LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Friday.----------FTSE 100 - WINNERS----------Smiths Group, up 1.8%. The engineer boosted its interim dividend despite lower profit, as it outlined plans to spin-out its struggling medical unit by the end of 2020. For the six months ended January, pretax profit narrowed 13% to GBP174 million from GBP200 million the year prior. This was despite revenue rising 2.0% to GBP1.57 billion from GBP1.54 billion the year before. Profit performance was hurt by a rise in exceptional costs to GBP42 million from GBP18 million the year prior. Smiths set out plans to demerge its Smiths Medical business and separately list it in the UK, with the process expected to complete in the second half of 2020. The firm has already began searching for a Smiths Medical CEO and "does not foresee any potential roadblocks in executing the demerger". Smiths proposed a 14.1 pence per share interim dividend, up 2.2% from 13.8p the year prior.----------Pearson, up 0.9%. JPMorgan raised the education publisher to Overweight from Neutral. ----------FTSE 100 - LOSERS----------Aviva, down 1.8%. The insurer said Chair Keith Williams will be departing in May to take up the same role at FTSE 250 postal operator Royal Mail. Williams is already deputy chair at Royal Mail, but will take over from Les Owen as chair on May 22, following the release of its annual results for its year ending March 25. Royal Mail said Williams is a "highly regarded" bushiness leader. Williams was formerly chief financial officer, chief executive, and executive chair at British Airways owned by International Consolidated Airlines Group. Williams will leave Aviva on May 23, following the FTSE 100 insurer's annual general meeting. Aviva's Senior Independent Director Glyn Barker will become interim chair while a permanent replacement is looked for. Royal Mail was down 1.9%. ----------FTSE 250 - WINNERS----------Sanne Group, up 1.0%. The hedge fund administrator said profit rose in 2018 due to robust growth from its Alternatives business, as well as new business wins. Sanne posted a pretax profit of GBP23.7 million for 2018, up 5.8% from GBP22.4 million the year before. Revenue totalled GBP143.0 million, up 26% from GBP113.2 million in 2017 including 52% revenue growth from its Europe, Middle East & Africa Alternatives segment to GBP71.8 million from GBP46.8 million. New business wins in the year came to GBP24.5 million versus GBP20.9 million in 2017. The company has declared a final dividend of 9.2p per share, taking the total dividend for the year up 9.5% to 13.8p per share from 12.6p per share.----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS----------Rockfire Resources, up 35%. The miner announced it has found "high-grade" copper at the Copper Dome project in central Queensland, Australia. Rock samples returned maximum grades of 23% copper, 3.2 grammes of gold per tonne of ore, and 952 grammes of silver per tonne. Of Rockfire's rock samples, 23% assayed above 0.5 grammes of gold per tonne, 5 grammes of silver per tonne, or 0.1% copper. The plan is to now sample soil towards the south of the project to find out the extent of copper-in-soil anomalies. Rockfire will also expand soil sampling to new western areas. "The rock samples have returned extremely high-grade copper and strongly elevated gold and silver in an area to the west of previous drilling. The correlation with topographic ridges provides potential for very high-grade, vein-hosted mineralization, as well as porphyry-style copper/gold targeted by the soil sampling," Chief Executive David Price said. ----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS----------Debenhams, down 27%. The struggling department store chain said it launched a consent solicitation with its bondholders in order to seek permission to raise GBP200 million by amending the terms of its loan notes. The department store launched the solicitations with holders of its 5.25% senior notes due 2021. It expects the process to remain open until Thursday. The amendments to the notes will allow the company to secure new money providing liquidity headroom for Debenhams' future funding needs and delivering stability, the retailer said. Meanwhile, shareholder Sports Direct International continued to put pressure on Debenhams, offering to buy its Danish business Magasin Du Nord for GBP100 million in cash, but only if Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley is put in charge of the rest of Debenhams. Under Sports Direct's proposal, Debenhams would have a 12-month option to buy back Magasin Du Nord at the price at which it was sold to Sports Direct. If accepted, Sports Direct proposed that its chief executive officer & founder Ashley take on the role of CEO at Debenhams to assist the restructuring programme----------SDX Energy, down 10%. The North Africa-focused oil and gas company said its comprehensive income for 2018 nearly diminished due to impairments, costs, and a lack of gains from the acquisition of Circle Oil assets. SDX reported a total comprehensive income of USD100,000, down from USD28.3 million the year before. Exploration costs rose to USD5.7 million from USD200,000, and SDX also reported an impairment expense of USD3.5 million on the reduced economic life of the North West Gemsa asset in Egypt. In addition, in 2017 SDX made a gain of USD29.6 million on the acquisition of the Egyptian and Moroccan businesses of Circle Oil. However, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation and exploration was USD34.3 million, up from USD21.4 million the prior year, on netback that grew to USD41.7 million compared to USD28.9 million.----------
16 Apr 2020 15:59
