Updates from British Land, Interserve and Smiths Group
Another small lift for the FTSE 100, climbing 0.26% to 6,671.9 on Monday. ARM Holdings and Fresnillo saw 2.4% and 2.2% rises (to 890p and 736.50p) while BSkyB also gained strongly, up 1.9% to 864p. Engineering player WeirGroup through plunged more than 3.5% to 2047p, their lowest level in two years following concern about oil prices and shale operations.
The Dow Jones continued its ascent, up just 13 points however to 17,647.7. Grim economic numbers from Japan unsettled investors while energy stocks also suffered.
We look at new numbers fromBritishLand first. Just-issued half year results show underlying profit before tax up 6.2% to £155 million. There's a quarterly dividend of 6.92 pence bringing the half year to 13.84 pence (2.5% higher). The total accounting return climbs 13.7%, British Land claims.
BL claims strong gains from both Retail & Leisure up 6% and Offices & Residential 8.7%. Additionally it says there's £1 billion of profits generated from the current development cycle (including £800 million from its 2010 development programme), plus more to come.
"Demand for offices in London," boss Chris Grigg says, "is improving, supply remains constrained and rental growth now looks firmly established. In retail, economic growth is feeding through to consumer spend and the lead indicators of rental growth in our business are all positive."
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Next, Interserve. The FTSE 250 player says revenues barely moved in the last six months, coming in at £241.7m compared to £241.3m this time last year. However adjusted EBITDA is improved, from £34.4m to £37.6m. Adjusted earnings per share climbs slightly, from 5.5p to 5.6p.
The UK business ended the period with 2.1m customers (HY14: 2.2m). However gross new customers increased to 110k (HY14: 80k). It says the retention rate is stable at 82% (HY14: 81%; FY14: 82%).
"Our UK business," says boss Richard Harpin, "ended the period with 2.1m customers and is on track to acquire around 0.3m gross new customers in the year...In the USA, we have signed six new partnerships, including one with AARP, an organisation with 22m member households."
Finally, a profits warning from SmithsGroup. Expectations for the year remain in line with the outlook given at full year results but foreign exchange gusts are likely to have a 3% hit on the Group's first half headline operating profits.
This headwind is expected to reverse in the second half if current exchange rates are maintained says Smiths. The Group's underlying performance will likely be weighted towards the second half.
In the three months to 1 November 2014, underlying revenue and headline operating profit fell against the first quarter last year as growth in Smiths Medical was offset by dips in Smiths Detection and Smiths Interconnect.
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