LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are amongst the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Tuesday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Reed Elsevier, up 2%. Barclays has upgraded the company, soon to be renamed RELX, to Overweight from Equal Weight, increasing its price target to 1,225 pence from 1,135p, saying that it is confident Reed's shares can still deliver a "decent performance" without a catalyst, given its valuation in relation to its peer group in other sectors. As a "defensive" name with very reliable growth, Barclays sees Reed's natural peer group as the more predictable businesses within staples, leisure and business services. Reed's shares are currently quoted at 1,083.00 pence.
International Consolidated Airlines Group, up 0.4%. Shares in the British Airways owner have risen after HSBC upgraded it to Buy from Hold. HSBC has a 630 pence price target on the stock. IAG's shares are currently quoted at 522.50p.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Anglo American, down 2.6%, and Rio Tinto, down 1.7%. Shares in the mining companies have fallen after Société Générale downgraded them both to Hold from Buy. SocGen also slashed its price target on Anglo American to 1,090 pence from 1,540p, lowering its price target on Rio Tinto to 3,100p from 4,000p. Shares in Anglo American are currently quoted at 978.80p, while Rio Tinto's are quoted at 2,772.00p.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Vedanta Resources, up 5.1%. Shares in the natural resource company have risen after it noted press speculation about potentially merging its subsidiary Cairn India Ltd into itself. Vedanta did not comment on the speculation, but said it "will make appropriate disclosures as and when required" about the potential merger of its wholly-owned subsidiary Vedanta Ltd and Cairn India, which is partly owned by Cairn Energy. Shares in Cairn Energy are down 0.1%.
RPC Group, up 3.8%. The plastic products designer and maker reported higher profits and earnings for its last financial year, helped by acquisitions, and said the current year has got off to a satisfactory start despite adverse exchange rate movements and a time lag in passing through higher polymer prices. It posted a pretax profit for the year to end-March of GBP67.1 million, up from GBP59.0 million a year earlier, as revenue increased to GBP1.22 billion from GBP1.05 billion. Its closely-watched pretax profit excluding restructuring, impairment charges exceptional items rose to GBP119.0 million from GBP89.5 million. The company raised its full-year dividend to 15.4 pence from 13.8p.
Savills, up 1.4%. UBS has increased its price target on the real estate services company to 1,025 pence from 900p, maintaining its Buy recommendation. The Swiss bank also has made minor upgrades to its earnings forecasts to reflect the UK general election result and recent acquisitions. Savills shares are currently quoted at 945.00 pence.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Pets At Home Group, down 3.9%. Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co has sold a further 108.0 million shares in Pets at Home Group, a 21.6% stake in the pet product retailer it listed last year, at 267 pence per share. BofA Merrill Lynch, the bookrunner on the accelerated bookbuild placing, said that KKR's sale of the 21.6% stake the company raised about GBP288 million for the private equity firm. KKR will hold a 24.6% stake in Pets At Home on completion of the placing. The private equity firm will not be able to sell any further shares for 90 days following completion. Pets At Home's shares are currently quoted at 270.00 pence.
Just Eat, down 1.8%. The company said 41.33% of the shares available under its recently-announced open offer were taken up, and the remainder have been placed so that it raised about GBP445 million to fund the company's acquisition of Menulog Group. It announced the open offer and placing last month and the open offer closed on Monday. It got valid acceptances for 43.6 million shares under the open offer, and the remaining 61.8 million in the offer were taken up under its placing. It had already said that its major shareholders, which held 42.97% of its share issuance ahead of the placing and open offer, wouldn't take up their entitlement under the open offer. Shares in the company are currently quoted at 416.50 pence.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Bacanora Minerals, up 14%. The company said it knows of no reason for the sharp increase in its share price in Canada overnight. Its stock rose 46% to CAD2.05 on the TSX Venture Exchange overnight. "The board is not aware of any reason for the price movement. The board will continue to work towards delivering value for all shareholders," the minerals explorer said in a short statement.
Porta Communications, up 12%. The public relations and marketing company said Chairman Bob Morton acquired 6.3 million shares at a price of 7 pence per share through Hawk Investments Holdings, a company beneficially owned by Morton and his wife. Following this transaction, Morton is beneficially interested in 42.6 million shares in Porta representing 15.36% of the issued share capital. Shares in Porta are currently quoted at 8.00 pence.
Private & Commercial Finance Group, up 10%. The company, which provides money to individuals and businesses looking to finance vehicles, plant or equipment, said it wants to restructure its balance sheet in a move to enable the payment of a dividend to shareholders. News of the plans for a dividend payment came as the company said that pretax profit increased to GBP2.1 million in the year ended March 31, compared with GBP1.2 million in the prior year, as revenue increased by 6.2% to GBP45.3 million, and administrative expenses fell by 3.6% to GBP6.7 million.
Croma Security Solutions Group, up 9.1%. The group said it had won three new contracts in the UK, including a further three-year deal worth between GBP1.1 million and GBP1.2 million to provide maintenance, servicing, installation and upgrade work for ODEON cinemas. It also signed a further five-year contract with Hilton Hotels to continue routine maintenance of its revenue parking systems and servicing. It expects this deal total GBP0.9 million over the five years, with the possibility of additional revenue for upgrade works over the tenure of the contract. Croma said it also won a deal to install a secure Fastvein biometric access control system into "the second largest Bank in the UK", working in partnership with Hitachi, for an undisclosed value.
Deltex Medical Group, up 8.1%. The company said that a US hospital, in which its oesophageal Doppler monitoring technology has been introduced, has now made it part of its enhanced recovery protocol for all colorectal surgery and could expand it to other areas such as urology and gynaecology. The company said doctors from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, presented the results from introduction of oesophageal Doppler monitoring as a quality improvement initiative in colorectal surgery at the 2015 meeting of the American Society for Colon and Rectal Surgeons.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Beowulf Mining, off 16%. On Monday, Beowulf's shares rose 30% after it said it has produced "super high grade" concentrates from the Kallak North iron ore prospect in northern Sweden that will benefit from higher prices. On Tuesday, Beowulf said it issued just over 2.0 million new shares to three of its directors, a deal that follows the board's decision last October to take some of their salary and fees in shares instead of cash. The mineral explorer said it has issued Chief Executive Kurt Budge with 716,426 shares, Chief Operating Officer Jan-Ola Larsson with 686,523 shares and Non-Executive Chairman Bevan Metcalf with 632,508 shares. It based the allocation on its Monday closing price of 2.25 pence. It said the move by the directors to take some of their salary and fees in shares, which it described as a salary sacrifice that aligned their interests with those of shareholders, had saved it some GBP45,798 in cash. Shares in the company are quoted at 1.90 pence.
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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp
Copyright 2015 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
10 Mar 2015 17:00
