UNG.L Share News (UNG)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Tuesday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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BG Group, up 1.7%. Subsidiary QGC confirmed Tuesday that it has begun operating a network of upstream gas processing plants integral to the delivery of gas to the Curtis island liquefaction facilities. "Confirmation of the start of gas processing operations should provide some greater visibility on the progress being achieved," said Deutsche Bank in a note to clients.

Shire, up 0.9%. The pharmaceutical company's volatile trading has continued, with its shares among the leading risers in the blue-chip index Tuesday. The stock has regularly been one of the biggest risers or fallers in the index in recent weeks amid merger and acquisition speculation within the pharmaceutical and health care sectors. UBS has increased its price target to 4,500 pence, from 3,450p, to reflect a 30% M&A premium after it was revealed last week that the company had rejected three indicative takeover approaches from US pharmaceutical research and development company AbbVie Inc. However, it has retained its Neutral recommendation on the stock, saying that while AbbVie could come back with a higher offer, the downside risk of a higher offer not materialising offsets the upside.

Tullow Oil, up 0.5%. The oil and gas exploration company said it has made a further oil find in northern Kenya during exploration drilling, which may have identified a new fault block in the developing Ngamia field area. It said its Ngamia-2 appraisal well found up to 39 metres of net oil pay and 11 metres of net gas pay, appearing to represent a new fault block area north of its previous Ngamia-1 discovery. The company said the reservoirs were of high quality, with over 200 metres of net reservoir sands and good permeability. It added that its separate SMP-5 drilling rig has completed testing operations on its Kenyan Agete-1 well which has shown a flow rate of 500 barrels of oil per day, and it is now preparing to test its Ewoi-1 discovery.

Petrofac, up 0.5%. The oil and gas services company said it has seen a good performance at its engineering, construction, operations & maintenance division in the first six months of 2014 and has not been significantly hit by the growing crisis in Iraq. It said it continues to expect net profit for the full year to be in the range of USD580 million to USD600 million. Order intake stands at USD6.8 billion in the year to date.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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Rio Tinto, down 1.7%, Anglo American, down 1.1%, and BHP Billiton, down 1%. The mining companies' earnings may be hit by a sharp rise in freight rates, according to Liberum Capital. "Consensus amongst shipping analysts is for capesize freight rates to double between now and 2015, but this is not reflected in mining consensus," says Richard Knights, an analyst at the brokerage. Knights believes that the impact of this would be material, and could see 13% downside to consensus 2015 earnings per share for Rio Tinto on iron ore volumes alone, with 9% downside to Anglo and BHP's respective 2015 EPS consensuses.

Capita, down 1.5%, and G4S, down 1%. The UK's Labour party will mount an assault on big outsourcing companies if it wins the election, reducing their role in delivering the government’s back-to-work programme and exploring a plan to force them to pay all workers above the minimum wage in exchange for Whitehall contracts, the Financial Times has reported, citing an interview with Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary. Reeves told the newspaper that the Labour party would do away with the current system of big centrally commissioned contracts when the current tranche expired in 2015-16. Instead services would be bought at a more local level, perhaps by local authorities or local enterprise partnerships, she said.

Aviva, down 1.6%. UBS has downgraded Aviva to Neutral, from Buy, lowering its price target to 524 pence from 570p. "Aviva is no longer the compelling restructuring that a premium valuation deserves," says James Shuck, an analyst at UBS. "With the balance sheet now fixed and cash flow repaired, investors should be looking to earnings surprises to drive the shares higher from here," he adds.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Imagination Technologies, up 6.9%. The technology company's shares have jumped after it expressed confidence that it is on track to deliver progress, even though it swung to a pretax loss for the year to end-April due to higher costs following its acquisition of MIPS Technology Inc. The company swung to a pretax loss of GBP314,000, from a pretax profit of GBP12.2 million the year before, despite seeing revenue rise to GBP170.8 million from GBP151.5 million. It was hit by a sharp up-tick in research and development costs and sales and administrative expenses following the acquisition of MIPS. Importantly, the groups licensing revenue came in at the upper end of guidance for the full-year. Jefferies says the current trading multiples "misrepresents the strength of the underlying fundamentals", and the stock deserves to trade higher.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Domino Printing Sciences, down 14%. The printing equipment company has expressed confidence it will meet its expectations for the current full year as it swung into a profit in the half year to end-April, but has cautioned that its results for fiscal 2015 could be only broadly similar to 2014. While the company remains optimistic about its longer-term prospects, it is cautious about 2015 due to competitive pricing in Asia and other developing markets, and a need to make additional research and development investments. Domino swung into a pretax profit of GBP25.9 million in the recent half, from a pretax loss of GBP3.8 million a year earlier, as revenue rose to GBP173.8 million from GBP161.9 million, and exceptional costs fell. In the previous year the company had posted exceptional costs of GBP27.1 million as a result of writing down its investment in TEN Media.

