Earnings season has started and true to form, it has begun with a bang, with the likes of Tesco, Sage , Vedanta and ASOS to name but a few, giving us updates this week. To put it simply, some of these stocks have provided share price movements of up to 20% since their earnings release,…
This week’s UK Index winner is Tesco (+14%) which defied UK high street gloom to some extent, dragging peers Sainsbury (+4%) and Morrison (+3%) up with it. To be fair, several retail names fared quite well this week after trading updates and/or results, including Dunelm (performing well in tough UK market, online strong), Card Factory (faster…
Shares in Card Factory are 5% higher this morning, topping the , after a solid acceleration in full year sales growth (FY18) and a satisfactory start to the new year (FY19). Headline sales growth of 6% accelerated from 4.4% in FY18 while like-for-like sales grew 2.9% vs 0.3% prev. Even better news was the online…
Shares in Heating and Plumbing supplier Ferguson top the UK Index this morning after H1 results, driven by strong US residential markets, were accompanied by welcome confirmation of a $1bn special dividend (circa 5%) to be paid with proceeds of its sale of Nordic building materials distributor Stark. Whilst the former maintains the positive corporate…
Smurfit Kappa shares are bottom of the UK Index this morning, -3.1%, after management’s formal rejection of a circa 3% boost to the cash and share offer from International Paper. Having jumped 26% in response to the early March news, hitting fresh record highs, the shares have since eased almost 10% from their peak. This…
I’ve written lots about M&A – takeovers specifically – and the typically divergent share price reactions of predator and prey. Rather than discuss another UK Index share price jump following a bid approach though, how about two blue-chips trading higher because they walked away from a deal? Why? Because it backs up the rule of…