Premier Veterinary shares sink as losses rise
Shares in Premier Veterinary sunk 8 percent on Friday morning, after losses increased for another year at its US business.
Losses rose to £1.9 million, up from £1.7 million last year, despite a revenue increase of 33 percent to £1.54 million.
“Solid progress has been made in number of pets on plan across the UK and Europe during the first six months of the financial year and this progress has continued in April and May,” chief executive Dominic Tonner said.
“Whilst the improvements in growth in the US are encouraging, the current number of pets on plan is not at levels previously expected.”
“We are continuing to explore options that will enable the group to capitalise on the investment that has already been made in the US whilst at the same time reducing the continuing cash burn in this territory.”
Shares in Premier Veterinary (LON:PVG) are currently trading down 7.46 percent at 31.00 (0917GMT).
Tesco shares rise on another set of positive results
Tesco reported yet another set of improving results on Friday, as its turnaround strategy continues to take effect.
First-quarter sales rose 1.8 percent over the past three months, with total sales growing by 2.3 percent over the 13 week period.
In the UK and Ireland, same-store sales grew by 3.5 percent. Like-for-like sales at the recently-acquired Booker wholesale business jumped 14.3 percent.
“Our growth plans are on track and we are pleased with the momentum in the business,” chief executive Dave Lewis.
“We remain well-placed to serve our customers better and deliver on our medium-term financial ambitions.”
“We are delighted with initial progress on Booker, and are focused on delivering the synergy benefits that our merger brings.”
The group confirmed that its own-brand relaunch was going well, a plan put into place to combat competition from discounters like Lidl and Aldi.
The performance represents another improvement for Tesco, who after, reporting their worst results in history in 2014, launched a turnaround plan.
Tesco shares are currently trading up 2.12 percent at 255.10 (0842GMT).
Rolls-Royce shares jump 11pc on job cuts
Rolls-Royce (LON:RR) shares jumped 11 percent at market open on Friday, after announcing plans to save £400 million a year through 4,600 job cuts.
The UK is likely to be the worst hit by cuts, that will likely be centred on middle management jobs, engineers working on early-stage design. It will be the company’s biggest round of job cuts since 2001.
Investors were cheered by Rolls-Royce’s announcement that would be well placed to exceed free cash flow of £1 billion by 2020 and set a mid-term target of free cash flow per share to exceed £1.
It added that the jobs would not include those protected by an agreement with unions in the East Midlands.
“After a decade of significant investment we are committed to delivering significantly improved returns, while continuing to invest in the innovation needed to realise our long-term ambition to be the world’s leading industrial technology company,” chief executive Warren East said.
“It is never an easy decision to reduce our workforce, but we must create a commercial organisation that is as world-leading as our technologies.”
Rolls Royce shares are currently trading up 11.44 percent at 983.90 (0821GMT).
Draghi signals end of ECB bond purchases
Mario Draghi today laid out plans for the end of the European Central Bank’s bond buying purchases.
The ECB will drop bond purchases to €30 billion until September then down to €15 million in October, November and December when bond purchases will finish.
Draghi did place a caveat on the plan, however, saying that the reduction in purchases would be on the condition that Eurozone economic data remained robust.
The comments gave a dovish tone to the delivery and the Euro fell heavily against the dollar sending European equity indices higher.
The announcement came after the Federal Reserve increased interest rates for the seventh time in the current tightening cycle to 2% from 1.75%.
In same manner the European Central Bank were slow to adopt QE in the first place, they have been slow to signal a return to normality.
This risks them not being able to prepare sufficiently, from a monetary policy standpoint, for any downturn in the global economy and could have long term implications.
Draghi also released downward revisions for economic growth in the Eurozone and pointed towards external factors such as a potential trade war as reasons for caution.
Inflation rate hits 2.3pc in May
Inflation rose to 2.3 percent in May 2018, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, up from 2.2 percent in April.
The figure came in a little under economists’ expectations, with forecasts coming in at 2.5 percent. A weaker inflation rate than expected will lend weight to the Bank of England’s decision not to raise interest rates, which was decided at the last monthly meeting.
Rising motor fuel prices were one of the largest upward contributions to the change in the rate between April and May 2018, with increases also from air and sea fares which had been influenced by the timing of Easter.
Partially offsetting downward effects came from price changes for games, domestic electricity, food and non-alcoholic beverages, and furniture and furnishings.
Morning Round-Up: FTSE 100 opens in negative territory, Just Eat sinks
The FTSE 100 opened down on Wednesday morning, ahead of the a rate decision by the US Federal Reserve and the release of UK inflation figures.
