UK WINNERS & LOSERS: Betfair Shares Add To Gains From Strong Results

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are amongst the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Monday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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WPP, up 1%. The media buying giant raised its total dividend by 12% to 26.58 pence, and forecast a year of growth in 2015 similar to 2014, as it met expectations for headline profit before interest and tax, and earnings per share for 2014. WPP's headline profit before interest and tax figure, which was GBP1.68 billion for 2014, up from GBP1.66 billion in 2013, excludes amortisation, impairment, gains on disposals or re-measurement of equity interests, write-downs, restructuring costs of shares of exceptional losses of associates. Investec says WPP's figures "look fine overall".
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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RSA Insurance Group, down 1.6% at 411.3p. Goldman Sachs downgraded the insurer's rating to Sell from Neutral, cutting its price target to 385p from 445p, on fears around its operating earnings and returns targets, as well as concerns that RSA's pension liabilities are an obstacle to a potential break-up of the group.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Betfair Group, up 3.8% to 2,136p. Morgan Stanley has raised its price target for the online betting firm to 2,030p from 1,550p, keeping its Overweight rating. Betfair posted on Thursday last week a 17% increase in its earnings, before interest, taxes, deprecation and amortisation for the third quarter to end-January, to GBP23.6 million, and a 20% increase in revenue to GBP114.6 million, driven by a 35% increase in active customers to 760,000. Since Wednesday, the stock has risen by around 21%.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Hansteen Holdings, down 2.5%. The property investor's shares are down even though its pretax profit doubled in 2014, as it sold properties into the buoyant UK property investment market, and it raised its dividend and announced a special dividend as it also gave a positive outlook. Hansteen reported a pretax profit of GBP131.2 million for 2014, up from GBP65.3 million, buoyed by the gains on property sales, while its normalised income profit, which excludes profits or losses from the sale of properties and therefore represents the repeatable income of the business, rose to GBP48.2 million, from GBP39.4 million in 2013.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Eurasia Mining, up 57%. The company revealed it has received two approaches for an outright acquisition or acquisition of an interest in its Monchetundra platinum group metals licence on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The company said it has started commercial negotiations with both interested parties, and got good feedback from recent site visits to the project. Eurasia also said its review of new project opportunities has accelerated since it announced a collaboration with Metal Tiger in December.

W Resources, up 10%. The tungsten, copper and gold miner, said it has received positive bulk sampling results from the Régua project in Portugal. W Resources, with projects in Spain and Portugal, said the bulk sampling tests at the Régua tungsten project showed larger-than-anticipated sections at the surface of the ore body, which can be mined at a low cost.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Transense Technologies, off 23%. The transportation and industrial sensor systems provider posted a widened pretax loss for the first half of its financial year, as revenue more than halved due to a "dramatic reduction in capital expenditure by the mining industry," and it said it is exploring options including the sale of its IntelliSaw business. For the half year to end-December 2014, Transense posted a pretax loss of GBP1.7 million, widened from a pretax loss of GBP84,000 a year before, as revenue more than halved to GBP930,000 from GBP2.2 million.

By Daniel Ruiz; danielruiz@alliancenews.com

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