Costain Share News (COST)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Wednesday.
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COMPANIES
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Budget carrier easyJet said it beat its guidance for revenue per seat in the third quarter, even as its total revenue fell for the period. The airline said its revenue per seat was down by 5.4% in the three months to the end of June to GBP59.08, slightly better than the guidance it issued in May. Total revenue in the quarter was down 1% to GBP1.23 billion. Capacity rose by 4.7% to 20.8 million seats, and passengers carried rose by 6.2% to 19.1 million. Load factor increased 1.3 percentage points to 91.7%.
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Mining giant BHP Billiton reported a 6% increase in iron ore production for the fourth quarter, while production of metallurgical coal grew 13%. Total iron ore production for fiscal year 2015 increased 14% and exceeded the company's own outlook. Further, the company said it expects underlying attributable profit for the 2015 June half year to include additional charges of up to USD650 million, tied mainly to writedowns and redundancies in its copper business. For fiscal 2016, the company forecasts iron ore production to increase by 6% to 247 million tons.
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Johnson Matthey said it expects its overall group performance in the current financial year to be "slightly ahead" of the previous year and reiterated it expects to deliver "good underlying growth". The FTSE 100-listed metals and speciality chemicals company said group sales totalled GBP797 million in the first quarter ended June 30, up 6% from the GBP749 million reported a year earlier, leading to a pretax profit before amortisation, impairments, restructuring charges and disposals of GBP94 million, slightly down from GBP95 million. Operating profit before amortisation, impairments, restructuring charges and disposals came in at GBP103.6 million, which was flat from the previous year.
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Fresnillo said gold and silver production both significantly rose in the first half of 2015, leading to the company increasing its full year production guidance for its gold segment. Gold production in the first half enjoyed an even larger rise, totalling 364,000 ounces of gold which is up 37% from the 265,670 ounces produced a year earlier. That led to the company increasing its full year gold production guidance by 6.6%. Gold production is set to come in between 715,000 to 730,000 ounces in 2015, from the previous guidance of 670,000 to 685,000 ounces.
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Astrazeneca said its phase III study of selumetinib in combination with dacarbazine for metastatic uveal melanoma did not meet its primary endpoint of progression free survival. The company is undertaking a full evaluation of the data of the trial.
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ARM Holdings said it expects to meet market expectations for dollar revenue in 2015 and posting a rise in pretax profit for its first half, as concerns over the slow-down of the smart phone market prevail. The chip designer reported a pretax profit of GBP198.1 million for the half year to end-June, up from GBP146.0 million a year before, as revenue rose 22% to GBP456.0 million from GBP373.7 million. In dollar terms revenue rose 15% to USD705.2 million from USD614.8 million. Within this, licensing revenue rose 7% to GBP95.8 million from GBP89.6 million, whilst royalty revenue rose 41% to GBP113.5 million from GBP80.3 million.
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The Sage Group reiterated its expectations for its current financial year, continuing to expect at least 6% organic revenue growth for the full year, as it saw organic revenue up 6.6% in its first nine months. The business software company said in the third quarter to end-June it saw organic revenue growth of 7.5%. Sage said growth was flattered by a relatively weak comparative third quarter in the previous year.
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Land Securities Group said its good momentum seen in its 2015 financial year has continued into the current period, with good performances in its London and Retail portfolios. The property developer said take-up in its London portfolio was healthy in the first quarter to the end of June, with vacancy rates low and rental values increasing. The group said it has seen good interest in its schemes in the capital and remains confident on securing lettings for the remaining vacant space on its books.
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The UK's Serious Fraud Office wants to discuss the possibility of a deferred prosecution agreement with Barclays over how it raised billions of pounds with Qatari investors during the global financial crisis, according to a Financial Times report. Citing people familiar with the investigation, the report said discussions are "very early stage" and that no offer has been made. "We are not in a position to comment on an ongoing legal matter, save to clarify that there has been no offer made of a DPA," Barclays said.
