UK WINNERS & LOSERS: Financial Stocks Recover On Plans To Head South

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Thursday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Standard Life, up 1.8%. The Edinburgh headquartered savings and investment business is seeing a second consecutive day of recovery following the negative shock the company received from a couple of polls that showed a sharp rise of support for the "Yes" campaign in the run up to the Scottish independence referendum on September 18. On Wednesday Standard Life moved to reassure investors by saying that it could transfer parts of its business out of Scotland.

Royal Bank of Scotland, up 1.3%; Lloyds Banking Group, up 1.2%. The two part-government owned, and heavily Scotland exposed, banks are also recovering some recent weakness after saying they have made contingency plans to move their headquarters to London in the event of the Scottish people voting in favour of a split from the UK in next week's independence referendum. "While the scale of potential change is currently unclear, we have contingency plans in place which include the establishment of new legal entities in England," Lloyds said in a statement.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Next, down 1.7%. Shares of the UK's biggest clothing retailer by market share have slipped despite a solid set of interim results. Investors were underwhelmed following the group's stellar run of late. Next reported a 19% rise in pretax profit to GBP324.2 million for the first half of the year, as revenue rose to GBP1.85 billion from GBP1.68 billion. The retailer cited a range of factors including the improving UK economy and much better summer weather, although it kept most of its full-year outlook unchanged, having already raised it twice this year. "Against lofty expectations, Next has had a stellar first half, but numbers are a little short of consensus," says Investec analyst Alistair Davies.

Tesco, down 0.8%. The supermarket giant has been outshone Thursday by Morrisons, which raised its interim dividend by 5%, along with delivering half-year results broadly in line with expectations. The delivery on planned shareholder returns has surprised some given that Tesco decided to slash its dividend by 75% less than two weeks ago due to the ongoing pressures in the UK grocery sector. Following recent share price weakness and the newly raised dividend payment, Shore Capital calculates that Morrison currently offers investors a particularly high dividend yield of almost 8%. This may have encouraged some investors to switch their supermarket holdings Wednesday. Morrison shares spiked as much as 4% in early trade, but are currently close to flat.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Ocado, up 4.1%. The grocery delivery business has seen a strong jump in its share price after saying that its sales in the 12 weeks to August 10 were up 23% to GBP231.9 million, against GBP189.2 million a year earlier. Retail sales in the period were up 16% to GBP218.5 million against GBP189.2 million last year. Average orders per week increased by 17% to 163,000, against 139,000 last year, but average order size was down by 1.7% to GBP111.64 against GBP113.54 in the corresponding period in 2013. The company said its trading momentum was solid in the period, but Chief Executive Tim Steiner said the retail environment at the moment was "challenging", owing to the "increased level of promotional activity and price reductions across the industry".

RPC Group, up 2.6%. The packaging company saw its share rise after saying it has reached a deal to sell its rigid-sheet businesses in Italy and Belgium for an undisclosed amount. RPC said the deals, along with the sale of its disposables trading business Tedeco-Gizeh GmbH in Germany, mark the end of the divestment portion of its "Fitter for the Future" programme. The two deals are expected to conclude towards the end of this month.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Home Retail Group, down 6.6%. The DIY and general merchants retailer reported a mixed quarterly update that recorded a ninth consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth for Argos, but tepid growth at its Homebase DIY unit as sales of seasonal goods fell short of last year. The group sounded a little cautious as it said it expects to report a benchmark profit in line with market expectations for the full year, in the range of GBP122 million and GBP135 million, although, as always, this will depend on how Argos performs over the key Christmas trading period. "To meet that target, we need Argos to continue its current run rate, with like-for-like sales broadly around 3% and margins close to flat," Chief Executive John Walden told journalists Thursday.

Ashmore Group, down 6.3%. The emerging markets asset manager reported a 34% drop in full-year pretax profit, as it came under pressure due to emerging-market volatility, lower performance fees and the strength of the pound. Ashmore made GBP170.3 million pretax profit in the year ended June 30, compared with GBP257.6 million last year. It said GBP46.0 million was due to foreign exchange translation, while GBP30.1 million was due to lower performance fees as a consequence of the market sell-off in May and June 2013 and continued volatility throughout the first half of the financial year.

William Hill, down 1.3%. The bookmaker has suffered a downgrading to Neutral From Overweight by analysts at HSBC. The bank also lowered its price target for William Hill to 365p from 385p, although that still suggests a small upside from Wednesday quote of 344.20p.

Green King, down 1.1%. The pub company has had its price target trimmed by Goldman Sachs to 860p from 890p, which comes with a Neutral recommendation. The shares closed Wednesday at 797.5p. The move from Goldman comes after Green King reported decidedly weak sales growth in the first 18 weeks of its financial year on Wednesday.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Elektron Technology, up 12%. The Cambridge-based technology company, which makes things like switches, connectors and monitoring and control products for scientific, medical, industrial and commercial use, saw its shares rise Thursday after it reported an underlying operating profit for the first half of its financial year. The company reported a narrowed operating loss of GBP0.4 million for the six months to end-July, compared with a GBP2.1 million loss a year, thanks to its cost cutting and as exceptional items, including restructuring expenses, impairments and some finance items, fell to GBP1.0 million, from GBP2.1 million. Excluding those items, its underlying operating profit rose to GBP0.6 million, from nothing a year earlier.

Solo Oil, up 10%. The exploration group saw its shares rise after saying that interpretation of newly acquired seismic data has extended the potential of the Ntorya appraisal area within the Ruvuma license in Tanzania, and it had further increased its resource estimate for the license by combining the Ntorya discovery with the adjacent Likonde prospect. Main market listed Aminex is also significantly higher, up 21%. Aminex owns 75% of the Ruvuma license and is its operator, while Solo Oil PLC owns the rest.

Patagonia Gold, up 8.9%. The gold miner reported record production from its Lomada de Leiva mine in August, extracting 2,961 ounces at a cash cost of USD625 per ounce. The company also said it is on target to achieve its production target of 3,000 ounces of gold per month by the end of the third quarter.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Stilo International, down 25%. Shares in the software company have plunged after the group reported its pretax profit and revenue fell in the first half, though the company said the fall would be offset in the second half and said it would pay an interim dividend. Stilo said pretax profit in the six months to June 30 nearly halved to GBP39,000, from GBP72,000 a year earlier, as revenue fell to GBP617,000 from GBP733,000 in 2013. Stilo said the fall in sales was down to a reduction in OmniMark content conversion software licence sales, which it expects to be offset by increased sales of its Migrate cloud XML content conversion service in the second half. The group also said it took a hit to the tune of GBP430,000 by adverse foreign exchange.

SpaceandPeople, down 13%. Shares in experiential marketing and media company have dropped after the company issued another profit warning for 2014 as a host of its businesses failed to meet performance expectations. The group said the first half of 2014 had proven challenging for its business and said that, while some of its operations have traded in line with the revised expectations, others have proved disappointing in comparison to the revised forecasts. The company is now forecasting pretax profit of GBP500,000 to GBP700,000 for the year, compared to the GBP2.3 million it made for the full year in 2013.

Futura Medical, down 11%. The healthcare company reported a widening of its pretax loss to GBP1.6 million in the first half of the year from GBP1.0 million in the previous year, as revenue fell to GBP2,262 from GBP320,513, and administrative and research and development costs rose. Futura said that its fund raising of GBP12 million in March would support the clinical development of its earlier-stage product portfolio towards commercialisation.
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By Jon Darby; jondarby@alliancenews.com; @jondarby100

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