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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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Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Lloyds Banking, up 6.1% and 4.8%, respectively. Citigroup raised both banks to Buy from Neutral.
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Barclays, up 5.4%. Citigroup raised the bank to Neutral from Sell.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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TUI, down 8.0%. The tour operator has decided to halt pre-payments and suspend contracts with some of its hotels to survive the severe downturn in the travel industry caused by coronavirus, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. "We are in close contact with our hotel partners worldwide, jointly reviewing options for capacity management, to mitigate the impact for both Tui and its partners," the company told the newspaper. TUI also stated that it had frozen recruitment and was considering cutting staff hours. According to the FT, citing hoteliers in Spain and Greece, TUI was in talks with a number of operators to invoke "force majeure" clauses in contracts and temporarily stop payments.
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Carnival, down 3.2%. On Thursday, the company said its Princess Cruises division will voluntarily pause its global operations in response to the "unpredictable circumstances" evolving from the spread of Covid-19 virus. "In proactive response to the unpredictable circumstances evolving from the global spread of covid-19 and in an abundance of caution, Princess Cruises announced that it will voluntarily pause global operations of its 18 cruise ships for two months, impacting voyages departing March 12 to May 10," the travel leisure company said.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Premier Oil, up 77%. The oil company said it continues to perform well with production to the end of February of 76,600 barrels of oil equivalent a day. The company's annual output guidance stands between 70,000 to 75,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, excluding the proposed UK acquisitions. With regards to the proposed acquisitions and extension to the company's credit facilities, the court hearing to sanction the creditor schemes of arrangement is scheduled to start on Tuesday next week, Premier noted. Elsewhere, Premier said it retains "significant" liquidity. It has unrestricted cash of USD135 million and undrawn facilities of USD330 million, as at the end of February. As well as maintaining liquidity, Premier is focused on managing its forward covenant position which could be hurt by the current oil price weakness, the company said.
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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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Redx Pharma shares almost tripled to 13.88p from just 4.50p at the close on Thursday. The drug discovery company has received two separate acquisition offers, one from new shareholder Redmile Group and the second from former suitor Yesod Bio-Sciences. The company in February ended takeover talks with Yesod Bio-Sciences and instead inked a GBP26.3 million funding deal with two investors, US healthcare investor Redmile and Paris-based Sofinnova Partners. On Friday, however, Redx said Redmile upped its stake in the company to around 46%, forcing Redmile to make a mandatory takeover offer under UK takeover rules. As a result, Redmile made a mandatory cash offer for Redx shares not already owned at 15.5p each. Moulton Goodies was the largest shareholder of Redx, holding 42% as of January. Separately, Redx also announced a receipt of a further private approach from Yesod Bio-Sciences which may lead to a possible cash offer for the company at 15p per share.
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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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Thor Mining, down 15%. The exploration and development company said its pretax loss widened to GBP479,000 in the six months to the end of 2019 compared to GBP406,000 loss reported a year ago. Thor did not generate any revenue in the period as it is currently developing its Kapunda copper project and Molyhil tungsten & molybdenum project, both located in Australia. Thor warned that copper prices moved in a range between USD5,000 per tonne and USD6,400 per tonne, with recent weakness potentially in a response to coronavirus disruption. The company also noted that tungsten pricing fell by 20% early in its financial half-year, but then recovered.
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GAN, down 14%. The internet gambling software supplier said internet gaming win in New Jersey was USD52.0 million in February, compared to USD31.7 million in the same month prior year, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 64%. Internet sports wagering gross revenues - after payouts - for the month of February were USD15.9 million, compared to USD12.9 million in February 2019, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 24%.
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By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com
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