LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Friday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Fresnillo, up 0.3%. The precious metals miner is one of just a handful of risers in the FTSE 100 following positive broker recommendations and price target revisions from Numis Securities and JPMorgan. Numis has upgraded the company to Buy from Hold, increasing its price target to 1,100.00 pence from 1,000.00p, while JPMorgan has increased its price target to 1,030.00p from 965.00p.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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ARM Holdings, down 4.2%, and Sage Group, down 2.7%. Technology stocks are once again among the biggest fallers in the blue-chip index, amid concerns over the high multiples on which some of them trade. Concern over tech-stocks trading at unrealistic valuations began on the tech-heavy US NASDAQ market last Friday and has since spread to global markets and into the bio-technology sector. While they did pare a small portion of the losses mid-week, tech-stocks look set to end the week firmly in negative territory.
Barratt Developments, down 3.1%, and Persimmon, down 2.5%. The housebuilders are among the biggest blue chip losers "amidst renewed talk of a house price crisis and potential bubble burst soon," says Farhan Ahmed, trader at TradeNext.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Hays, up 0.1%. The recruitment company is one of just a few mid-cap risers following a raft of positive price target revisions. Kepler Cheuvreux has raised its target to 160.00 pence from 153.00p, Exane BNP Paribas has increased its to 175.00p from 145.00p, and Barclays has lifted its to 190.00p from 155.00p. The rise in share price follows on from a 4.6% jump Thursday after the firm released a positive management statement.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Pace, down 5.1%, Laird, down 4.5%, Imagination Technologies Group, down 3.4%, and Xaar, down 3.3%. The companies are further examples of technology stocks being hit by concerns over valuations.
Berkeley Group Holdings, down 3.4%. The company is another housebuilder among the big fallers Friday.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - WINNERS
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Equatorial Palm Oil, up 40%. The palm oil development company said it has started an agreement with KLK Agro Plantations, which will provide up to USD35.5 million in funding for their Liberian Palm Developments Ltd joint venture.
URU Metals, up 23%. The base metals and uranium explorer and development company said it has completed the acquisition of Umnex Minerals Limpopo and has confirmed its 100% interest in the Zebediela Nickel Project in South Africa. The Zabediela project holds a combined inferred and indicated resource of over 1.5 billion tonnes of nickel and a preliminary economic assessment completed for the site in 2012 showed an indicated resource of 495.4 million tonnes averaging 0.245% nickel.
Cientifica, up 7.1%. The firm has entered into a call option under which it could take a 49.9% stake in newly-formed graphene company Rainmaker Technologies. The venture is intending to bring together a number of companies with graphene application projects and their management teams which have expertise in a range of sectors. The first part of the option would involve a GBP100,000 cash investment by Cientifica, which hopes the deal will rapidly expand its interests in the graphene market.
Nature Group, up 5.9%. The company said it has be granted planning permission by the government of Gibraltar for the re-building of its waste oil reception facility at the North Mole. The rebuild is expected to take up to 12 months.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - LOSERS
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Lombard Medical Technologies, off 11%. The medical technology company has delayed its initial public offering on the NASDAQ, blaming the adverse US stock market conditions that has seen biotechnology stocks sold heavily on Wall Street in recent days. It has been trying to de-list from London's AIM and move to the NASDAQ in an effort to accelerate the commercialisation of its Aorfix product in the US, but has been stymied by the recent volatility on NASDAQ, where technology and biotechnology stocks in particular have been sold in recent days due to fears that they were becoming over-valued.
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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp
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