(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Friday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Royal Bank of Scotland, up 3.3%. The blue chip lender reported a sharp drop in first-quarter profit, as it was forced to significantly increase its credit impairments to cope with the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. In the three months to March 31, the state-backed lender's operating pretax profit nearly halved to GBP519 million from GBP1.01 billion in the same period the year before. RBS recorded GBP802 million in impairment losses in the quarter, up from GBP86 million a year before. The credit losses represents 90 basis points of gross customer loans, compared to 11 basis points the year before. The significant rise, RBS said, was to cover the "more uncertain economic outlook". Net interest income was down 4.4% year on year at GBP1.94 billion from GBP2.03 billion. Total income was up 3.9% however at GBP3.16 billion.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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Royal Dutch Shell A shares, down 6.2%. HSBC cut the oil major to Hold from Buy. On Thursday, Shell announced its first dividend cut since the second world war amid the oil price crash. The Anglo-Dutch company slashed its first-quarter dividend to 16 US cents from 47 cents. Shell's first-quarter current cost of supplies earnings attributable to shareholders, excluding items, were USD2.9 billion, down 46% on a year ago due to a drop in oil, gas and liquefied natural gas prices as well as lower sales volumes. The oil giant produced 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, down 1% on a year before. B shares were down 5.8%. Shell closed 11% lower on Thursday.
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Hargreaves Lansdown, down 2.7%. Liberum cut the fund supermarket to Hold from Buy.
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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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ValiRx, up 45%. The clinical stage biotechnology firm has signed an agreement with an unnamed "global" Japanese pharmaceutical company to evaluate Valirx's therapeutic, VAL301, to evaluate a potential future license, for its use in the treatment of endometriosis. The material transfer agreement covers the evaluation of VAL 301 in a series of preclinical proof of concept and efficacy studies relating to endometriosis. Studies are also scheduled to consider proprietary delivery methods for the compound.
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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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Ryanair, down 4.2%. The Irish budget airline said it could slash up to 3,000 jobs as it embarks on a restructuring in response to destructive effects the Covid-19 has had pandemic on travel. Ryanair also took aim at what it labelled as "state-aid doping", to which the likes of airline Deutsche Lufthansa and Anglo-German holiday operator TUI have turned in the face of the ongoing health crisis. Ryanair expects the recovery of passenger demand and pricing to 2019 levels will take at least 2 years, until summer 2022 at the earliest. Dublin-based Ryanair's outlook for its first half and beyond is bleak. Travel restrictions mean its first quarter traffic will be more than 99% lower than initially planned. It expects traffic of fewer than 150,000 passengers, a fraction of its initial forecast of 42.4 million passengers. It expects to operate fewer than 1% of its scheduled flight programme in April, May and June. Blue chip peers Easyjet and IAG were down 5.4% and 3.6%, respectively. Midcap midcap Wizz Air was down 3.8%.
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By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com
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