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Petra Diamonds now a hold: Petra Diamonds’ full year results were well flagged in advance and contained few surprises for investors. The confidence was underpinned by full year, pretax profits up 68% to $124.4 million (£77.3 million), on revenue of £471.8 million, giving earnings per share of 12.8c (8p) for the year ended June 30. Production increased 17% to 3.11 million carats and management reiterated its long-term target of 5 million carats for the year ended June 2019. Petra is embarking on huge expansion projects at the Finsch, Cullinan and Koffiefontein mines to extend production for the foreseeable future. Total capital expenditure during the year increased 10% to $209 million (£123 million) and net debt increased to $124.9 million, up from about $121 million at the same stage last year. As spending on mine infrastructure goes up and the debts rise, this greatly increases risks for investors. However, the company said that after the year end it achieved a sale price of $27.6 million for its 122-carat blue diamond. Petra will receive $23.5 million in cash now and the balance once the cutting and polishing is finished. Cash will also be boosted by the sale of a 232-carat white diamond in this financial year. Petra received $8.5 million for the sale of a 126-carat white diamond in December last year. Rough diamond prices have been steadily rising during the past year. The U.S., which is the largest single market for rough stones, is still enjoying an economic recovery. Petra has guided for rough diamond prices during the next 12 months to be underpinned by strong demand. On this update, the two diamond finds will reduce risks but there is still exposure to a volatile rough diamond price, and after excellent gains we downgrade to a hold. Petra Diamonds at 197p+1.2p Questor Says “Hold”.

Private equity: changing the game: There were $89 billion of leveraged buyouts in the first six months of 2014, according to S&P Capital IQ. That is a third higher than a year ago but still a very low proportion of overall M&A activity. That volume is two-thirds lower than in 2007, which was the heyday of private equity. Deals are smaller too. There have only been two deals of over $10 billion in the past five years, against 15 in the five years before the crisis. What’s wrong? Appetite for classic multibillion-dollar public-to-private deals – often carried out by a consortium of debt thirsty private equity groups – has waned. Buying out large listed companies is expensive. The S&P 500 recently hit a new high and is trading at about 15 times forward earnings compared to 11 times three years ago. And the buyout groups are having to put more into each deal – equity contributions have jumped to 35% in recent years from 30% in the pre-crisis era. To complicate things further, companies have lots of cash, so there is fierce competition for undervalued assets. So where is private equity putting money now? Unwanted divisions of big companies are popular targets. This avoids the hassle of buying public companies, which can require shareholder votes and big premiums. Another target is late-stage venture capital (think TPG’s investment in ride-sharing service, Uber). Private equity’s key skill is not buyout, but finding cheap assets and attractive deals before anyone else does.

Alibaba: From FOMO to FOGI: Fear of missing out, or FOMO, can make people do irrational things. And so it proved on Friday when shares in Chinese internet giant Alibaba closed their first day of trading at $94. The offering price was $68. The opening day pop was huge, even by Wall Street’s exuberant standards. This means someone has got something badly wrong. If the closing price represents Alibaba’s underlying value, the company’s balance sheet is now $8 billion lighter than it would be had the offering been priced correctly. Alternatively, it might be the buyers that have it wrong, if they are concerned about value at all. This seems more likely. Alibaba’s market capitalisation is more than $230 billion, larger than eBay and Amazon combined. The stock trades at more than 40 times this year’s earnings, according to the handful of analysts’ forecasts listed on Bloomberg. This makes it wildly more expensive than eBay (16 times) and Hong Kong-listed gaming and messaging service provider Tencent (29). Relative to 57% forecast growth in earnings, this may not seem steep. But these strong growth forecasts for Alibaba assume that net income margins rise from 45% this year to more than 50% for 2015 and 2016.

Fleeing Londoners push up commuter belt home costs: Londoners leaving the capital have spent £17 billion on new houses in the past year, pushing up prices in the commuter belt.

Lodha Group, India’s largest housing developer by sales, is launching an aggressive drive to become one of the biggest investors in London’s residential property market with plans to spend as much as $5bn by the end of 2018. Mr Lodha said he now planned to spend about $3bn acquiring new assets, alongside a further $2bn for construction, to develop a slate of properties ranging from super-prime to mid-market. “We want to be among the top two developers in London in the next five years,” he said. (Financial Times)

If there is going to be material news; I expect an RNS before the AGM which is standard practice or at least a Trading Update statement before the AGM which is also customary amongst FTSE 350 companies but not necessarily AIM quoted entities.

Mirada has its Annual General Meeting this coming Wednesday; 24th September 2014

Cenkos gives £40,000 bonus to all staff: All 120 staff at Cenkos Securities, from secretaries to financiers, are to share in a windfall of about £4m after the stockbroker decided to distribute some of the £30 million it received for floating the AA.

