UK WINNERS & LOSERS SUMMARY: Lookers Profit Warning Hurts Auto Trader

Fri, 01st Nov 2019 10:52

(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Friday.

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FTSE 100 - LOSERS

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Auto Trader, down 2.4%. The car marketplace was down following a profit warning by smaller peer Lookers. Lookers itself was 10% lower. The car dealership said its first half was "challenging", and Chief Executive Officer Andy Bruce and Chief Operating Officer Nigel McMinn will be leaving the company immediately. Lookers said Chair Phil White will become executive chair until permanent successors for Bruce and McMinn are found, while Non-Executive Director Richard Walker will take on a part-time executive role until the end of 2019. Lookers expects to report 2019 underlying pretax profit of GBP20 million. The company reported an adjusted pretax profit of GBP67.3 million in 2018. It said the UK new vehicle market was weak in the third quarter, including the normally highly profitable plate-change month of September. Like-for-like unit sales of new cars were down 3.2% in the quarter, accelerating the 1.2% decline seen in the first half of 2019. As a result of the poor sales performance, Lookers said it will "accelerate" its portfolio consolidation in order to finance the future of the company.

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FTSE 250 - WINNERS

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HomeServe, up 3.5% Peel Hunt upgraded the home emergency repairs firm to Add from Neutral.

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TP ICAP, up 2.4%. The interdealer broker reiterated its annual guidance and said favourable market conditions have resulted in a 17% jump in third-quarter revenue. For the three months to September 30, the interdealer broker recorded revenue of GBP478 million, up from GBP408 million in the year ago period. Year-to-date revenue increased 6% year-on-year to GBP1.40 billion from GBP1.32 billion a year ago. On a divisional basis, the core Global Broking unit saw a 10% year-on-year rise in revenue to GBP334 million, Energy & Commodities revenue jumped 24% to GBP98 million, Institutional Services revenue by 38% to GBP11 million and Data & Analytics revenue by 9% to GBP35 million. TP ICAP said its 2019 guidance of low single-digit revenue growth on a constant currency basis remains unchanged despite the strong quarterly performance. It cautioned however that geopolitical uncertainties may hurt transaction volumes in the final quarter of 2019.

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BBA Aviation, up 1.9%. The aviation services company said it will return USD835 million to shareholders following the disposal of the company's aerospace parts and services unit Ontic for USD1.37 billion, while also renaming itself. BBA Aviation received USD1.32 billion in net proceeds from Ontic sale, following price adjustments. After payments toward bank debt and pension funding, BBA will return USD835 million, or 80.71 pence per share, to shareholders. BBA Aviation said as a result of the special payout it will undertake a share consolidation to maintain the comparability of the company's share price and per-share metrics. The share consolidation will replace every five existing shares with four new shares. The company also said that it will rename itself as Signature Aviation PLC, effective around November 25.

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FTSE 250 - LOSERS

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Crest Nicholson, down 5.3%. UBS cut the housebuilder to Neutral from Buy.

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Euromoney Institutional Investor, down 2.3%. UBS cut the financial events and publishing firm to Neutral from Buy.

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Britvic, down 1.4%. Liberum cut the soft drinks maker to Hold from Buy.

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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS

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Chemring, up 3.7%. The aerospace technology product manufacturer said it expects its adjusted operating profit for the year ending October 31 to be "slightly" ahead of expectations. This follows "continued positive momentum" and "robust" trading. Chemring also announced it has been awarded a contract from the US Department of Defense to deliver 75 aerosol and vapour chemical agent detectors. The units are expected to be delivered in financial 2020.

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Argos Resources, up 24%. The company said late Thursday the Falkland Islands government has extended the second term of its PL001 Licence. The Falkland Islands based exploration company said the extension is for 18 months to May 1, 2021, with no additional work commitments. Argos Resources noted it has a commitment to drill one exploration well within the licence area by the end of the second term of the licence.

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President Energy, up 7.7%. The company said its own 60 kilometre pipeline in Argentina is ready to flow gas to the market from President's Estancia Vieja and Las Bases fields. Starting on monday the pipeline will be able to deliver 30,000 metres of gas per day. President also noted average daily production in Louisiana, US has tripled since June 30. "The significance of the start of our own gas flowing through the Estancia Vieja and Las Bases pipeline should not be understated as should not the great efforts made by our Argentina team to enable this to take place," Chair Peter Levine said. He added: "Finally, it is also pleasing to see the production recovery in Louisiana due to the hard work of our management there and the consequential material increase in free cash flow from those assets."

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Mosman Oil & Gas, up 7.6%. The company narrowed its full-year loss and reported a sharp output rise. In the year ended June 30, Mosman's pretax loss narrowed to AUD1.2 million, roughly GBP643,821, from AUD4.1 million last year. Revenue rose by 49% year-on-year to AUD1.1 million from AUD740,853. Mosman, which has assets in the US, said gross production more than doubled to 55,508 barrels of oil equivalent from 25,923 barrels of oil equivalent. The company also owns the Amadeus basin in Australia, where exploration is ongoing.

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OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS

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Baron Oil, down 21%. The company said, due to a recent change in land demarcation, it can bow be no longer offered the prospective areas in Blocks 98/11b and 98/12, provisionally awarded to the firm's joint venture with Corallian Energy in the 31st Seaward Licensing Round. The revised blocks now being offered are no longer adjacent to the Colter South discovery and no longer include the primary targets that had been identified as part of the application process. As a result, the companies have decided not to accept the petroleum licence offered over the remaining, seaward parts of blocks 98/11b and 98/12 as it does not fit with the strategy for developing Licence P1918.

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By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com