Marks & Spencer Share News (MKS)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Wednesday.----------FTSE 100 - LOSERS----------easyJet, down 3.5%. Keppler Cheuvreux cut the low cost carrier to Hold from Buy. ----------Marks & Spencer, down 1.4%. RBC Capital downgraded the food, clothing and homewares retailer to Sector Perform from Outperform. "M&S has been a strong relative performer recently and now trades at a small premium to Next, despite the latter's more favourable online growth prospects. We expect M&S's cashflow profile to remain robust which should support its dividend, however we now think it will take longer to turn around its key Food business," said RBC. ----------FTSE 250 - WINNERS----------On the Beach Group, up 5.1%. The online holiday retailer reported a rise in profit in its recently ended financial year, helped by acquisitions and television advertising campaigns. The company said pretax profit for the year to the end of September rose by 24% to GBP26.1 million from GBP21.1 million the year earlier, as revenue grew by 25% to GBP104.1 million from GBP83.6 million. Revenue in the core segment improved 9.0% to GBP89.3 million, with revenue per daily unique visitor increased by 8.5% to GBP1.27 from GBP1.17 the year previous. On the Beach proposed final dividend of 2.2 pence per share, taking the total payout to 3.3p, up 18% from 2.8p paid the year before. Looking forward, the company said the first quarter of its current financial year is historically the quietest trading period. ----------FTSE 250 - LOSERS----------Thomas Cook Group, down 6.1%. Morgan Stanley downgraded the travel agent to Equal Weight from Overweight. On Tuesday, Thomas Cook closed down 23% after it suspended its annual dividend and issued a profit warning.----------Senior, down 4.6%. The engineer said it expects good progress to be made in 2018 as it invests in aircraft development programmes and new products. The company said trading in the 10 months to the end of October has been in line with expectations. The Aerospace division continued to benefit from positive activity in the large commercial aircraft sector, Senior said, with production increasing on the new aircraft development programmes. In 2019, the company said it intends to invest actively in the new product introductions and development of the programmes won over the past year. ----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS----------Cluff Natural Resources, up 16%. The natural resource investor said it signed an exclusivity agreement with an undisclosed international oil and gas firm on licence P2252. The P2252 licence is located to the north west of the Breagh gas field in southern North Sea. Exclusivity has been granted to the undisclosed partner, subject to a definitive farm out agreement being entered by the end of January and completion by February 28. In addition, the company said the UK Oil & Gas Authority has confirmed the extension of both the P2252 and P2248 licences for six months to the end of May. P2248 is located to the west of the depleted Esmond and Pegasus gas fields in southern North Sea. The extension is subject to Cluff completing a seismic and well work programme on the Pensacola prospect, a part of the P2252 licence, by the end of February. The company is also committed to drill one or more wells on the P2248 licence. ----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS----------Amedeo Resources, down 70%. The natural resource investor announced plans to cancel its AIM shares from trading and sub-divide its share capital after cost concerns. "The directors consider the cancellation to be in the best interest of shareholders, after considering, amongst other things, the costs of maintaining trading in the ordinary shares on AIM and the limited liquidity in the ordinary shares," Amedeo said. Shareholder approval of the cancellation will be sought December 17 and Amedeo's shares will continue to trade prior to cancellation.----------Ten Lifestyle Group, down 46%. The lifestyle concierge company said its loss widened in its recently-ended financial year as it invested heavily in its headcount. The company reported a widened pretax loss in the year to the end of August of GBP8.5 million from GBP2.2 million the year prior, despite revenue rising by 15% to GBP40.1 million from GBP34.9 million. Revenue growth has been supported by new contract launches, Ten Lifestyle said. At the end of its financial year, the company had 24 contracts, up from 15 it had at the same date in 2017. Ten Lifestyle highlighted that its 2018 financial year was a "period of investment", leading to growth in operating expenses to GBP41.1 million from GBP31.5 million year-on-year. A large proportion of growth was due to increased headcount which grew to 823 by August 31. On average, the company said it had 750 employees during its financial 2018 compared to 550 employees reported in financial 2017. ----------