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Which 3 Stocks Would Warren Buffett Buy?London afternoon: Footsie recovers from US jobs jolt
04-02-2011 14:40
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The Footsie kept its head above 6,000 over the lunchtime period despite a negative reaction to US jobless figures at 1:30.
Nonfarm payrolls rose just 36,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday, well below forecasts of at least 140,000. On the bright side, December's number was revised up to 121,000 from 103,000.
Utilities are dragging the blue-chip index higher on the back of a positive broker note on the sector from BofA Merrill Lynch. The US bank has upgraded United Utilities and Severn Trent from "neutral" to "buy" and upgraded Pennon and Northumbrian Water from "underperform" to "neutral".
In other broker action Wm Morrison has been upgraded to 'buy' from 'neutral' by UBS, which suggests the supermarket chain has at least £1bn to hand out either in a one-off distribution or through higher dividends.
"In our view, Morrison's balance sheet strength and ongoing cash generative capabilities could support both, although we think the latter is marginally more likely," UBS said.
Matrix Group is also high on Morrisons and has reiterated its "buy" rating and 325p target price.
Sales continue to surge ahead at component distributor Electrocomponents with an improvement of nearly a fifth over the past four months. Overall, sales grew by 19% in the period to January, as the International business grew by around 23% and the UK by around 11%.
The US Food and Drug Administration has accepted the AstraZeneca's resubmission of a new drug application for its blood-thinning drug BRILINTA, and set a review date of 20 July.
Dairy Crest, the company responsible for Cathedral cheese and Country Life butter, reckons full-year profits will be in line with expectations following a "strong" third quarter. In a statement for the nine months to 31 December, it said sales were "broadly unchanged" from last year when the contribution from the offloaded stake in Wexford Creamery is taken out. The shares have fallen back a little.
Power systems developer Rolls-Royce has signed a £20m contract to supply engines and propulsion equipment for four gas-fuelled ferries to be built for the Norwegian operator Torghatten Nord.
Budget airline easyJet flew 19.1% more passengers on its orange liveried planes this January than a year ago. More than 3.74m people took to the skies with the carrier last month, up from 3.14m in January 2010. The load factor, which measures how well planes are filled, slipped from 79.3% to 78.9%.
SuperGroup, owner of the rapidly growing Superdry clothes chain, leads the FTSE 250 higher after saying it has splashed out €40m in cash and shares to buy out its Benelux and France franchisee CNC Collections from its owner Luc Clément. CNC is the leading franchisee globally for the Superdry brand.
Elsewhere in fashion, French Connection's ongoing businesses staged a strong profit recovery over the past six months and the fashion chain now expects to post at least £6.8m, up from £1m, for the year to January just ended.
Shares in Accsys Technologies took a battering on Friday morning after the company announced a deeply discounted placing of shares. The wood products company is to raise €30m by way of an underwritten firm placing and open offer of 200m shares. The shares are being offered at €0.15 each, representing a discount of 58.9% to the closing mid-market share price on the day before the announcement.
AIM-quoted Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping continues to lose money but it is focusing on its core data processing and interpretation operations. Stripping out impairment provisions and other one-off, non-cash charges, the underlying loss fell from £8.71m to £8.37m in the year to August 2010.
Nonfarm payrolls rose just 36,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday, well below forecasts of at least 140,000. On the bright side, December's number was revised up to 121,000 from 103,000.
Utilities are dragging the blue-chip index higher on the back of a positive broker note on the sector from BofA Merrill Lynch. The US bank has upgraded United Utilities and Severn Trent from "neutral" to "buy" and upgraded Pennon and Northumbrian Water from "underperform" to "neutral".
In other broker action Wm Morrison has been upgraded to 'buy' from 'neutral' by UBS, which suggests the supermarket chain has at least £1bn to hand out either in a one-off distribution or through higher dividends.
"In our view, Morrison's balance sheet strength and ongoing cash generative capabilities could support both, although we think the latter is marginally more likely," UBS said.
Matrix Group is also high on Morrisons and has reiterated its "buy" rating and 325p target price.
Sales continue to surge ahead at component distributor Electrocomponents with an improvement of nearly a fifth over the past four months. Overall, sales grew by 19% in the period to January, as the International business grew by around 23% and the UK by around 11%.
The US Food and Drug Administration has accepted the AstraZeneca's resubmission of a new drug application for its blood-thinning drug BRILINTA, and set a review date of 20 July.
Dairy Crest, the company responsible for Cathedral cheese and Country Life butter, reckons full-year profits will be in line with expectations following a "strong" third quarter. In a statement for the nine months to 31 December, it said sales were "broadly unchanged" from last year when the contribution from the offloaded stake in Wexford Creamery is taken out. The shares have fallen back a little.
Power systems developer Rolls-Royce has signed a £20m contract to supply engines and propulsion equipment for four gas-fuelled ferries to be built for the Norwegian operator Torghatten Nord.
Budget airline easyJet flew 19.1% more passengers on its orange liveried planes this January than a year ago. More than 3.74m people took to the skies with the carrier last month, up from 3.14m in January 2010. The load factor, which measures how well planes are filled, slipped from 79.3% to 78.9%.
SuperGroup, owner of the rapidly growing Superdry clothes chain, leads the FTSE 250 higher after saying it has splashed out €40m in cash and shares to buy out its Benelux and France franchisee CNC Collections from its owner Luc Clément. CNC is the leading franchisee globally for the Superdry brand.
Elsewhere in fashion, French Connection's ongoing businesses staged a strong profit recovery over the past six months and the fashion chain now expects to post at least £6.8m, up from £1m, for the year to January just ended.
Shares in Accsys Technologies took a battering on Friday morning after the company announced a deeply discounted placing of shares. The wood products company is to raise €30m by way of an underwritten firm placing and open offer of 200m shares. The shares are being offered at €0.15 each, representing a discount of 58.9% to the closing mid-market share price on the day before the announcement.
AIM-quoted Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping continues to lose money but it is focusing on its core data processing and interpretation operations. Stripping out impairment provisions and other one-off, non-cash charges, the underlying loss fell from £8.71m to £8.37m in the year to August 2010.
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