Dfs Furn Share News (DFS)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Thursday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Coca-Cola HBC, up 6.1%. The soft drinks bottler reported growth in profit in the first half of 2016, but revenue slipped due to negative movements in foreign-exchange rates. Coca-Cola HBC said pretax profit in the recent six months to June 30 rose to EUR190.9 million from EUR164.7 million in the first half of 2015, although net sales revenue decreased to EUR3.04 billion from EUR3.15 billion. "We remain confident that 2016 will be another year of currency-neutral revenue and operating margin growth," Chief Executive Dimitris Lois said.

TUI Group, up 4.4%. The travel operator reported growth in earnings in the third quarter of its financial year, but revenue fell as it continued to suffer from the terrorist attacks which have occurred in Europe and the Middle East over the past year. The Anglo-German group said total earnings before interest, tax and amortisation grew by 27% to EUR162.9 million in the three months to June from EUR128.3 million a year before, although revenue slipped 5.4% to EUR4.83 billion from EUR5.10 billion. TUI reiterated its earnings guidance for the full year, with underlying Ebita expected to grow by at least 10%.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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Old Mutual, down 5.4%. The Anglo-South African financial services company said it is making good progress with its managed separation, which the insurer and wealth and asset manager expects to be "materially complete" by the end of 2018, as it increased its interim dividend and reported a fall in pretax profit for the first half of 2016. Old Mutual is currently undergoing to process of separating itself into four standalone businesses. Old Mutual reported a pretax profit of GBP608 million for the six months to the end of June, down from GBP683 million a year before. Pretax adjusted operating profit was GBP708 million, down 22% from GBP904 million a year before, hit by the weaker rand. Old Mutual proposed an interim dividend of 2.67 pence, up from 2.65p a year before. Shore Capital said Old Mutual's interim results were "a series of misses", but the broker retained a Buy recommendation as it expects value to be created by the process of separating Old Mutual into four standalone businesses.

Travis Perkins, down 3.0%. The builders' merchant was cut to Underweight from Equalweight by Barclays. The bank fears the UK’s vote to leave the EU will have a larger impact on the business than the market anticipates, with the bank forecasting the UK will experience a mild recession in 2017. "Economic and company data for July generally show demand is holding at levels consistent with earlier in the year, with some more sharply negative exceptions. Mortgage and housing data, which correlates well with Travis’s like-for-like growth, suggests demand may weaken in the final quarter of the year," Barclays said

British Land Co, down 2.4%. Liberum added the property company to its Conviction Sell List.

Royal Dutch Shell 'B', down 3.2%, Shell 'A', down 3.1%, Berkeley Group Holdings, down 2.1%, The stocks went ex-dividend meaning new buyers no longer qualify for the latest dividend payouts.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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DFS Furniture, up 12%. The furniture retailer said it expects to deliver a record performance for its full financial year and pay a higher dividend, after achieving good growth in revenue. DFS said revenue in the year ended July 30 grew by 7% year-on-year, and in light of this expects full-year results to be at the upper end of market expectations. DFS attributed store expansion, development of the omnichannel offering, retail space conversion and enhancement of its product ranges as reasons for revenue growth. Its subsidiaries Sofa Workshop and Dwell added 1% to overall growth, DFS said. DFS added that it anticipates announcing a progressive final dividend in line with guidance of an overall payout for the whole year of 45% to 50% of post-tax profit.

Riverstone Energy, up 2.2%. The energy investment company reported an increase in profit and net asset value per share for the first six months of 2016, despite a period of "prolonged" oil market volatility. Riverstone's operating profit for the six-month period to June 30 was USD25.5 million, over five times higher than its profit of USD4.1 million for the same period last year. The company said its net asset value in sterling rose to 1,225.00 pence per share in the period, from 1,040.00p a year earlier. This fell in dollar terms to USD16.24 from USD16.36 due to the strengthening of the dollar against the pound during the first six months of the year. Riverstone said it invested a total of USD203.00 million during the period, bringing its total capital invested to USD1.0 billion.

