UK WINNERS & LOSERS: Airlines Continue To Gain As Oil Prices Slide

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are among the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices late-morning Monday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Tesco, up 2.3%. The UK's biggest supermarket chain by market-share has moved to bolster its board, adding the chief executive of food services company Compass Group and a former CEO of furniture and household goods retailer IKEA Group as non-executive directors. Compass CEO Richard Cousins and former IKEA CEO and President Mikael Ohlsson will join Tesco's board on November 1. The appointment of the pair marks the first board additions since Tesco's new Chief Executive Dave Lewis took the CEO job at the start of last month, and comes amid investigations into the company after it admitted it had overstated its profit guidance for the first half of its financial year. Tesco's board has been criticised for not having enough retail experience. Shore Capital head of research Clive Black says the pair are "highly regarded by investors."

International Consolidated Airlines Group, up 1.7%, and EasyJet, up 1.6%. The companies' shares are up for a second consecutive day as the price of Brent Oil hit a fresh two year low at USD91.46 a barrel over the weekend. Both companies posted gains at the end of last week amid strong trading results. CitiGroup has raised its EasyJet price target to 1,670 pence from 1,600p, with a reiterated Buy recommendation. The stock currently trades at 1,482p.

BG Group, up 1%. The oil company said it has received a USD350 million payment from the Egyptian government, meaning its domestic receivables balance in the country has fallen to about USD1.2 billion. The Egyptian government has raised funds to help repay debts that it owes to the oil and gas sector in the wake of the disruption and turmoil caused by the so-called Arab Spring, when Egypt's previous rulers were thrown out.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Sports Direct International, down 1.4%. Citigroup has cut the sports goods retailer's price target to 800p from 1,000p, reiterating its Buy rating. The stock currently trades at 602.3072p.

Petrofac, down 1.3%, and Royal Dutch Shell 'B', down 0.6%. The companies are down due to the low oil prices.

Fresnillo, down 0.8%. The company is down as the price of gold continued to slide following Friday's unexpectedly strong US jobs report. The yellow metal reached a 2014 low of USD1,182.79 per ounce early Monday.

Lloyds Banking Group, down 0.4%. The bank is set to cut thousands of jobs and close more branches as it shifts towards a "digitisation" strategy and automates its business, The Times reported Monday. Jobs are expected to be cut in areas such as mortgage processing and new account opening, as work currently completed manually is moved to computer systems in order to cut costs and improve customer service, the newspaper said, citing City sources.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Just Retirement Group, up 4.7%. Deutsche Bank has raised the annuities provider to Buy from Hold, with a price target of 180p. The company currently trades at 126p.

Henderson Group, up 1.9%. Canaccord Genuity has upgraded Henderson Group to Buy from Hold, while maintaining its price target of 240 pence, following a recent period of underperformance and analysis of the management's recently-stated aspirations. The asset management company's shares are trading at 203.3 pence.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Hochschild Mining, down 3.2%, and African Barrick Gold, down 2.3%. The companies' shares have suffered due to the falling gold price.

Cranswick, down 1.8%. The food and pet products producer said trading in the first half of the year has been in line with its expectations, with revenue in line with the year-earlier period as growth across most of its product categories offset lower sales of fresh pork. It said its markets remain competitive and operating margins in the six months to September 30 are expected to have been similar to the previous year as a whole. Cranswick reported an adjusted operating margin of 5.4% for its last financial year, as a 4.9% first-half margin due to raw material price increases rebounded strongly to 5.8% in the second half. Its revenue in the first half of the last financial year was GBP483.5 million.

Dunelm Group, down 1.5%. Citigroup has downgraded the company to Neutral from Buy, with a price target cut to 870p from 930p. The stock currently trades at 815.68p.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Boxhill Technologies, up 29%. The lottery, software and payments services firm saw its shares surge by more than two-thirds early in the trading session, but the stock dropped back a bit when the company put out a statement saying it knows no reason for the rise.

Iofina, up 25%. The company said production of crystallized iodine rose 18.6% on the month in September, and its US subsidiary was preliminarily granted a water permit in the state of Montana. Iofina reiterated its year-end production forecast of 325 to 350 metric tonnes of crystallized iodine. The company produced 28.0 metric tonnes of crystallized iodine in September, compared to 23.6 metric tonnes in August, meeting its projected monthly target for the month. Year-to-date revenue for the nine months to end September is over USD20 million, compared to its total revenue for 2013 of USD18.8 million.

Beowulf Mining, up 22%. The company said the latest assay results for the Kallak iron ore project in Sweden showed high grades and extensive intersections at the site. It said high grade assays for Kallak South were returned for one drillhole at the site, with an average grade of 52.9% iron over an intersection of 36.35 metres. In the same drill hole, Beowulf said the high-grade intersection runs nearly 90 metres, averaging 42% iron.

Petroceltic International, up 21%. Dragon Oil has made a 230 pence per share offer for Petroceltic. The offer would value the Dublin-based oil and gas explorer at GBP491.6 million and represents a 29% premium on Petroceltic's closing price Friday of 177.92p. Petroceltic said in a statement that Dragon has completed due diligence and has submitted the bid to its board. It said any takeover of the company would be subject to standard Irish takeover rules and to approval by authorities in Algeria in relation to the Algerian assets owned by Petroceltic.

Graphene Nanochem, up 15%. The company said it has won a further USD4.8 million order for its PlatDrill drilling fluid, and had won a contract extension with Royal Dutch Shell's Malaysian unit. It has won a second commercial order for 23,400 barrels of its PlatDrill Series graphene-enhanced biodegradable drilling fluid product from Scomi Oiltools Sdn Bhd, which will deploy it to an unnamed national oil company. The order is three times bigger that the 7,800 barrel order it previously won for PlatDrill. Separately, it will supply up to 5 million litres a month of its PlatAmber biofuel product under its contract extension with Shell Malaysia.

London Mining, up 8.9%. Indian steelmaker JSW Steel is in talks to buy Sierra Leone-focused London Mining, Reuters reported Monday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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International Mining & Infrastructure, off 30%. The Africa-focused iron ore miner is the biggest faller on AIM despite saying an updated resource estimate substantially increases the tonnage of oxidised resource at its Nkout iron ore project in Cameroon. The company declared a 68% increase in total direct shipping ore/high-grade saprolite indicated resource to 252 million tonnes at 43.2% iron. The resource includes an indicated high-grade resource of 22.2 million tonnes at 62.57% iron.
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By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com

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