London open: Blue chips start well

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Date: Monday 07 Jul 2008

  • Market Movers
  • FTSE 100 5,470.50 +1.07%
  • techMARK 1,370.08 +0.71%
  • FTSE 250 8,596.00 +0.94%

LONDON (ShareCast) - London's blue chips made good gains in the first hour led by bargain hunters while sellers sat on their hands.

Carphone Warehouse, Amec and London Stock Exchange all made good progress, while British Airways was buoyed by Easyjet's latest passenger numbers.

The no-frills airline reported its June load factor remained strong at 86.9% and passenger numbers grew 19.5% to 4.1m compared to last year. Loads on a rolling 12 month basis fell to 83.3% from 84%. "In line with expectations, total revenue per seat continues to improve and to date nearly 70% of seats for the second half of the year have been sold," it added.

It's a big week for housebuilders with reports this morning already suggesting that Persimmon will make 1,000 staff redundant tomorrow. Marks & Spencer boss Staurt Rose also faces a difficult week with one in four shareholders expected to abstain or vote against his election as executive chairman.

Elsewhere, gaming machines group Inspired Gaming is to raise £40m through an issue of 80m convertible preference shares at 50p each. The money raised will fund its exit from its Pubs Division, pay down £10m of senior debt facilities and fund the further expansion of its core business. The pubs division is being sold to Danoptra for a nominal consideration. Inspired reported an after tax of loss of £45.3m for the half year to 12 April including a pub division write-down of £47.6m.

Engineer Morgan Crucible's turnover rose by about 13% in the first half of its financial year. On a like for like basis, excluding acquisitions, revenue growth is expected to be c.10% (c.4% on a constant currency basis). "Our organic revenue growth guidance for the full year remains in the 5-6% range on a constant currency basis," it added.

Courtesy car supplier Helphire reports satisfactory progress in the year to June just ended, but cautions that the UK non-fault accident management market is maturing and its caseload is growing less rapidly. If the economic environment remains challenging in the near future and fuel prices remain high, motoring activity and therefore growth in the use of credit hire may slow, it added.

Support services firm Spice reported a 40% rise in full-year pre-tax profit and said it continues to look to the future with confidence.Pre-tax profit increased to £17.1m in the year ended 30 April from £12.2m last time on revenue of £312.2m compared with £228.6m.

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