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(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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Hikma Pharmaceuticals, up 11%. The generic drugmaker raised the annual sales outlook for its two main units and reported higher first-half profit, as hospitals stocked up on essential medicines during the Covid-19 pandemic. For the half-year ended June 30, attributable profit came in at USD212 million, up 16% from USD185 million last year, and revenue was USD1.13 billion, up 8% from USD1.05 billion. Hikma said it expects 2020 revenue from the Injectables business to be between USD950 million and USD980 million, up as much as 9.6% from USD894 million in 2019, raised from a previous forecast of growth in the low to mid-single digits. The Injectibles unit makes needle-based drugs primarily for hospitals. In addition, Hikma raised the revenue outlook for its Generics division to a range of USD720 million to USD760 million, from USD700 million to USD750 million previously. The Generics arm makes a broad range of branded and non-branded generic medicines - usually cheaper than patented medicines. Hikma raised its interim dividend 14% to 16.0 cents from 14.0 cents.
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Rightmove up 8.5%. The property portal pointed to positive signs in the UK housing market going forward, despite posting a fall in interim profit. Rightmove reported a drop in first-half profit and scrapped its dividend after the Covid-19 crisis prompted the property portal to offer discounts to its customers. For the half-year to June 30, pretax profit dropped to GBP61.6 million, down from GBP108.1 million last year, as revenue fell to GBP94.8 million from GBP143.9 million. Average revenue per advertiser was down by 34% to GBP712 per month from GBP1,077 last year. However, Rightmove said stamp duty holidays offered by the UK government provided the potential for cautious optimism that housing transaction levels would increase from the low point in the second quarter. "The platform had many of it's busiest days ever since the property market reopened, thanks to pent up demand, a stamp duty holiday and higher interest in relocations after lockdown," commented analysts at Hargreaves Lansdown.
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Hargreaves Lansdown, up 6.3%. The fund supermarket said it delivered a strong annual performance, despite an external environment of persistent challenges. The company, which offers an investment platform for retail investors, said assets under administration for the year to June 30 increased 5% year-on-year to GBP104.0 billion from GBP99.3 billion a year ago. Net new business inflows also rose 5% year-on-year to GBP7.7 billion from GBP7.3 billion. Annual pretax profit jumped 24% to GBP378.3 million from GBP305.8 million profit a year ago. This included a gain on disposal of GBP38.8 million relating to FundsLibrary Ltd. Stripping out the exceptional disposal gain, pretax profit rose 11% year-on-year to GBP339.5 million. Revenue rose 15% to GBP550.9 million from GBP480.5 million, driven by higher asset levels and record share dealing volumes seen in the second half of the year. Following the strong performance, Hargreaves Lansdown raised its total dividend 11% to 54.9 pence from 42p.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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Rolls-Royce Holdings, down 3.7%. The Financial Times reported US-based activist investor ValueAct sold its entire shareholding in the jet engine maker - citing two people familiar with the situation. According to the FT, ValueAct built a 10% stake in Rolls-Royce in 2015 after it issued a string of profit warnings. The UK engineering company is currently evaluating a GBP1.5 billion to GBP2 billion capital raise to help restore its balance sheet. ValueAct started reducing its stake - which peaked in 2017 at 11% - after the departure of Rolls-Royce's chief operating officer Brad Singer in December.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Greggs, up 2.3%. Jefferies started coverage on the high street bakery chain with a Buy rating.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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TP ICAP, down 11%. The interdealer broker said earnings for the first half of 2020 fell as it noted a slowdown in trading activity at the beginning of the second half. TP ICAP said pretax profit for the six months to June 30 was GBP78 million, down 6.0% year-on-year from GBP83 million. This was despite revenue rising 7.4% to GBP990 million from GBP922 million. The London-based company said the Covid-19 pandemic led to higher volatility and volumes, particularly in February and March, which subsequently resulted in higher revenues in its Energy & Commodities, Institutional Services and some Global Broking asset classes. However, profit was hurt by higher business reorganisation costs due to the proposed group redomiciliation, a GBP10 million expense due to an increase in unused annual leave as at June 30, and an Asia Pacific goodwill impairment.
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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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Scapa Group, up 32%. The adhesive products manufacturer said revenue for the first-quarter ended June 30 was "well ahead" of the company's Covid-19 scenario plan and annual trading profit is currently trending 10% ahead of market estimates. Scapa explained that the combination of the better-than-anticipated business performance in financial 2021 to date, early cost intervention measures and continued improvement across both divisions mean the company's outlook on full-year trading profit is trending approximately 10% ahead of market expectations. Scapa had an adjusted net debt at the end of June 30 of GBP18.4 million, compared to the financial 2020 year-end position of GBP54.4 million.
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Avacta Group, up 5.5%. The Affimer biotherapeutics and reagents developer said it has partnered with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for the clinical validation of the rapid, saliva-based coronavirus antigen test which is being developed with life sciences firm Cytiva. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is dedicated to researching tropical medicine and disabling diseases, and has a research portfolio of GBP320 million. Under the collaboration, LSTM will carry out a clinical validation of the SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test in its laboratories on patient samples, gathered from the UK, Africa and South America. Clinical validation is the process of evaluating the performance of a diagnostic test using real patient samples. Such a process generates the sensitivity and specificity performance parameters which are most often used to define the performance of a diagnostics test.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com
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