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Nomura has resumed coverage of soft drinks group Britvic with a 'buy' rating, saying it sees upside from US franchising and if the AG Barr merger is revisited. The broker said that while the macro outlook in key Great Britain market "looks challenging for 2013", the first quarter has got off to a good start. Revenues were up 4.8% across the group, "which creates some cushion for softer conditions in later quarters". Nomura said that Britvic's US franchise story "appears to be delivering". If the Fruit Shoot brand becomes as big in the US as it is in the UK, the broker believes that it can ascribe a value per share of 200p to the franchise. "With a roll-out now underway in 30 states, we have now the confidence to factor in some value from this (30p per share) into our target price." Meanwhile, the merger proposal between Britvic and AG Barr lapsed after it was announced last week that the tie-up was referred by the Office of Fair Trading to the Competition Commission (CC).

Nevertheless, the market was impressed by the full-year beat, with shares up 6.12% at 641.50

Power station group Drax's full-year results may have come in slightly ahead of expectations but Cantor Fitzgerald retained its 'sell' rating for the stock on Tuesday morning. The company's results for 2012 were slightly ahead of its own guidance, "as has often tended to be the case", says analyst Angelos Anastasiou. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation came in at £298.4m, down 10.6% year-on-year but ahead of the guidance range of £285-290m and the £292.5m consensus estimate (Cantor had estimated £295.3m). Anastasiou highlights that output was strong last year at 27.1TWh and the group is now progressing with its biomass plans. The first unit conversion is on track to be completed in April 2013, the next is due in the second half of 2014 and the third is scheduled for 2016. "However, we believe that the plans are not risk free, and the group remains exposed to carbon costs even after the planned unit conversions. Hence, we reiterate our 'sell' recommendation and our 523p target price," Anastasiou said.

Having said that, there are those who saw the sale as the disposal of a deteriorating, lower-margin business that generated a large amount of its revenues from Europe, which in turn is still trying to solve its sovereign debt crisis. Fine, but then why did the company purchase �30m buying 50% of Canada Newswire in November? Was UBM not supposed to now concentrate on its [cyclical] events division? The company's full-year results on March 1st should provide greater clarity. For now, Questor recommends steering clear of UBM. The shares are expensive, trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.6, higher than some of its rivals, such as Informa. Avoid, it says.

Is the company pursuing a new strategy or simply realigning itself geographically? That would seem to be the question which investors are trying to answer, without much success so far, with regards to UBM. Hence, shares have recovered from the drop following the announcement of the sale of the firm's Delta data services division earlier this month. Those assets were sold for �160m - well below the �300m which some had expected it to fetch - and to help finance the transaction UBM provided Electra Partners with a �40m high-interest loan, which for some implied the FTSE 250 company was desperate to get rid of Delta.

Even so, HSBC estimates that BG should be close to break-even in 2015 and The Times's Tempus suspects that neither of those two decisions will be taken much before then. BG's share price, up 4 �p at �11.46 � last night, is a long way short of its estimated net asset value of �19 a share - a valuation more appropriate to a mature oil business than a growth company. The priority will be to narrow that gap. Brazil is going sufficiently well that there is no real point in selling down now. Hence, Tempus continues to believe that BG's share price lags well behind its true value.

BG Group's is facing two transformational choices. The first refers to the sale, or not, of part of its Brazilian interests to China's Sinopec for $20bn or more. The second has to do with the need to invest billions in Queensland, where BG's budgeted capital spending now runs at $20.4bn. The above decisions are all the more important in light of the company's reduction of its estimates for oil production over the next couple of years. This month it forecast 630,000 to 660,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2013 in Brazil, so it is possible that it could even undershoot last year's 658,000.

The story of the quoted house builders over the past year, which has driven share prices substantially higher across the sector, has been one of continuing improvement in margins as land bought ahead of the economic downturn was gradually built on and traded out. The exception, because of its history, is Crest Nicholson, dealing in the shares of which started officially yesterday. Crest was taken private by HBOS in 2007; as part of a subsequent refinancing in 2009, the value of its land bank was written down to its worth then in the market. So the company is already enjoying a level of operating margin, at about 18%, that its peers are still striving towards. The Crest proposition, and the attraction of the shares, is that it has the largest land bank in the sector, about nine years' worth at present levels, 95% of it in the affluent South East. None of this comes terribly cheap. Today's share price compares with the most recently published net asset per share figure of about 154p, so the shares are selling on a thumping premium to NAV. They may need a little time to make further headway. Hold says Tempus.

e-Therapeutics (ETX) Director name: Mr Malcolm Young Amount sold: 50,000 @ 31.00p Value: £15,500

Top Director Sells Carr's Milling Industries (CRM) Director name: Mr Christopher Holmes Amount sold: 2,250 @ 1,079.00p Value: £24,278

Telecity Group: Goldman Sachs revises target price from 1110p to 1160p and retains a buy recommendation.

Standard Chartered: Morgan Stanley ups target price from 1656p to 1924p and upgrades to overweight.

Spirent Communications: N+1 Singer downgrades to buy with a target price of 165p.

Shire: JP Morgan revises target price from 2200p to 2340p retaining an overweight rating.

RSA Insurance Group: Deutsche Bank shifts target price from 140p to 147p, while its buy recommendation is reiterated.

RPS Group: Jefferies raises target price from 255p to 280p and keeps a buy recommendation.

Reed Elsevier: UBS revises target price from 770p to 790p, its buy recommendation is unaltered.

Pendragon: Jefferies moves target price from 20p to 31p maintaining a buy recommendation.

Mondi: Deutsche Bank increases target price from 640p to 930p and keeps its buy recommendation.

Inmarsat: Morgan Stanley takes target price from 640p to 690p, while leaving its equal-weight rating unchanged.