Virgin Money Holdings Share News (VM.)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Tuesday.----------FTSE 100 - WINNERS----------Just Eat, up 4.0%. The online takeaway platform said revenue rose nearly 50% over the three months to the end of March, with its Hungryhouse acquisition and the Easter holiday weekend helping to boost orders in the UK. Revenue rose 49% to GBP177.4 million, "driven by strong order growth and a greater proportion of higher value delivery orders in the mix", from GBP118.9 million last year. The number of UK orders increased by 24% to 29.7 million, from 24.0 million a year ago. This included 1.4 million orders from Hungryhouse, following the completion of the acquisition in January, as well as the inclusion of part of the Easter holiday weekend in the first quarter, which added an estimated 1 percentage point to growth.----------United Utilities, up 2.1%, Severn Trent, up 2.0%. Credit Suisse upgraded the utility companies to Outperform from Neutral. In addition, Severn Trent said it intends to sell a land in Nottingham through its subsidiary Midlands Land Portfolio to Persimmon Homes, part of housebuilder Persimmon, for GBP21.8 million in cash. Severn Trent said Persimmon plans to create 830 new homes as well as new leisure areas including play pitches and a new primary school to bring people and jobs into the area. The sale values the land at GBP21.8 million, Severn Trent said, and it will realise a pretax profit of GBP18.2 million in calendar 2019 from the sale. ----------J Sainsbury, up 1.5%. Kantar Worldpanel said the proposed merger between Sainsbury's and Walmart's Asda could create a firm with a market share some 3.8 percentage points higher than that of current leader Tesco. Kantar - based on data for the 12 weeks to April 22 - said the combination of Sainsbury's and Asda would create a company with a possible grocery market share of 31.4%. This compares to Tesco's market share of 27.6% for the same period, unchanged from a year before. Within this combined figure of 31.4%, Kantar said Sainsbury's market share over the period came in at 15.9% and Asda's at 15.5%. Shares in Sainsbury's closed up 15% on Monday after it agreed a GBP13 billion pound merger with Asda.----------FTSE 250 - WINNERS----------Ocado, up 4.2%. According to the latest survey by Kantar Worldpanel, the online grocer was the fastest growing supermarket in the 12 weeks to April 22 with sales rising 13% to GBP332.0 million.----------Virgin Money, up 3.8%. The challenger bank said it has performed in line with expectations in the first quarter of 2018 with its full year guidance left unchanged. Gross mortgage lending in the three months to March was GBP1.40 billion, down from GBP2.00 billion in the same period a year earlier. Net mortgage lending was GBP200.0 million, as guided, compared to GBP900.0 million 12 months earlier. Mortgage balances as at March's end were GBP33.85 billion, compared to GBP33.67 billion at the end of December and GBP30.68 billion a year earlier. Credit card balances were up 14% year-on-year to GBP3.02 billion at March's end and 1.3% higher on December's end figure.----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS----------Pipehawk. Shares in the engineer more than doubled after it said it has received a number of new orders in the period since its interims announcement in late March. PipeHawk in March said it was awaited a number of "significant" contracts for its QM Systems division over the four to six weeks ahead of that date. Since then, the company said, it has received four such orders valued at between GBP150,000 and GBP500,000 each, and the total value of orders received by QM Systems was GBP1.2 million. In the four months to April's end, the value of QM Systems orders was GBP1.9 million. On top of this Pipehawk, which makes electronic systems for the land mine and utilities detection markets, said its enquiry pipeline is strong and it is confident its "buoyant" order intake will keep going in its current financial year, which ends June. ----------OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS----------Widecells Group, down 50%. The stem cell research company said talks over a fundraising needed for it to keep going have taken longer than hoped. The delay in securing funding, the company added, means it was not been able to publish its 2017 results in time for the Monday deadline, as the audit process has been delayed as a result. WideCells said it has been talking with financial advisers over a possible fundraise. In the absence of any cash being raised, it said, "the group is at risk of not being able to continue trading as a going concern". The company also said it received loans from directors in April totalling GBP115,000. ----------