London afternoon: BAE takes off

Mining stocks are dragging London lower as copper and precious metal prices come off the boil. Kazakhmys, Lonmin and ENRC are the worst performers while precious metals miners Randgold and Fresnillo fare little better.BAE Systems is the best performing blue-chip after holding an investor day yesterday. The company has admitted that it is seeing delays in new orders from the US but chief executive Ian King said it was less affected by US decision-paralysis than many of its rivals. Broker Investec reiterated its "buy" recommendation of the defence firm, arguing that the company has not gone ex-growth. "We think the group is well placed to exploit long term growth opportunities and hence the shares are still good value at a 2011 estimated PE of around 8.0 times - a 20% discount to the sector and a 22% discount to US defence majors with the added attraction of a 5.2% forecast yield," the broker said.Fears that the dividend of utility Scottish & Southern Energy might be under threat look premature, as the company bumped up its interim dividend by 6.7%. The company hiked its interim dividend from 21.0p last year to 22.4p this time round, and said it is on course for a full year dividend of at least 74.5p per share. The update has impressed investors. The stock is rivalling BAE Systems for the position as best performing Footsie stock, though it is off its best levels for the day.Sainsbury's sales were pretty much as expected given the supermarket giant updated the market just a month ago. Profit before tax, the benefit of any property deals and other one-offs was £332m for the 28 weeks to 2 October, up 8.1% on last year. Analysts were looking for £330m.Another strong performance from its Asian operations helped Prudential's sales jump 17% over the last three months, though the US and UK also went well. Third quarter sales rose to £809m, up from £689m, to take the year-to-date total to £2.46bn, up 24%.Trendy clothing group SuperGroup saw its breakneck growth speed up in the three months to the end of October. Total group sales in the period were up 68% to £57.5m from £34.1m a year earlier. That brought sales for the first six months of the group's financial year up to £90.3m, up 65% on the £54.7m achieved in the first half of last year.Talvivaara Mining is shrugging off losses elsewhere in the mining sector after setting production records in the third quarter.Nickel production rose 18% from the preceding quarter to 3,211 tonnes. Zinc production rose 36% from the second quarter to 7,557 tonnes.Advertising agency WPP has bought I-Behavior, a US consumer and business transaction data firm. I-Behavior is a privately-held database marketing business which provides direct marketing services to multi-channel merchants, based on consumer purchase transaction data. which includes over 8 billion purchase transactions. The database covers purchases by 171m consumers from 110m households.Conveyor belt maker Fenner's results for the year ended 31 August showed revenue up 11% to £552.5m as demand improved markedly in the second half. Underlying pre-tax profit jumped 49% to £46.3m and was up 38% to £57m at the operating level.Engineering software firm Aveva saw a return to growth in sales and profits at the interim stage. Revenue in the six months to the end of September rose 12% to £78.5m from £69.9m at the interim stage last year.Shares in gold miner Triple Plate Junction (TPJ) were wanted after the company rejected an indicative 4p per share offer from international mining giant Newmont, which holds a 10.1% stake in TPJ. Sticking with the mergers and acquisitions arena, business telecoms services group Daisy has snapped up rival Spiritel for about £27.3m. It is the latest in a long list of acquisitions by Daisy, which is focused on small- and medium-sized businesses, since coming to the market last year and the biggest so far.Shares in BATM Advanced Communications surged after the group said second half revenues will be some 14% ahead of the first, at $63m, in line with the group's full year revenue guidance of $119m.