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TalkTalk Telecom Group was the biggest faller in the FTSE 250 despite reiterating its guidance for its current financial year, as it posted a slowdown in revenue growth for its quarter and warned on softness in the broadband market. The telecommunications company said the broadband market was softer in its first quarter to end-June than it has been in previous quarters as a result of "higher promotional activity" in the sector. Competition is increasing in the telecommunications market as providers continually work towards becoming 'quad play' providers - meaning they provide fixed-line voice, broadband, mobile and television services - in an effort to hold on to customers.
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Marston's which runs pubs and brews beer, said wage costs will be "moderately greater" than it had expected in the wake of the UK government's move to introduce a compulsory national living wage of GBP9 per hour by 2020. The company said the higher cost of paying staff will be mitigated by the fact it already had expected increases above the rate of inflation, as well as by the government's simultaneous move to cut corporation tax to 18% by 2020 from the current 20% rate.
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PayPoint said it is making satisfactory progress in selling its parking and online payment processing companies, as the UK payment service provider reported that overall trading in the first quarter of its financial year was in line with its expectations. The company said it processed 201.6 million transactions in the three months ended June 30, compared with 189.3 million in the corresponding period the prior year.
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Carbon and ceramic products manufacturer Morgan Advanced Materials said its pretax profit increased in the first half of 2015 on the back of improved revenue and solid order intake. Morgan Advanced said its pretax profit for the half was GBP49.2 million, up from GBP37.5 million a year earlier. Revenue increased to GBP469.2 million from GBP448.4 million and the group's profit was further boosted by an improvement in its earnings before interest, taxation and amortisation margin to 13% from 12.6% a year earlier. Morgan Advanced said its order intake in the first half was solid, with its book-to-bill ratio at 1.03-times and all three of its operating regions above 1-times.
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A slew of construction and support services companies said they have been named on packages awarded by Highways England for its GBP1.5 billion Smart Motorway programme. The scheme will involve increasing capacity, reducing congestion and shortening journey times across a number of stretches of the motorway in the UK. Balfour Beatty, as part of its joint venture with French construction company VINCI, has been selected to work on a package worth up to GBP607.4 million, the largest of the three packages awarded. Carillion and Kier Group, working in a joint venture, have been named on a GBP475 million package under the programme, while Galliford Try and Costain Group have been named on a GBP302 million portion of the scheme.
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MARKETS
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UK stocks are lower in the late morning, with easyJet leading the FTSE 100 after it beat guidance on revenue per seat and said its full-year pretax profit will rise.
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FTSE 100: down 1.0% at 6,704.52
FTSE 250: down 0.4% at 17,694.44
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.1% at 757.49
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The pound is up against the dollar after the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee member voted 9-0 to leave UK interest rates at 0.5% at its latest meeting held in July. Gold is resuming its downward trend, trading below USD1,100 an ounce.
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GBP: up at USD1.5616
EUR: down at USD1.0934

GOLD: down at USD1,095.44 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD56.67 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Policymakers of the Bank of England unanimously decided to keep the monetary policy unchanged at the meeting held early this month, the minutes of the meeting showed. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 9-0 to retain its key rate at a record low 0.50% and asset purchase programme at GBP 375 billion. For all members, the policy decision this month was clear cut, the minutes said.
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Bank of England Governor Mark Carney repeated his view that the picture on interest rate policy in the UK will become clearer towards the end of the year. Speaking at an event held by think-tank The Policy Exchange, Carney said the UK economy is still facing challenges from the economic weakness in the eurozone, the strength of sterling, and further UK government austerity measures.
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is cracking down on dissenters within his SYRIZA party ahead of a parliamentary vote Wednesday on a second batch of reforms agreed to in exchange for an international bailout. Government sources said Tsipras warned SYRIZA lawmakers during a meeting Tuesday to "not hide behind the safety of my signature." He said that lawmakers who supported an exit from the eurozone should try to first explain their position to the Greek people. A vote on the first raft of measures last week prompted about a quarter of the ruling SYRIZA party lawmakers to rebel, as anti-austerity demonstrations outside Parliament turned briefly violent.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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