(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Thursday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Unilever, up 7.1%. The Anglo-Dutch consumer goods firm reported a 4.1% rise in first-half profit and said that it saw a double-digit sales growth in hygiene products due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which help offset decline in sales of food service and out of home ice cream sales. For the half-year ended June 30, revenue was EUR25.71 billion, down 1.6% from EUR26.13 billion the year before, but pretax profit rose 4.1% to EUR4.53 billion from EUR4.35 billion. Home Care underlying sales grew 3.2%, with 2.9% from volume and positive pricing of 0.3%. The rise was attributed to increased consumer demand for household cleaning products, such as Cif surface cleaners. Unilever maintained its quarterly shareholder dividend at EUR0.4104 per share. In addition, Unilever said that it has decided to form a separate entity for its tea business, which generated revenue of EUR2 billion in 2019. "Business resilience is a much sought-after attribute in the current economic climate and Unilever has certainly got the right ingredients. While it failed to deliver any sales growth on a group basis during its first-half period, its performance was considerably better than expected," said AJ Bell's Russ Mould.
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Sage Group, up 4.0%. The accounting software provider reported solid growth for the first nine months with recurring revenue expected to grow a good amount for the financial year. The company said it expects recurring revenue in the financial year ending September 30 to grow by 7% to 8%, with a organic operating margin of 22%. Sage Group's total organic revenue saw an increase of 4.1% to GBP1.40 billion in the first nine months ending June 30 from GBP1.34 billion, with a 1.1% increase in revenue for the third quarter to GBP460 million from GBP455 million a year before. Recurring revenue for the nine months ending June 30 increased 9.0%. This was driven by a software subscription growth of 23% to GBP885 million, compared to prior year's nine-month result of GBP722 million.
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WPP, up 3.0%. The ad agency was benefitting from a positive read-across from French peer Publicis Groupe. Publicis reported revenue growth of 8.4% in the six months to the end of June to EUR5.28 billion, resulting in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization growth of 4.3% to EUR923 million. Publicis added that it continued to record significant wins in new business across the world, such as Sephora in North America, McDonald's in China and Francaise des Jeux in France. Publicis shares were up 15% in Paris.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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SSE, down 5.5%, Pennon Group, down 3.5%. The utility stocks went ex-dividend meaning new buyers no longer qualify for the latest payout.
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RELX, down 3.0%. The Anglo-Dutch information, events and analytics company posted lower interim revenue and profit as its exhibitions business was significantly dented by Covid-19. For the half-year ended June 30, revenue fell 10% to GBP3.50 billion from GBP3.89 billion the year before and adjusted pretax profit dropped 25% to GBP858 million from GBP1.14 billion. RELX highlighted that its Exhibitions unit, which accounted for 16% of revenue and 13% of adjusted operating profit in 2019, has been hurt significantly by Covid-19, as the pandemic forced countries to block public events and gatherings. In the Exhibitions arm, first-half revenue of GBP201 million was less than a third of GBP684 million last year, and the business swung to an adjusted operating loss of GBP117 million from a profit of GBP231 million. The outlook for the remainder of 2020 for Exhibitions remains highly uncertain, RELX added.
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NatWest Group, down 2.5%. Credit Suisse cut the majority state-backed lender to Neutral from Outperform.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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IG Group Holdings, down 6.5%. The contract-for-difference provider reported a sharp rise in annual profit and revenue on the back of a "record" performance in the fourth quarter. For the year ended May 31, IG recorded a pretax profit jump of 52% to GBP295.9 million from GBP194.3 million. Net trading revenue grew 36% year on year to GBP649.2 million from GBP476.9 million. In the first three quarters of the financial year, net trading revenue improved 9%, but then doubled year on year in the final quarter. Looking ahead, IG expects to maintain the momentum seen in its Core Markets, and hit medium-term targets - which remain unchanged at Core Market revenue growth between 3% to 5% and an incremental GBP100 million of revenue by the end of financial 2022. Winterflood Securities said IG provided a "solid set" of results in line with the company's June update, but noted that the stock already had risen far from its March low of about 550p.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com
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Relx (REL)
Unilever (ULVR)
Sage Group (SGE)
SSE (SSE)
IG (IGG)
Pennon (PNN)
WPP (WPP)
Natwest (NWG)