Croda International, down 8.2%. The speciality chemicals company has warned that it now expects to report lower pretax profit than previously hoped in both its second quarter and in 2014 as a whole, due to the strength of the pound and weakness in its industrial chemicals business. In April, the company had said it expected its performance in the second quarter to end-June to be similar to that of the first quarter when it reported a pretax profit of GBP65.2 million. However, it now expects the second quarter figure to be about 8% below that.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - WINNERS
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Kalibrate Technologies, up 14%. The company said that it expects to post underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation "comfortably" ahead of current market expectations, with revenue slightly ahead of expectations, in the year ending June 30. It said it had seen a strong performance during the year, boosted by new and existing customer wins in the second half and growth in recurring revenues. It expects year-end net cash to be around USD9 million.

Kea Petroleum, up 13%. The oil and gas company said it has assigned a rig contract to Drill Force New Zealand Ltd to start the drilling of its Puka-3 well on the PEP51153 licence, located onshore in Taranaki in New Zealand. It said Drill Force will use its Rig-6 to drill the site, with preparations progressing and test drilling to start in late July. The drilling of Puka-3, from the same well pad as the producing Puka-1 and Puka-2 wells, is an important component of its farm-out agreement with MEO New Zealand Pty Ltd, which is intended to boost existing production and assist future field appraisal for Kea Petroleum.

Bowleven, up 12%. The oil and gas exploration and development company has sold a 50% stake in the Etinde oil and gas permit, offshore Cameroon, to Russia's Lukoil OAO and NewAge Ltd, for a total cash payment of USD250 million. It said it will now reduce its interest in the Etinde permit to 25%, from 75%, providing Lukoil with a 37.5% interest and NewAge an additional 12.5% stake, bringing its holding to 37.5%. Bowleven said the USD250 million payment will comprise USD170 million on completion of the deal, a USD40 million deferred cash payment upon final investment decision for Etinde and the completion of appraisal drilling, with another USD40 million payment that Bowleven would have paid for two appraisal wells being covered by the buyers.

DDD Group, up 11%. The company's shares have risen after it said that its Dimentia3D puzzle game is now available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The game is being sold for USD1.99 on the Apple App Store.

Venn Life Sciences Holdings, up 8.8%. The health care provider Tuesday expressed confidence for its future and reiterated its expectations for significant revenue gains in the second half of 2014. In a statement ahead of its annual general meeting, the company said it was pleased by the progress made by innovation division Innoven following its acquisition of technology from Evocutis PLC.
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AIM ALL-SHARE - LOSERS
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The Hotel Corporation, off 28%. The investment company has seen its shares slide as it warned there is uncertainty over whether its Puma Hotels subsidiary can keep going, even though it said The Hotel Corp would be able to keep going even without an income from its Puma investment. The Hotel Corp reported a net loss of GBP165,000 for 2013, narrower than the GBP213,000 loss it reported in 2012, as it cut administrative expenses. It didn't book any revenue having previously agreed with Puma Hotels to defer interest that Puma owes on bonds and dividends due on Puma's preference shares until further notice. It said it hadn't recognised revenue of nearly GBP2.0 million interest on the bonds and GBP824,000 worth of dividends.

Universe Group, down 16%. Chairman Robert Goddard told shareholders at the company's annual general meeting that results for 2014 will be weighted towards the second-half, although final results remain dependent on securing "certain large-scale roll-outs" and the timing of those is uncertain. The group has made progress in establishing its new products into existing and new customers, he said, adding that overall trading is in line with last year.
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By James Kemp and Jon Darby; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp

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