Member Info for jange

A 2% discount is available to eligible shareholders on the price of a new property, subject to a maximum discount of £4,000 in any 12 month period. Shareholders must inform the Sales Negotiator on site when reserving their home that they are claiming the shareholders discount.

Profit before tax fell 38% to £156.7m in the year to the end of March, something the firm blamed on operational, infrastructure and employment costs.

In a statement made on May 30th, Wray said the company had "delivered outperformance" and its shareholders "provide the capital investment for us to keep investing in our networks".

Tony Wray, the Chief Executive Officer of Severn Trent, the FTSE 100 utility provider which serves eight million customers, has ditched 4,570 shares in the firm to cover his tax liabilities following the award of shares under a long-term incentive plan. Wray traded the shares at 1,747p a pop, pocketing a tidy profit of £79,838 and leaving him with a total of 17,731 shares. Only a week ago the director was forced to defend the company's decision to pay a special dividend of £150m, equal to 63p per share, despite a decline in annual profit and soaring consumer water bills.

Pubs group Spirit is expected to report a slow-down in like-for-like growth in its trading update. The company will be the first boozers operator to report on trade over the extended Diamond Jubilee week-end, which could prove useful weather-vane for the pubs sector as a whole.

"The only exception to positive trading is likely to be seen within Plasma Technology division where over capacity in the High Brightness (HB) LED [light-emitting diode] market is still not expected to see a recovery in demand," the broker cautions. "That said, equipment solutions in MEMS should offset the downturn in HB LED within Plasma Technology," the broker added.

Westhouse Securities expects the firm to report positive trading patterns across its three main business activities: Nanotechnology Tools, Industrial Products and Service.

Oxford Instruments, a provider of high technology tools and systems for research and industry, revealed back in April that profits would be at the upper end of expectations so there should not be too many surprises when it unveils full year figures on Tuesday.

The loan is a secured loan facility with an annual interest rate of 7.0%, repayable on 31 March 2014. The facility is convertible into ordinary shares of 1p each in African Copper at a conversion price of 2.40p per share, with a maximum of just over 163m shares. If this occurred, ZCI would own 91.09% of African Copper.

African Copper, a producer and exploration company, has secured an additional loan of $6.0m from its controlling shareholder ZCI (84.19% ownership), which will be used to provide the company with further working capital for its Mowana Mine facilities, partially to cover the funding gap caused by the failure of the Ball Mill pinion shaft in May 2012.

The Executive Chairman of Wasabi Energy, John Byrne, explained that "through our licensing agreements, Wasabi Energy receives one-off licence payments of between $50,000 and $150,000 per installed MW, depending on the licensor and the particular industry."

Wasabi Energy has reported that its Kalina Cycle licencee, FLSmidth, has secured a contract to install its second power plant using waste heat from a major cement plant. The plant will be installed in the second quarter of 2013 at a cement plant owned by Star Cement in United Arab Emirates. Wasabi Energy will receive a one-off licence fee based on the gross power output of the Kalina Cycle plant.

A full mobile website has recently been launched and the E-Commerce service is now available to French customers, Laura Ashley explained.

"The company is confident that its well-established brand, high-quality product offering and strong balance sheet will ensure the like-for-like sales growth trend continues across the retail business for the rest of 2012," it said in a company update. Online sales grew 18.8% compared to the same period last year after a revamp of the company's website.

Like-for-like sales flourished at fashion and homeware firm Laura Ashley as it looks to continued sales growth for the remainder of 2012. In its update for the 18 weeks of the current financial year ending 26 January 2013, the retailer known for its English rose patterns, said like-for-like sales grew 5.4% while total UK retail sales increased by 4.1%.

The board is recommending a 10% increase in the final dividend to 22.73p, lower than market expectations of a 32.60p dividend.

"Given the current level of economic uncertainty, it is not surprising that the new year has started slowly. Despite this, with the level of prospects and opportunities at an all time high, and the resources now in place to service these, we are confident of achieving a strong performance for the year as a whole," he added.

Analysts had predicted revenue of £42.9m and pre-tax profit of around £10.20m. Commenting on trading, chairman Paul Hearson said: "Following the very strong growth achieved in 2010/11, the past year has been a period of solid progress for Latchways, despite the increasingly difficult global economic environment. We have achieved good growth across the majority of geographies and product lines, with the exception of North America."

Safety systems specialist Latchways unveiled record full year revenue and pre-tax profit after growth in all regions except North America. The maker of devices to stop roofers and window cleaners falling said revenues rose 5% to a record £41.4m for the year ended 31 March 2012. Pre-tax profit also rose to a record £9.9m during the year compared to £9.3m the year before.

Parris added, "Our pipeline of commercial opportunities continues to grow as we seek to deepen our penetration of the markets where Intercede's MyID digital identity technology has become an industry standard. There are also a number of new technology-led trends which provide additional opportunities for Intercede; for example mobile device security and the deployment of digital patient identities in healthcare. The outlook is therefore extremely positive."