LONDON (ShareCast) - Nerves ahead of the busy reporting season had London’s blue chip stocks struggling by the afternoon, as weak metal prices left the miners in the cold.

BHP Billiton, the mining giant, fell after announcing a mixed view of production from its operations. It reported record quarterly production of aluminium from continuing operations of 337,000 tonnes though silver and copper output fell.

Other miners were also down heavily, with Kazakhmys, Anglo American, Rio Tinto and Lonmin all in the red today.

British Energy attracted more selling due to the uncertainty over the duration of outages at two plants because of cracked tubes and weak oil prices.

BP picked up though after reporting a third quarter replacement cost profit of $6.98bn compared with $4.41bn a year ago, an increase of 58%. For the nine months, replacement cost profit rose 23% to $18.36bn.

Reckitt Benckiser was in demand after raising its full year net revenue growth target to 17% from 15% previously. The news came alongside a rise in adjusted earnings to £271m for the third quarter from £210m a year earlier.

Tate & Lyle also did well after Morgan Stanley upped the sugar group to 'equal-weight' from 'underweight' with a target of 750p. The broker also raised its 2007 and 2008 earnings per share estimates.

JP Morgan lifted its price target on high street fashion retailer Marks & Spencer to 761p from 642p ahead of first half results due early next month. The broker also raised its EPS guidance for the next two years.

Whitbread lifted first half profits by 21% to £109.8m and confirmed it would return £350m to shareholders and put £50m into its pension fund. The pub and leisure group added it remained confident of further progress in the second half.

Department store Debenhams saw like for sales fall by 4.2% in the first seven weeks of the current year, but a 68% hike in full year profit before tax and exceptional items to £112.8m cheered investors. Results for the year to August showed underlying trading profits up by 21% to £267m.

Carpetright reports that its UK and Republic of Ireland business has recorded a total sales increase of 5.9% with like for like sales up by 0.3% in the last 25 weeks. The rest of Europe has recorded a total sales increase of 9.1% with like for like sales up by 3.6%.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals, the generic drug maker, cautioned today that full year sales will be slightly below expectations after a fall in wholesaler inventories and a lower than forecast contribution from new product launches.

Data search software specialist Autonomy more than tripled profits in the third quarter as the benefits of its recent acquisition Verity continue to boost margins.

Gold miner Avocet Mining jumped today as it said revised resources at its wholly owned Penjom gold mine in Malaysia are estimated to be at an historical high of in excess of 1m ounces of gold.

Davenham also improved as the asset based lender to small and medium-sized businesses said trading is in line with expectations, driven by a continued increase in its loan portfolio which hit a record in October.

It was gloomy news for Turbotec Products though as the heat exchangers maker said significant increases in raw material costs will result in profitability that will fall short of expectations for the year.

• News Channel