UK WINNERS & LOSERS: Oil Producers Benefit As Brent Surpasses USD60

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are amongst the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Friday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Tullow Oil, up 4.6%, BG Group, up 3.0%, BP, up 1.6%, and Royal Dutch Shell 'A', up 1.0%. The oil producers are trading higher as the price of Brent oil surpasses the USD60 a barrel mark for the first time since the end of December. Brent currently trades at USD60.13 a barrel.

GlaxoSmithKline, up 3.7%. The pharmaceutical giant is trading higher after UBS upgraded the stock to Buy from Sell.

Anglo American, up 2.9%. The miner reported an expected drop in underlying earnings in 2014 on the back of weaker commodity prices. The company also took a USD3.9 billion impairment charge, mainly related to its iron ore mine in Brazil, which led to a wider net loss. However, it maintained its dividend unchanged. According to Investec, the company's earnings-per-share of 173 cents per share beat consensus of 164 cents.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Severn Trent, down 1.1%. The water utility company said it is on track to meet its expectations for the full year, though it does expect growth to moderate in the second half.

Rolls Royce, down 0.6%. The jet engine and power turbine company reported a drop in profit, hit by negative currency translation, reduced defence spending and world macroeconomic uncertainty. The company said its reported pretax profit for the year to the end of December was GBP67 million, a massive decline against the GBP1.7 billion reported a year earlier.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Afren, up 7.1%, Premier Oil, up 4.8%, and Ophir Energy, up 2.9%, all benefiting from the higher oil price.

RPS Group, up 4.5%. The energy consultancy said it has acquired Texas-based Klotz Associates in a USD24.1 million all-cash deal. Klotz provides engineering, planning and environmental consultancy services. For the year to the end of December, Klotz reported a pretax profit of USD3.6 million on revenue of USD26.2 million, RPS said.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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TalkTalk Telecom Group, down 1.2%. Jefferies has cut the group to Underperform from Hold.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Mariana Resources, up 27%. The company has continued to rise, having gained 85% on Thursday following strong test results at its Hot Maden prospect in Turkey.

Fitbug, up 20%. The health and fitness wearables and online services company said that it expects to post a wider full-year loss in line with its forecasts, as increased investment in the development of its products offset a near quintupling of product sales in its second half. Fitbug said its sales in the second half were GBP1.4 million, taking its full year sales to GBP2.34 million compared to just GBP749,000 in all of 2013. The stock is trading at 6.84 pence, compared to 0.35p as recently as mid-October.

Cluff Natural Resources, up 9.1%. The company said it has entered a memorandum of understanding with a unit of US oil services company Halliburton related to developing Cluff's underground coal gasification and southern North Sea assets in the UK.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Aeorema Communications, off 24%. The company said it anticipates a stronger second half, after it posted a drop in pretax profit due to lower revenues in its first half. In the half year to end-December the live events agency posted a pretax profit of GBP101,316, more than halved from GBP225,941 a year before, as revenue fell to GBP1.7 million from GBP1.8 million.
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By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com; @NeilThakrar1

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