Fenner PLC Share News (FENR)

LONDON (Alliance News) - It's UK Autumn Statement day for the London market Wednesday, while Wall Street will start to wind down for the US Thanksgiving Day holiday after the release of the minutes of the most recent Federal Reserve policy meeting.

Ahead of UK Chancellor Philip Hammond's statement to Parliament at midday, the stock-market focus was on company results, with Thomas Cook showing confidence by restoring its dividend despite a terror-hit year for the travel industry.

The stock was up 7.1%, just behind Hunting in the FTSE 250. Hunting was up 8.2% after being raised to Outperform from Neutral by Credit Suisse.

Here is what you need to know at the London market open:
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MARKETS
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FTSE 100: up 0.5% at 6,851.65
FTSE 250: up 0.3% at 17,736.12
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.1% at 816.72
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Hang Seng: closed flat at 22,676.69
Nikkei 225: Tokyo market shut for holiday
DJIA: closed up 0.4% at 19,023.87
S&P 500: closed up 0.2% at 2,202.94
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GBP: soft at USD1.2405 (USD1.2427)
EUR: flat at USD1.0621 (USD1.0615)

GOLD: firm at USD1,213.12 per ounce (USD1,209.00)
OIL (Brent): up at USD48.96 a barrel (USD48.55)

(changes since previous London equities close)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Wednesday's Key Economic Events still to come
(all times in GMT)

