RGU.L Share News (RGU)

(ShareCast News) - Analysts at Investec upped their rating for Regus from 'hold' to 'buy' after the office space provider more than doubled its interim pre-tax profit.Shares in Regus were up by 8.43% to 271.20p at 1507 BST after the office provider said return on investment had improved to 23.1% from 20.9%.Investec reiterated a 295p price target but said its recommendation changed as the share price had recently reversed."Overall, this was a solid update by Regus with the continued improvement in its post-tax cash returns on investment the key highlight," the bank said.Regus had strong underlying trading and its network investment was continuing to deliver good returns, Investec said.Investec increased its 2017 profit before tax forecast by 6.9% to £216.6m from £202.6m and earnings per share to 18.5p from 17.3p, and said there was room for operational efficiency improvements.The Share Centre analyst Ian Forrest said in a note it held a 'buy' rating on Regus."These are good figures from Regus as we believe they demonstrate respectable growth, despite some weakness in the global economic environment," Forrest said. Shares in Home Retail were under pressure after Barclays downgraded the stock to 'underweight' from 'equalweight' and cut the price target to 130p from 175p.The bank's analysis showed that Home should be disproportionately hit by UK wage inflation as a large proportion of its labour force is not on living wage and the company's low-margin profile does not leave much room to manoeuvre."While Home has been historically very successful in managing costs effectively, we doubt any price increases can be made in order to alleviate the pressure due to the commoditised nature of many of Home's products," Barclays said.In addition, the product cycle was viewed as unexciting for Argos into the peak period other than large-screen branded TVs, which is a category where Argos is under-penetrated.Barclays said that combined with increased competition from consumer electronics specialists like Currys and John Lewis and pure players like Amazon and AO, risks are skewed to the downside both for the second half of next year and full-year 2017 earnings, with limited ability from the company to mitigate them in the next 12 months."We believe that some of management's initiatives could have a positive effect on earnings in the mid term, but we expect EPS momentum to remain negative in the next 12 months." Analysts at Numis upgraded merchant bank Close Brothers Group to 'add' from 'hold' and said the bank was largely unaffected by market concerns such as rising US rates and weakness in China.Numis dropped its price target for the bank to 1540p from 1545p but said it upped its recommendation due to its recent share price weakness."The group has a very long track record of playing the cycle well in the core banking division and we have already factored in higher UK interest rates into our forecasts," analyst James Hamilton said.Hamilton said the track record of the bank meant it was worthy of a premium valuation, and Close was well positioned in the attractive specialist market segments of UK banking.Numis noted while Close would see lower growth, and shed market share, it would protect its margin and the quality of its loan book as far as possible."Current banking returns are unsustainable and we forecast increasing impairment and falling margins through our forecast period despite our belief that Close will do better than most," Hamilton said.