger over the Fortuna floating liquefied natural gas project in Equatorial Guinea have been terminated. Ophir said that despite Schlumberger completing technical due diligence, the two companies were unable to complete the transaction on terms agreed in the heads of terms, and as such, talks between the two were terminated. The company remains in "active discussions" with a number of other parties in regards to participation in and funding of Fortuna, it said.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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Proton Power Systems, up 24%. The power systems provider said it has secured a fuel cell emergency power units order from an unnamed "blue chip customer", sending its shares higher in morning trade. Proton said the total order is worth EUR1.8 million and the systems are all expected to be delivered and installed in 2016. Further orders from the customer are expected in 2017, it added.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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Octagonal, down 19%. The company said it experienced a challenging second half but expects results for the financial year to the end of March to be in line with expectations. The company currently generates the bulk of its revenue through its GIS operating business, which provides global settlement and safe custody services to investors. Octagonal said results across the investment banking sector have illustrated the challenges it faced in the second half of its financial year. Due to those challenges, GIS has been cutting costs to cope and migrated over to a new operating system, which should save costs in the long term.

Pires Investments, down 16%. The investment firm said results in its last financial year were disappointing, even though the level of losses in the first half were "stemmed" in the second. The company's loss before and after tax widened to GBP454,698 in the year ended October 31, 2015, from GBP326,909 a year earlier. In the six months ended April 30, 2015 the first half, Pires made a loss before and after tax of GBP355,376. Chairman Peter Redmond said the main reasons behind the loss were the "poor performance" of the share price of Pires's principal investment, Rame Energy, the "lack of progress" on the European wind projects of Pires's subsidiary, Ventec Renewable Energy, and the level of Pires's operating costs relative to its "modest" asset base.
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By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance

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