One million small firms should be exempted from business rates in overhaul of way companies are taxed by local councils, according to report from property industry: The British Property Federation will publish its proposal in the coming weeks to replace the current system of reviewing each firm’s annual business rates every five years with a yearly review for bigger companies.

Marks & Spencer’s online sales in China surge after deal to sell clothes through internet giant Alibaba: Marks & Spencer sells its clothes through Alibaba’s subsidiary, Tmall, and it said almost half its dress sales in China are online, adding that it was the fastest growing womenswear brand on Tmall.

WANdisco now a sell: WANdisco [LON:WAND], the Aim-listed technology specialist, said last week that first half losses had more than doubled to $18.5 million (£11.3 million) and, with customers seemingly reluctant to sign up for its services, Questor removes its highly speculative buy recommendation. The Sheffield-based company writes computer software that helps companies search through vast amounts of data quickly and easily. With everything from a Tesco store card to social networking websites like Facebook collecting information about our daily lives, WANdisco’s services should be increasingly in demand. The problem is not the interest in the product but rather converting that interest into paying customers. David Richards, WANdisco’s Chief Executive, said the company has “reached advanced stages in production trials with a number of large global corporations”. It continues to win customers for its big data product, with British Gas and University of California Health signing contracts during the first half, and has renewed existing contracts with HP and Walmart for its application lifestyle management (ALM) product. WANdisco’s revenues increased 43% to $5 million – up from $3.5 million in the first half of 2013 – but pretax losses widened to $18.5 million from $7.5 million at the same stage last year. The group spent $4.2 million investing in new products in the first half. Questor says “Sell

Ghost tube stations worth billions go on sale: Transport for London (TfL) is preparing to invite companies to bid to transform London’s abandoned underground stations into a network of tourist attractions, retail hubs, hotels and museums.

Asos faces brand label revolt over discounting: Under-fire online fashion retailer Asos is facing growing concerns from its suppliers – some of Britain’s leading clothing brands – about the discounts it is offering on their products.

Woodford raises stake in Game Digital: Neil Woodford, the veteran fund manager who shunned technology stocks during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, has snapped up some of the stake in Game Digital that U.S. hedge fund Elliott Advisors put on the market on Friday, netting it £58.5 million.

Ex-StanChart finance Chief lands board role at L&G: Richard Meddings will join the board of Legal & General as a non-Executive Director in his first role since quitting as Standard Chartered’s Finance Director earlier this year.

Exxon winds down Russian Arctic drilling campaign: ExxonMobil, the U.S. oil company, is winding down its drilling campaign in the Russian Arctic, making it the biggest corporate casualty of sanctions announced by the U.S. and EU this month, by putting its $700 million project on indefinite hold. Mexico’s oil hedging deal exposed: Mexico’s oil hedging programme - a highly secretive deal that is the largest single trade in crude markets - appears to be unfolding in public for the first time, according to traders.

Morgan Stanley were upbeat on TUI Travel'sprospects following the merger with its German parent: The planned disposal or demerger of some non-core businesses, plus the strong balance sheet post the expected conversion of £750m of TUI Travel convertible bonds to equity, could pave the way to a €1-2bn cash return at some point, 15-30pc of the market cap,

Rents hit a record high as new mortgage loans keep climbing: London rents hit a record high of £1,161 on average last month, acc­ord­ing to figures out from LSL Property Services.

Cash and carry group sales up: The cash and carry division of Booker has grown like-for-like sales by 1.8%, with non-tobacco sales up 3.1% in the 12 weeks to September 12

DS Smith has strong start: Shares in recycled packaging maker DS Smith jumped more than 5% as the company said sales volumes were up in the first quarter of the new financial year. The upbeat update means Questor’s advice that the shares were looking oversold is paying out nicely. The packaging group said like-for-like corrugated box volumes since May 1 have grown across all DS Smith’s regions, with growth ahead of last year’s rate and its target rate of “GDP +1%”. The company added that it bought a Scandinavian foam business for £24 million and that, following the triennial pension review, no drastic changes were required to the funding. Miles Roberts, Chief Executive, said: “Notwithstanding continued headwinds in many of our markets, performance has been in line with our plans.” DS Smith is still generating plenty of cash and the dividend is covered more than twice by free cash flow. Analysts from Investec expect net debt to fall to about £750 million by next April, down from about £830 million. We didn’t expect the recovery to be that quick and we think there could be a little longer to run with the prospective dividend yield of 4% on offer, and that dividend is covered more than twice by earnings. Questor maintains the long-term view on DS Smith. DS Smith at 286.9p+13.9p Questor Says ‘Buy’.