UK WINNERS & LOSERS: Gold Price Surge Sends Miners Higher

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are amongst the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Thursday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Randgold Resources, up 4.3% and Fresnillo, up 4.0%. The gold miners are trading higher following a rise in gold prices after the Swiss National Bank cut its interest rates and removed its currency cap. The yellow metal hit a high of USD1,260.92, it highest level since early September.

Experian, up 3.3%. The information services company, said it is confident of returning to a position of revenue growth as it approaches the end of its financial year, and for its full-year results to demonstrate stable margins and good progress in benchmark earnings, both at constant currency, and to exceed 95% cash flow conversion. In a trading update for the last three months of 2014 it said that revenue from continuing activities was down 1%. At constant exchange rates, growth was 2%, and organic revenue was unchanged.

BHP Billiton, up 2.5%. Goldman Sachs has added the miner to its Conviction Buy List from Neutral.

BG Group, up 1.9%. The oil and gas giant said gas and condensate production has begun at the West Franklin field in the UK North Sea, and it claimed to have pushed the boundaries of high pressure, high temperature developments in the process. BG Group holds a 14.1% stake in the project, whilst Total holds a 46.2% interest as operator.

Associated British Foods, up 1.1%. The company said it now expects a marginal fall in its adjusted earnings per share in the current financial year, as strong growth at its Primark retailer is more than offset by further profit declines in its sugar business and due to the strength of sterling. However, Liberum remains positive on the stock saying it offers compelling exposure to secular growth trends in retail over the next 10 years.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Imperial Tobacco Group, down 3.6%, and Next, down 1.3%. The companies are trading lower after going ex-dividend, meaning new buyers no longer qualify for the latest dividend payouts.

Compass Group, down 2.4%. Credit Suisse has cut the catering and outsourcing company to Neutral from Outperform.

BT Group, down 1.7%. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has proposed new pricing rules that would set in stone BT Group's ability to maintain a sufficient margin between its wholesale and retail superfast broadband charges, allowing it to invest in its fibre network, whilst at the same time ensuring it wouldn't be able to undercut its rivals in the superfast broadband market.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Polymetal International, up 6.8%, Acacia Mining, up 4.1%, Lonmin, up 3.8%, and Centamin, up 2.0% The precious metal miners are trading higher following the rise in the price of gold.

Savills, up 5.4%. The high-end real estate adviser said it expects its 2014 underlying results to be well ahead of its previous expectations after a very strong December. The company said it had seen strong performances across its transactional businesses in December, resulting in revenue and profits significantly exceeding its previous forecasts for the month. It said the strength was driven by the the completion of a number of sizeable transactions in UK and European commercial markets, the rise in Stamp Duty announced by the UK government on residential transactions, which provided a short-term boost to volumes, and the successful close of a new Nordic Logistics Fund earlier than anticipated in its investment management business.

Halma, up 1.3%. Exane BNP Paribas has upgraded the safety, health and environmental technology company to Outperform from Neutral.

Rotork, up 1.2%. Exane BNP Paribas has upgraded the manufacturing company to Neutral from Underperform.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Home Retail Group, down 7.0%. The company said it expects to report benchmark pretax profit for the current financial year that's in line with market expectations, after its Argos unit traded "cautiously" over the key Christmas period, meaning sales rose only slightly but gross margins were also higher. Cantor Fitzgerald said sales at both Argos and Homebase fell below market consensus.

Spire Healthcare, down 6.3%. Private equity firm Cinven sold a 10% stake in the company at a discount. Cinvent sold 40.1 million shares in Spire at 315 pence per share, raising a total of GBP126.3 million. Spire shares currently trade at 318.50p.

Booker Group, down 5.8%. The food wholesaler posted a rise in sales in the 16 weeks to January 2 and said the turnaround plan for its Makro cash-and-carry business is on track. Booker said total sales in the 16 weeks, including Makro, rose 1.4%, with tobacco sales up 2.2% and non-tobacco sales up 1%. Like-for-like sales, excluding Makro, rose 2.5% for Booker, with tobacco sales increasing 2.4% and non-tobacco sales up 2.6%. However, Shore Capital said trading was a little below its expectation, noting that unlike the supermarkets and many non-food retailers, the festive trading period is not a particularly big event for Booker.

Bovis Homes, down 4.8%. The housebuilder reported further growth in profitability, as it built and sold more houses at a higher average price. Bovis echoed peers in saying it expects to sell even more houses in 2015, although the rate of growth will stabilise after the exceptional recovery seen in 2014. It expects "2015 will be another successful year of growth in revenue and profit giving rise to further improvement in returns". However, Numis has downgraded the company to Add from Buy, saying there is uncertainty over market conditions which has triggered lower volume and margin forecasts in 2015.

KAZ Minerals, down 4.5%. The company has been downgraded to Reduce from Hold by Numis, and cut to Neutral from Buy by UBS.

Domino's Pizza, down 3.7%. Credit Suisse has cut the pizza delivery chain to Neutral from Outperform.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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DDD Group, up 13%. The company said that shipments of its TriDef 3D consumer products have crossed the 50 million mark, largely due to a 20% year-on-year increase in 3D TV chip shipments during 2014, while its soon-to-be-launched software products had got a positive response at a recent key trade show and it is already talking with mobile market customers about them.

Deltex Medical Group, up 10%. The company said it has signed up another dedicated trainer hospital in the US, bringing the total number in the country to seven. It said that the new hospital it has signed up for a dedicated trainer account is owned by the same hospital system in North West US as one of the company's existing dedicated trainer accounts, and is covered by a newly agreed two year purchasing agreement which allows other hospitals in the 26 hospital system to implement CardioQ-ODM on the same terms.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Alecto Minerals, off 42%. The company said it has raised GBP600,000 by way of a placing with new and existing shareholders at a 40% discount. The funds were raised after the company issued 200 million shares in the company at a price of 0.3 pence per share, a 40% discount to the company's closing share price on Wednesday.

Scientific Digital Imaging, down 34%. The company launched a discounted equity fundraising to raise GBP0.5 million for working capital and to cover the recent costs for re-organising its synoptics business. It also said its adjusted operating loss had more than halved in the first half of its financial year, and it's expecting further trading improvements in the second half now that it has completed the revamp of the synoptics unit.

Clean Air Power, down 22%. The developer of compression-ignited natural gas engine management software for heavy duty vehicles is down even though it said its sharply-reduced 2014 revenue had come in slightly above market expectations and key partner Ricardo Inc had re-affirmed its commitment to the co-operation agreement that the companies have.

Enteq Upstream, down 21%. The oilfield services company issued a warning on its full-year sales on the back of the impact of the falling oil price on its North American customer base. The company said it expects its sales for the year to March 31 to be substantially lower than current expectations and against the year before, owing to a slump in capital equipment purchases and budget cuts in its North American customer base.
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By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com

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