WINNERS & LOSERS: Miners Boosted By Chinese Stimulus Hopes

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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BHP Billiton, up 1.1%, Rio Tinto, up 0.9%, and Glencore, up 0.7%. The miners are trading higher after more weak Chinese manufacturing data raised hopes for more stimulus from the country's policy makers.

Vodafone Group, up 0.7%. Nomura has upgraded the telecommunications company to Neutral from Reduce.
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FTSE 100 LOSERS
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Taylor Wimpey, down 3.9%. The housebuilder is due to pay its special dividend Thursday.

Intertek Group, down 1.5%, and Bunzl, down 1.2%. The stocks are down after going ex-dividend, meaning new buyers no longer qualify for the latest dividend payouts.

United Utilities Group, down 1.2%. The water company reported annual results that beat analyst expectations and its dividend was increased as expected, but pretax profit after exceptional items fell substantially. Pretax profit for the year ended March 31 fell to GBP341.6 million from GBP543.3 million a year earlier, while before exceptional items, pretax profit came in at GBP447.0 million, up from GBP388.0 million, as revenue rose to to GBP1.72 billion from GBP1.68 billion.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Booker Group, up 9.7%. The food wholesaler confirmed that it will buy Musgrave Retail Partners GB Ltd, which comprises the Londis and Budgens convenience store chains, from Irish food wholesaler Musgrave Group, while also reporting growth in profit in its recently-ended financial year.

Qinetiq Group, up 8.0%. The defence services company reported a higher pretax profit for its last financial year after the previous year was hit by a big impairment, while revenue fell as it continued to be hit by the withdrawal of US military from Afghanistan.

Electra Private Equity, up 5.0%. The investment trust said its diluted net asset value per share rose by 12% in the first half of its financial year and it will pay an interim dividend. It said its diluted net asset value per share rose by 12% in the half year to the end of March to 3,548 pence, while its share price rose by 19%, against a total return of 5% on the FTSE All-Share index.

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, up 3.8%. The online gaming operator said its revenue in the first quarter to the end of March was down, as it said it expects takeover talks with its various suitors to complete in the next few weeks.

Rank Group, up 2.7%. The bingo club and casino operator said all of its businesses have continued to make progress and it expects its full year results to meet management expectations, as increased visitor numbers at its casinos pushes up revenue while its Mecca bingo clubs show little growth.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Dairy Crest Group, down 6.9%. The dairy company reported a huge fall in profit in its recently-ended financial year as it booked various costs relating to investments and disposals, and as revenue fell due to further struggles in its Dairies and its Spreads And Butter businesses.

Electrocomponents, down 5.3%. The electronics company announced that Finance Director Simon Boddie will be stepping down at the end of the first half of its current financial year, as it posted a decline in pretax profit for its recently-ended financial year due to continued declines in the UK. It said that its performance had been "disappointing", with investments not yet delivering an expected step-up in revenue growth and its UK business remaining in decline.

SSP Group, down 4.7%. The food and drink concessions operator said it will pay its maiden interim dividend for the first half of its financial year after pretax profit rose as an improvement in its operating margin offset a slight fall in revenue. Like-for-like sales in the half were up 3%, with good performances in the UK, North America and Rest of World businesses but continued challenging conditions in some European markets, including in France and Germany owing to weak consumer spending and transport strikes.

Inchcape, down 3.3%. The automotive retailer and distributor said it has started 2015 in-line with its expectations on the back of growth across its markets and solid demand in both its vehicles and aftersales businesses. However, it said its revenue in the four months to the end of April was GBP2.19 billion, down 0.9% year-on-year due to the weakness of the euro but up 4.1% in constant currencies. Like-for-like revenue was down by 0.3% in the period, but up 4.9% in constant currencies.

Just Eat, down 2.3%. The online takeaway platform said it will launch a placing and open offer of shares to raise GBP445 million to back its acquisition of Australian online takeaway company Menulog Group Ltd, announced earlier this month.

Computacenter, down 2.1%, Provident Financial Group, down 2.1%, Euromoney Institutional Investor, down 2.0%, and Clarkson, down 1.8%. The companies have gone ex-dividend.

Aveva Group, down 1.6%. The engineering software company has been cut to Neutral from Buy by Citigroup.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Tristel, up 11%. The company said it traded ahead of its expectations in the first ten months of its financial year and has raised its pretax profit guidance on the back of the good performance. It said the outperformance in the ten months to the end of April was boosted by good performances in the UK, Germany and Australasia which offset some weakness in its Russian business.

Concurrent Technologies, up 10%. The computer components company said it expects revenue in the first half of 2015 to be ahead of its forecasts as the good momentum seen in the second half of 2014 continued into the new year. Concurrent said it expects revenue in the first half of the year to be ahead of its previous predictions and significantly better year-on-year.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Tungsten Corporation, off 21%. The electronic invoicing, analytics and financing company said it is currently in talks on a proposed joint venture with an unnamed global financial institution and said it is actively exploring strategic options for its Tungsten Bank business.

Alkane Energy, down 11%. Ofgem said it has opened investigations to see if five generators provided false or misleading information to National Grid about planning consents for some of their proposed generating units that took part in the December 2014 capacity auction. The companies being investigated are GF Power Peaking Ltd, Berangere Ltd, Adret Ltd, Alkane Energy UK and Power Balancing Service Ltd. Alkane Energy said it "does not believe it is in breach of the capacity market rules" but said it will co-operate with the investigation.
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By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com; @NeilThakrar1

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