The FTSE is currently down 11 percent at 7,695.21, with other EU markets also seeing a slow start to the day. The German DAX index is down 0.17 percent at 12,821.10, with Spain’s IBEX 35 down 0.63 percent at 9,852.30 (0936GMT).
Fiona Cincotta, Senior Market Analyst at City Index, commented:
“The FTSE 100 opened a touch lower as focus shifted from this week’s historic summit between Donald Trump and the North Korean president onto key central bank interest rate meetings which are due to yield rate decisions and potentially a winding down of the easy money supply in Europe.”
The FTSE’s biggest risers are Evraz plc (LON:EVR), up 2.65 percent, followed by Johnson Matthey (LON:JMAT) and mining company Glencore (LON:GLEN).
The biggest fallers this morning are Just Eat (LON:JE), who have been hit by big expansion plans from competitor Deliveroo and are trading down 7.88 percent, BT Group )LON:BT.A) and Fresnillo (LON:FRES).
Dewhurst sales and profit plummet in H1
Components supplier Dewhurst (LON:DWHT) suffered from both falling sales and profit in the half year to March, sending shares plummeting at market open.
Profit before tax fell 4 percent to £2.8 million, down from £3 million this time last year, with revenue taking a 5 percent hit to land at £24.7 million. Operating profit also fell 19 percent to £2.5 million, with the company warning that the slump may well continue into the second half.
A strong pound was largely responsible for the fall, as well as a lack of demand for keypads, one of its key sales drivers.
“Although keypad sales have picked up a little in the last couple of months we do expect a declining trend on these products over the long term,” the company said.
“The second half may see a period of consolidation, but on balance we are encouraged by the future growth prospects for the group,” the company added.
The group maintained its interim dividend at 3.5 pence. Shares in Dewhurst are currently trading down 14.44 percent at 800.00 (0920GMT).
Toshiba shares jump on share buyback announcement
Shares in Toshiba (TYO:6502) jumped on Wednesday on the announcement of a share buyback plan worth around 700 billion yen.
The share buyback was designed to fulfill the promise made to its investors to share some of the profits made from the $18 billion sale of its memory chip business.
The group finalised the sale of the memory business to a consortium led by Bain Capital earlier this month. The deal came as a relief to investors, after financial struggles driven by the doomed Westinghouse nuclear business meant the company came close to delisting.
The scale of the buyback exceeds what some in the market expected, which was around 600 billion yen. The timing of the announcement is earlier than we had expected, so the first impression is positive,” Mizuho Securities analyst Takeshi Tanaka said in a note to clients.
Shares rose around 11 percent when the news was released, and are currently trading up 6.65 percent at 337JPY (0901GMT).
Dixons Carphone shares sink on massive data breach
Dixons Carphone (LON:DC) shares plummeted over 4 percent at market open on Wednesday, after admitting to a huge data breach affecting 1.2 million people.
Hackers “attempted to compromise” 5.9 million payment cards, but Dixons Carphone said only 105,000 cards without chip-and-pin protection had been leaked.
The group added that there was no evidence that any of the cards had been used fraudulently following the breach, but chief executive Alex Baldock said it was “extremely disappointed” by the data breach and “sorry for any upset”.
“The protection of our data has to be at the heart of our business, and we’ve fallen short here.
“We’ve taken action to close off this unauthorised access and though we have currently no evidence of fraud as a result of these incidents, we are taking this extremely seriously,” he added.
The news comes as a further blow to Dixons Carphone investors, just a month after it warned that it had been affected by the tough market conditions and said it may suffer a sharp fall in profits.
Shares in the company are currently trading down 4.12 percent at 189.60 (0842GMT).
Biffa report 33pc profit boost, CEO steps down
Waste management company Biffa reported a 33 percent rise in profit on Wednesday, alongside the announcement that CEO Ian Wakelin would be stepping down.
Underlying after tax profit rose 33.8 percent to £47.9 million, with net revenue jumping 8.8 percent to £977.7 million. Underlying earnings rose 8.9 percent to £150 million, with underlying operating profit rose 10 percent to £81.2 million.
CEO Ian Wakelin also announced that he would be stepping down from his position, to be replaced by CFO Michael Topham.
Wakelin said: “I have thoroughly enjoyed the last eight years and will leave satisfied that we have achieved a great deal including successfully bringing the business back to the stock market.
“I would like to thank all of my colleagues across the business for their support and commitment over the years. Biffa is a great business with a great future ahead of it.”
Shares in Biffa (LON:BIFF) are currently trading down 0.83 percent at 239.50 (0823GMT).