UK small caps hold steady in morning trade, while junior-listed AIMshares fall 0.2 percent.
Engineering, automotive and environmental consultancy Ricardo rises5.4 percent after saying customer activity in the past two months has beenpositive, and profit for the year to end-June should be above marketexpectations.
"Encouragingly, the outperformance is derived from across Ricardo's coremarkets, including the AEA business. We upgrade our forecasts accordingly toreflect current earnings momentum as well as on-going impressive cashgeneration," analysts at Investec said in a note, reiterating a 'buy' rating.
Amerisur Resources gains 3.3 percent to 47.45 pence after sayingthe eight new well in the current Platinillo drilling programme has beensuccessfully drilled and completed for production.
"In our opinion, this is an excellent result from Platanillo-12 and, withexport capacity additions in the offing, we believe that Amerisur remains a veryhigh quality, production-led story in Colombia; we calculate Risked NAV of 85pence/share," analysts at Shore Capital, which provides broker services toAmerisur, say in a note.
Reuters messaging rm://antonina.vorobyova.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net
Ricardo (RCDO)