Cobham (LSE: COB) falls on defence worries, while BTG (LSE: BTG) is hit by a product failure.
The FTSE 100 (UKX) is trading 22 points lower at 5,819 this morning, after closing at a new three-month high of 5,814 yesterday. Part of today's slide was due to AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) falling, and part was blamed on various shares going ex-dividend, but generally 22-point FTSE movements are indistinguishable from random noise.
As always, some individual constituents of the various FTSE indices were enduring a rough session today. We take a quick look at three names that look set to lag the FTSE 100 index by the close of play:
Cobham
Cobham (LSE: COB) fell 14p (6%) to 224p after the aerospace and defence engineer said it was cautious about US sales as it announced interim results.
On revenue that fell 5% to £843 million, the firm saw underlying pre-tax profit fall 4% to £142 million, and told us the "outlook for the US defence/security market for the end of 2012 and 2013 is particularly uncertain due to the upcoming US elections and the lack of political consensus on US Government budgets."
But the 60% of Cobham's business that is not affected remained strong, and the interim dividend was boosted by 33% to 2.4p per share.
BTG
Healthcare specialist BTG (LSE: BTG) lost 12p (3.6%) to 326p after announcing this morning that AstraZeneca is to halt the co-development of anti-sepsis drug CytoFab, or AZD9773. AstraZeneca shares also fell, down 60p (2%) to 3,016p.
Apparently there is great demand for a treatment of severe sepsis but, unfortunately, BTG's Phase IIb trials "did not show any significant improvements versus placebo in respect of the primary endpoint, ventilator-free days, or secondary endpoints including mortality".
BTG will take a charge of £28 million relating to the ending of the trials in the current year.
Aquarius
Aquarius Platinum (LSE: AQP) dropped 3% to 35.5p after releasing full-year results that showed revenues falling 29% to $486 million and a headline loss for the year of $154 million before exceptional charges.
The poor performance of the world's fourth largest producer of platinum was due to two causes: lower production, which is hitting all operators in the sector, and a $97 million foreign-exchange loss.
The shares are now down 86% over the past twelve months.
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> Alan Oscroft does not own any shares mentioned in this article
