Card Factory Share News (CARD)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are amongst the biggest risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Friday.
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FTSE 100 WINNERS
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Hikma Pharmaceuticals, up 4.2%. Citigroup raises the pharmaceutical company to Buy from Neutral.

Ashtead Group, up 1.7%. Exane BNP raises the industrial equipment rental company to Outperform from Neutral.

London Stock Exchange Group, up 1.6%. The bourse operator named Donald Brydon, the current chairman of Royal Mail and formerly of the London Metal Exchange, to take on the same role at the company. London Stock Exchange Group has been looking for a successor to Chris Gibson-Smith since last July, when he said he would be leaving the group.
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FTSE 250 WINNERS
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Colt Group, up 21%. The independent directors of telecommunications and IT firm said that a 190 pence per share offer from Fidelity for the remaining share in Colt it does not already own "undervalues" the company, and makes no recommendation as to whether or not shareholders should accept the offer. The offer from FMR LLC and FIL Ltd, together known as Fidelity, values the company at around GBP1.72 billion. Fidelity said this offer price will not be increased. FMR already has a 62.43% shareholding in Colt. Colt shares now trade at 190.30p.

Poundland Group, up 5.0%. Morgan Stanley raises the discount retailer to Equal-Weight from Underweight.

N Brown Group, up 3.8%. The online, catalogue and stores retailer reported growth in revenue in the first quarter of its financial year and said its guidance for the full year remains unchanged. It said group revenue was up 2.5% in the 13 weeks to May 29, as like-for-like sales rose 1.5% and product revenue grew 4.3% but financial services revenue fell 1.9%.
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FTSE 250 LOSERS
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Card Factory, down 8.6% at 330.00 pence. The greeting card retailer said some of its directors and members of its senior management team have sold 14.8 million shares in the company at 330p each, representing approximately 4.3% of its issued share capital. At that price, the sale was worth GBP48.8 million. The selling shareholders, which included Chief Executive Richard Hayes and Chief Financial Officer Darren Bryant, continue to have an interest in 49.1 million shares between them, representing 14.4% of the issued share capital.

PZ Cussons, down 1.0%. The consumer products group is cut to Neutral from Buy by Goldman Sachs.
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AIM ALL-SHARE WINNERS
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Styles & Wood Group, up 56%. The company revealed a refinancing of its outstanding convertible preference shares, with a Henderson Global Investors fund and an investor backed by the big five FTSE 100 banks taking shares in the company after buying its outstanding convertible preference shares from a subsidiary owned by Royal Bank of Scotland. The refinancing strengthens the company's balance sheet, gives it a better capital structure and increases net assets by GBP3.6 billion, according to Styles & Wood, which said the move will cut cash outflows by GBP5.2 million and enable it to consider acquisitions.

Central Rand Gold, up 12% at 13.30p. The company said it has raised GBP200,000 by issuing 2.0 million new shares at 10 pence each in a subscription. It said the proceeds of the subscription will be used primarily to strengthen the company's balance sheet and provide working capital in order to undertake continued surface mining operations, together with the programmed plant upgrades and efficiency processes improvements.

Daily Internet, up 12%. The hosting and cloud infrastructure company said it has agreed a two-year contract renewal with Netplan Internet Solutions worth GBP500,000. This is an uplift of GBP90,000 compared to the initial contract terms, the company said, and is a result of additional upgrades for Compute and Storage capacity.

Fyffes, up 8.2%. The Irish fruit and fresh produce company said it is increasing its target earnings ranges for the full year 2015 as it has performed strongly in the year to date. It increased its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation target range to between EUR55 million and EUR61 million from between EUR44 million and EUR50 million, and has also increased its adjusted earnings per share to between 12.2 cents and 13.9 cents from between 10 cents and 11.8 cents.

Biome Technologies, up 6.9%. The company said its Stanelco RF Technologies division has inked a GBP1.1 million contract with a customer in Asia to manufacture a set of fibre optic furnaces for supply in 2015.
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AIM ALL-SHARE LOSERS
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Auhua Clean Energy, off 33%. The company said its pretax profit and revenue fell in 2014 compared to 2013, and it has raised GBP1.7 million through its previously announced discounted share placing and subscription. The placing comprised of 9.0 million shares, and the subscription 29.3 million shares, both at the price of 4.5 pence each. The company currently trades at 5.35p.

Urals Energy, down 23%. The exploration and production company posted a widened pretax loss for 2014, hit by volatility in the crude oil price and the devaluation of the Russian rouble against the dollar.

Vela Technologies, down 15%. The company said it has invested GBP50,000 for a minority interest in Revolve Performance, a newly incorporated company which fully owns Nitec, a non-operating holding company which fully owns specialist powertrain and performance engineering group Revolve Technologies, as well as 91% of US operating company Mountune.

Rurelec, down 11%. The company said Chief Executive Officer Peter Earl is stepping down and will take its Independent Power Corp subsidiary with him, as the provider of power generation in Latin America posted a narrowed pretax loss for 2014. Earl will buy the IPC business for a nominal sum after all its assets and liabilities have been repositioned into Rurelec. The company said that Earl's departure will take IPC and over GBP500,000 of overheads out of Rurelec.
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By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com; @NeilThakrar1

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