holiday Japan Labor Thanksgiving Day

0830 Germany Markit services, manufacturing and composite PMI preliminary
0900 EU Markit services, manufacturing and composite PMI preliminary
1230 UK Treasury Autumn Statement
1330 US initial and continuing jobless claims
1330 US durable goods orders
1400 US housing price index
1445 US Markit manufacturing PMI preliminary
1500 US Michigan consumer sentiment index
1500 US new home sales
1530 US EIA crude oil stocks
1700 US EIA natural gas storage
1900 US FOMC minutes
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UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is expected to unveil a bleak outlook for the public finances and downgrades to economic growth forecasts when he delivers his inaugural Autumn Statement on Wednesday. The Office for Budget Responsibility - which provides the official independent forecasts of the Government's performance - outlined during the March Budget that GDP growth would reach 2.0% this year, before hitting 2.2% in 2017, 2.1% in 2018 and 2.1% in both 2019 and 2020. However, the average independent forecasts compiled by the Treasury for November paints a gloomier picture for UK growth. It predicts UK GDP growth will be hit 2.0% this year, before sliding back to 1.3% next year, 1.5% in 2018, 1.8% in 2019 and 2.1% in 2020.
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Hammond is expected to provide GBP1.4 billion to construct new homes with an aim to improve housing affordability. In the Autumn Statement, the chancellor also is likely to lift the national living wage to GBP7.50 per hour from next April. The government plans to build 40,000 new homes. Further, letting agent fees are set to be scrapped to help 4.3 million households that depend on private rental houses.
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US President-elect Donald Trump has offered a senior job to Republican rival Ben Carson and condemned the controversial alt-right movement on another busy day for the incoming president. He also spoke positively about outgoing President Barack Obama and risked further angering some hardline supporters by signalling that he does not want defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted. The tycoon has now left to spend Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, as his advisers said he was focused on matters that are essential in setting up his administration, not on comments he made during the heat of the campaign. Trump has officially asked Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and he is expected to respond after the holiday.
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China's business sentiment picked up slightly in November after falling in the previous month, survey figures from MNI showed. The MNI business sentiment indicator, a gauge of current business confidence, rose to 53.1 in November from 52.2 in the previous month. In September, the reading was 55.8. The increase in November was driven by gains in new orders and output and the recent depreciation in the yuan.
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EU member states and parliament finalised a deal to regulate so-called conflict mineral imports, aiming to prevent warlords, militant groups and criminal regimes from funding their activities through the raw mineral trade. Beginning in 2021, a new regulation will "set to ensure" that 95% of all EU imports of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold are sustainably sourced.
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EU lawmakers appeared to form a broad majority in favour of temporarily freezing EU membership talks with Turkey. The European Parliament debated the issue in Strasbourg on the second day of a four-day plenary session and will hold a non-binding vote on Thursday. The proposal for suspending accession negotiations comes amid a heavy-handed crackdown on media and political opposition in Turkey by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has shown few signs of toning down his hardline response to a military faction's failed coup attempt on July 15.
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Syrian government ground forces pushed into eastern Aleppo, a monitoring group said, alleging that government helicopters had also dropped poisonous gas on the besieged rebel enclave. "We can say the regime took almost a third of Masakin Hanano, which is a key eastern Aleppo neighbourhood," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told dpa. The push into the only major urban centre still in rebel hands came as the UN envoy to Syria warned that the government now appeared highly confident of a quick military victory in the five-year-old conflict.
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A revised peace deal between the Colombian government and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) group is due to be signed on Thursday, according to a statement from government peace negotiators. The agreement is then expected to be approved by the country's Congress, where the ruling centre-right coalition National Unity has a majority.
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BROKER RATING CHANGES
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CREDIT SUISSE RAISES HUNTING TO 'OUTPERFORM' ('NEUTRAL') - TARGET 575 (500)P
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FinnCap Ups Fenner To Buy From Hold, Target At 300p
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TRADERS: PEEL HUNT RAISES SECURE TRUST BANK FROM 'ADD' TO 'BUY'
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COMPANIES - FTSE 100
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United Utilities Group said its operating profit grew in the first half while its revenue edged lower, adding it remains on track to meet its expectations for the full year. The water utility said it made an operating profit of GBP303.6 million in the half-year to the end of September, up from the GBP278.3 million made a year before. Pretax profit was down to GBP158.4 million from GBP215.6 million, due to higher financing expenses. Revenue edged down to GBP853.0 million from GBP857.0 million, in line with its expectations. The group declared an interim dividend of 12.95 pence per share, up 1.1% year-on-year.
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Severn Trent said late Tuesday it is considering its options after investment company Ancala Fornia ramped up the bidding battle for water company Dee Valley Group. Ancala had made a 1,550 pence per share bid for Dee Valley in October but this was trumped earlier this month by Severn Trent, which offered 1,705p per share, valuing Dee Valley at GBP78.5 million. Dee Valley switched its recommendation away from Ancala to the Severn Trent offer. But on Tuesday, Ancala came back with a new bid of 1,706.00p per Dee Valley share, overall valuing the company at around the same at the Severn Trent offer, but with a single extra penny on top.
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Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said both the co-primary endpoints and secondary endpoints have been met in phase 3 trials for its mepolizumab medicine. Mepolizumab is a treatment for relapsing and refractory Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis, a rare disease characterised by widespread inflammation in the walls of small blood vessels, Glaxo said.
