London afternoon: Shares off the top

22nd Sep 2009 14:07

Shares drifted lower over the lunchtime session but are still up on the day, helped in no small part by the strength of miners, which are rising in line with firmer metals prices.Rio Tinto is wanted after it sold off another chunk of Alcan. The heavily indebted miner sold Alcan Composites, part of the Alcan Engineered Products division, to Swiss firm Schweiter Technologies for $349m. Last week, Rio announced the sale of 56% of the Alcan Engineered Products Cable business to Platinum Equity.Elsewhere in the mining sector Eurasian Natural Resources, Lonmin, Xstrata and Vedanta Resources all advance while precious metals miners Fresnillo and Randgold Resources are also on the climb.Brokers are queuing up to sing the praises of Irish oil company Tullow Oil, following its two big oil finds last week. Nomura has upped its base case net asset value for Tullow to 1341p per share from 1160p, while Morgan Stanley goes further still and raises its price target to 1500p.Cruise ship operator Carnival is also a riser after Bank of America added it to its "Europe 1" list,Defensive stocks such as utility companies Severn Trent and United Utilities and supermarkets Sainsbury and Morrison get the cold shoulder.Tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco, best known for its Lambert & Butler cigarettes in the UK, said performance in the year to end-September remains in line with management's expectations. The integration of Gauloises and Gitanes maker Altadis is going well, the company said, and is on track to deliver the expected synergies.UK's leading building contractors are weaker after they were landed with heavy fines by the Office of Fair Trading after a four-year investigation into collusion and price-fixing in the building industry. Balfour Beatty, Kier, Carillion, Interserve and Galliford Try were among 103 firms fined. Struggling broadcaster ITV could be released from its public service requirement to provide regional news after Ofcom estimated the service would be heavily loss making once digital TV is switched on. Trainers and tracksuits group JD Sports has raised both first half profits and like for like sales, but warns the outcome for the year will depend on crucial Christmas trade. Profit before tax for the 26 weeks to 1 August rose 11% to £10.1m on revenue up 8.4% to £324m. Like for like sales rose 0.7% and are 'satisfactory' in the six weeks to 12 September, up 0.8%.Education IT specialist RM said trading so far this year has been in line with expectations. As mentioned at the time of its interim results on 11 May, the company expects revenue to grow this year as a result of its participation in numerous Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programmes.Oil production from Emerald Energy's Khurbet East field in Syria has topped 4.5m barrels, The oil exploration firm said current daily gross oil production is about 16,400 barrels per day. Attempts to recover oil from Khurbet East No.7 well proved fruitless. The company had regarded this as a long shot.Russian gold miner Highland Gold said profit soared 70% for the half year ended 30 June 2009. Marketing group Chime Communications has made an agreed offer for sports marketing specialist Essentially Group. Chime is offering 0.04545 of a new Chime share for each Essentially ordinary share. The terms value each Essentially share at 8.08p and the entire issued share capital of Essentially at about £18.23m.Mobile phone content provider Mobile Streams more than halved losses at the interim stage on reduced revenue.Shares in CVS gained after the vet services supplier reported a 71.9% jump in full-year operating profits and said it is confident in the group's future.Aurelian Oil and Gas has had a disappointing test result with the Voitinel-1 well in its Brodina concession in Romania. The oil and gas exploration company's shares tumbled Tuesday morning after it said the primary Badenian sand objective was non-hydrocarbon bearing, as were the underlying Albian sands.In contrast, Petroceltic hailed the test results on its AT-1 well in Algeria. 'This test exceeds our pre-drilling expectations, and is the most prolific single zone well test on the Isarene permit to date,' said Brian O'Cathain, chief executive of Petroceltic.