Marks & Spencer Share News (MKS)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Tuesday.

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FTSE 100 - WINNERS

Sports Direct International, up 4.1%, and Marks and Spencer, up 2.9%. The retailers have jumped after a report by the British Retail Consortium revealed UK retail sales rose by much more than expected in January.

Fresnillo, up 4.1%, and Randgold Resources, up 2.5%. The gold mining companies continue to edge higher, after Monday rising 8.8% and 2.4% respectively, on the back of a strengthening gold price. The precious metal has climbed by more than 3% since the beginning of February.

Babcock International Group, up 3.2%. The company said its bid pipeline has increased by GBP3.0 billion to GBP18.5 billion since the half-year end, making good on its promise at the time that "significant" long-term growth opportunities were being progressed. The engineering group said its higher bid pipeline, together with the significant opportunities still being tracked, will be the key driver of organic growth over the next few years. Subsequently, WH Ireland has increased its price target to 1,550.00 pence from 1,450.00p, retaining its Buy recommendation.

Anglo American, up 1.7%. The major mining company has announced good results from its subsidiary Kumba Iron Ore Ltd's operations for the full year 2013. The group said that Kumba announced a 4.6% increase in its headline earnings to USD1.60 billion for the year from USD1.53 billion in 2012. After a set of adjustments, including depreciation of some assets and corporate cost allocations, the contribution of cash to Anglo American also will be up, at USD1.11 billion from USD1.04 billion. The news comes ahead of Anglo American's full-year financial results announcement due on Friday.

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FTSE 100 - LOSERS

Barclays, down 3.5%. The bank, which unexpectedly pre-released its headline profit figure Monday, is the biggest blue-chip loser Tuesday, on the back of disappointing cost-cutting measures revealed in its full earnings report, say analysts.

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FTSE 250 - WINNERS

Kazakhmys, up 25%. Kazakhmys shares have jumped after the National Bank of Kazakhstan effectively devalued its currency, the tenge. The central bank said Tuesday it would intervene in the forex market to support the tenge only at KZT185 to the US dollar - a 19% devaluation from Monday's rate. There are obvious short-term benefits to the devaluation, with 60% of Kazakhmys costs generated in Kazakhstan, says Liberum Capital. However, the brokerage maintains its Hold recommendation, saying that the company still has a lot of work to do elsewhere.

Debenhams, up 4%, and Dixons Retail, up 2.8%, are two more companies benefiting from the better-than-expected UK retail sales figures.

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FTSE 250 - LOSERS

Thomas Cook Group, down 1.6%. The tour operator said its pretax loss widened for the first quarter as revenue declined during the period. In the three months to December 31, 2013, the company reported a widened pretax loss of GBP161 million from GBP123 million in the same period of last year. Revenue fell to GBP1.656 billion from GBP1.671 billion.

Halma, down 0.9%. The company's share price has dipped after it revealed that it expects to see pretax profit in the range of GBP139 million to GBP140 million for the full year ending March 29.

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AIM - WINNERS

African Copper, up 39%. The copper production and exploration company said work it completed during a planned shutdown at its Mowana Mine in November has led to higher grades and increasing production. In December and January, the company produced 1,124 metric tonnes of copper concentrate each month, after producing just 632 metric tonnes in October and 743 metric tonnes in November. Average grades increased to 2.02% copper in January from 1.21% copper in November.

Fitbug Holdings, 16%. The group said it has secured a GBP1.0 million loan agreement with NW1 Investments Ltd., and that its Fitbug KiK coaching plans have received a very strong market response following its official launch in January.

WANdisco, up 11%. The software provider said it has launched the Non-Stop HBase, a database for Big Data real-time transaction processing. The firm said it has applied its active-active replication technology to HBase, making it continuously available across multiple data centers. WANdisco said the product eliminates the single points of failure in HBase. HBase is an open source, non-relational, distributed database modeled on Google's BigTable and used for random, real-time read/write access to Big Data.

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AIM - LOSERS

Tricorn Group, off 24%. The tube manipulation specialist said it expects its revenues for the second-half are expected to come in 15% lower than first-half figures, as demand continues to lighten. Although it has been taking steps to restructure the business in order to reduce the impact of the lower revenue levels, the firm said that it anticipates full-year profit before tax will be materially below current market expectations.

Sabien Technology Group, down 14%. The company said its 2014 first-half pretax loss much-widened to GBP245,000 from GBP67,000 in 2012.

Elektron Technology, down 8.5%. The technology company said its net debt for the year has risen as it saw a "disappointing" financial performance in the full year to January 31. It said the disruption of its production in Tunisia, restructuring and other exceptional costs led to an increased net debt of GBP8.2 million as at January 31, compared to an average net debt level of GBP7.9 million for the year.

Ashley House, down 8.2%. The health care property partner has confirmed that the final payment of funds relating to the LIFT scheme previously aborted by the NHS has been agreed, clearing all items of accrued income or outstanding payment from its balance sheet that were significantly impacted by the abolition of the Primary Care Trust. The company has also updated on its current progress, with planning applications submitted for three new schemes. However, "further significant progress needs to be made by year-end on these schemes to meet our full year estimates", says WH Ireland analyst John Cummins

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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp

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