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Retail property investor Hammerson said it and its partners in the VIA Outlets joint venture have acquired four established outlet shopping centres in Europe. Hammerson said the VIA Outlets venture - also comprising APG, Mayer Bergman and Value Retail - have bought four sites in Germany, Portugal, Spain and Poland for a total of EUR587.0 million Hammerson's share of the acquisition funding for the deal will be EUR170.0 million. The outlets include one in Zweibrucken in Germany, one in Vila Do Conde near Porto in Portugal, an outlet close to Seville in Spain, and one in Wroclaw in Poland.
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COMPANIES - FTSE 250
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Thomas Cook Group reported a fall in profit in its recently ended financial year, following a difficult period for tourism plagued by terrorist attacks and political instability, but the venerable travel operator resumed payment of a dividend for the first time in five years. Thomas Cook said pretax profit in the year ended September 30 fell to GBP42 million from GBP50 million the year before, as revenue slipped just slightly to GBP7.81 billion from GBP7.83 billion and it booked higher personnel expenses and depreciation charges. Thomas Cook will pay a 0.5 pence dividend for the year, having not paid a dividend for the past five years, which it said reflects confidence in its strategy and "the opportunity for sustainable, profitable growth".
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CMC Markets said a drop in trading levels led to reduced income and profit in its first half, but the provider of financial derivatives trading said it expects a recovery in activity in the second half. CMC reported a pretax profit of GBP18.8 million for six months to September 30, down 29% from GBP26.5 million in the prior financial year. The income decline came as the number of trades on CMC platforms fell by 9% to 30.4 million for the period from 33.5 million in the same period the prior year, with the value of those trades also down 18% to GBP911 billion from GBP1.12 trillion. CMC declared an interim dividend of 2.98 pence per share.
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IT infrastructure provider Softcat said its operating profit will be weighted towards the second half of its financial year, as it continues investing in the first half of the year. Softcat said that, during the first quarter to October 31, its gross profit performance has been strong, but the company has continued to make investments in both sales and technical resource. As such, the company expects operating profit to be weighted towards the second half of the financial year to end-July 2017.
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Respiratory drugs company Vectura Group reported substantial growth in revenue for the first half of its financial year, thanks to its acquisition of peer Skyepharma, though its pretax loss widened because of costs of the deal. Vectura said it made a pretax loss of GBP18.6 million in the half to September 30, widened from a GBP2.7 million loss a year before due to exceptional items booked on the Skyepharma merger. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose to GBP21.5 million from GBP4.7 million, however, stripping out those exceptional items.
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COMPANIES - LONDON MAIN MARKET AND AIM
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ServicePower Technologies late Tuesday said it had rejected an offer from Canada's Constellation Software but now is in talks with Diversis Capital over a potential cash offer for the company. ServicePower said it had received an approach from Diversis at an indicative price of 6.00 pence per share. The field service management software company emphasised that talks with Diversis were at a preliminary stage. This came shortly after Jonas Computing, the unit through which Constellation was in talks with ServicePower, said it did not intend to make an offer for ServicePower following further talks.
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COMPANIES - INTERNATIONAL
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German airline group Deutsche Lufthansa said it cancel 876 of 3,000 scheduled flights Wednesday due to a pilots' strike. The cancelled flights include 51 intercontinental flights and will affect some 100,000 passengers. Around 2,124 of 3,000 daily flights will take place, Lufthansa said. It plans to operate at least nine intercontinental flights Wednesday.
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Shares of French construction giant Vinci fell by more than 18% on Tuesday after a fake press release said the company would restate its accounts and sack its chief finance officer, Christian Labeyrie. According to Vinci, the hoax claim was first published late on Tuesday afternoon by the Bloomberg website. The false statement said the company would revise its 2015 and 2016 accounts after supposed accounting errors.
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HP, the PC and printer business of the former Hewlett-Packard, reported a profit for the fourth quarter that met analysts' expectations driven largely by a higher-than-expected revenues. The PC giant detailed a first-quarter outlook below consensus. HP's fourth-quarter profit dropped to USD492 million from USD1.32 million last year. Revenue for the quarter rose 2% to USD12.51 billion from USD12.27 billion last year. On a constant currency basis, revenues were up 4%.
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Drinks and food giant PepsiCo has agreed to buy probiotic drink maker KeVita, as the beverage giant expands its portfolio in the health-beverages segment. Although Pepsi did not disclose any financial terms of the deal, Fortune reports the transaction price to be around USD200 million. PepsiCo had acquired a minority stake in KeVita back in 2013.
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South Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Samsung and a state-run pension fund in connection with the current corruption scandal involving President Park Geun Hye and her friend Choi Soon Sil, the country's Yonhap news agency reported. Prosecutors were investigating whether Park pressured the National Pension Service to support Samsung in return for favours given to Choi, Yonhap said. The NPS, which held stakes in Samsung's construction arm and its de facto holding firm Cheil Industries, played a key role in the two companies' merger, Yonhap said.
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Facebook is so keen to return to China that it built a tool that would geographically censor information in the country, The New York Times reported. While that may help the Chinese government get comfortable with Facebook, the company's re-entry may not happen for years, if at all, given licensing restrictions and other regulations that favour locally owned companies. China blocked the world's largest social network in 2009.
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Tesla Motors, which completed its acquisition of SolarCity on Monday, has announced that Ta'u, an island in American Samoa, is now entirely powered by solar energy. The island, which depended on diesel generators, has been made self sufficient by Tesla after installing a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid that can supply nearly 100% of the island's power needs.
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Wednesday's Shareholder Meetings

Transense Technologies
ScS Group
Finsbury Food Group
Draganfly Investments
Sacoven (EGM re cancellation of AIM listing)
Town Centre Securities
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By Tom Waite; thomaslwaite@alliancenews.com; @thomaslwaite

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