Hastings Group Holdings, up 1.6%. The motor insurer said its results for the six months to June displayed "impressive momentum", with increases in revenue and profit. Gross written premiums grew 28% year-on-year to GBP360.6 million from GBP282.7 million, as net revenue was up 27% to GBP282.7 million from GBP222.6 million a year previously. Pretax profit rose 20% in the half-year to GBP70.8 million from GBP59.2 million, which Hastings Group said was due to its strong operational performance, lower financing costs, and a "data-driven" approach. The motor insurer's market share grew to 6.2% from 5.5% at the end of June last year, it said.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Card Factory, down 8.3%. The gifts and greeting card retailer reported increased sales in the first half of its financial year, although growth was slower than the prior year which it attributed to lower footfall and uncertainty surrounding the EU referendum. The retailer said total sales in the six months ended July 31 rose by 4.8% year-on-year, although this was slower than the 8% growth achieved in the first half of the prior year. Like-for-like sales grew by 0.2%, compared with 2.8% the prior year. Card Factory said sales growth in the half was softer than prior levels due to "variability" in retail footfall impacting weekly sales patterns, and noted uncertainty resulting from the EU referendum result.

Aldermore Group, down 6.2%. The lender said it has seen "no direct impact" on its business from the UK's Brexit vote, and expressed optimism for its future, as it reported a rise in pretax profit for the first half of 2016. For the six months to the end of June, Aldermore reported pretax profit of GBP59.1 million, up from GBP39.5 million in the same period the previous year. It reported operating income of GBP127.7 million, up from GBP104.8 million. The company said it had delivered "another excellent credit performance", with its cost of risk maintained at 20 basis points in the half compared to the previous year.

Derwent London, down 3.5%. The property company said it expects demand levels for central London office space to dip in the near-term due to uncertainty following the UK's vote to leave the European Union. The company's portfolio valuation rose 1.6% over the six months, incorporating the recent increase in stamp duty land tax, to GBP5.20 billion, Derwent said. Its net asset value per share rose 1.8% to 3,598 pence from 3,535p over the same period, Derwent said, though noted this growth was "much lower" than recent half years. This came as the positive effect of rental value growth was offset by the negative effect on property values caused by the 1.0% rise in stamp duty land tax applicable to most of its portfolio, and the immediate reaction to the Brexit vote, Derwent added.

Cineworld Group, down 2.2%, The multiplex operator reported a fall in profit in the first half of 2016 due to negative currency movements, but revenue rose on the back of growth in admissions and the opening of new cinemas. The group said its pretax profit in the first half fell to GBP30.6 million from GBP46.8 million in the first half of 2015, despite revenue rising to GBP356.7 million from GBP329.1 million. Cineworld said profit was lower as it did not see a repeat of the one-off GBP6.4 million gain on a disposal the year before. The company also suffered a GBP6.1 million hit from unfavourable movements in foreign exchange rates, after the prior year benefited by GBP8.9 million from currency movements.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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LiDCO Group, up 4.2%. The hemodynamic monitoring company said trading was positive in its financial first half ended July 31, despite a "challenging" UK market, and announced the appointment of Phil Cooper as non-executive director. In the period, LiDCO said it expects to report product revenue up 10% to GBP3.0 million, from GBP2.8 million the year before, with total revenue estimated to be up 5.0% to GBP3.8 million. In the US, revenue is anticipated to be up 37% to GBP680,000. LiDCO said it saw high levels of hemodynamic monitoring technology adoption in the region, with contracts from individual hospitals contributing to the total.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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Bezant Resources, down 17%. The miner said it will seek additional equity funding to create a low cost mine plan for the Colombian platinum and gold licence areas in the Choco region over which it holds options. The company pointed to its strategy outlined in January to assess the economic viability of the licence areas and said the licences cover areas of near-surface platinum that have previously supported low-cost mining operations. As such, Bezant said it has decided to undertake a series of work programmes during 2016 and 2017 in order to correlate data from historical mining operations, define new platinum areas, undertake advanced separation and recovery test-work, all which will help it to create a low cost mine plan for the area.

John Lewis of Hungerford, down 15%. The kitchen, bedroom and furniture retailer said it will close its showrooms in Harrogate and Tunbridge Wells, following a review of its trading estate. The company said it has made this decision after assessing the prospects for each showroom and their recent financial performance. It noted that Tunbridge Wells has been performing materially below its other showrooms, while the average sales performance of the Harrogate showroom does not warrant the costs associated with supporting a showroom in the north of the country. The two showrooms contributed sales in aggregate of GBP370,000 in the last full year.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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