3 Shares The FTSE Should Beat Today

Published in Investing on 28 August 2012

Chemring (LSE: CHG), G4S (LSE: GFS) and Lamprell (LSE: LAM) fall as business suffers.

The FTSE 100 (UKX) has been up and down 20 points or so today, and currently sits on 5,771 points, just five points down on the day, as there appears to be weakened interest in the markets ahead of expected updates from central banks.

But whatever the index aggregate is or isn't doing, individual shares are still moving up and down every day. We look at three members of the various FTSE indices whose shares are sliding today...

Chemring

Chemring (LSE: CHG) saw its shares crushed today, down 46.5p (12.6%) to 324p, after the manufacturer of air defence countermeasures released a profit warning.

Although business in the three months to July 2012 saw steady growth, the firm told us that it has discovered errors in a new Enterprise Resource Planning system being installed at its Florida subsidiary, and that there are delays to the start of production of one of its new products. Together, these are expected to knock £15m, or the equivalent of around 6p per share, off full-year operating profit.

G4S

Interim results from security firm G4S (LSE: GFS) confirmed a minimum £50m price tag for its Olympics contract debacle, and that helped push the price down 6.4p (2.4%) to 260p. And that £50m might not be the end of it, as the final costs are not all in yet.

Pre-tax profit for the period slumped 60% as a result, to £61m, even though revenue rose by 5.8% to £3.9bn. We also heard of a £24m charge and the loss of more than 1,000 jobs as part of the firm's restructuring plan. But the biggest worry now has to be of longer-term damage to the company's reputation, and we won't really know the extent of that for some time.

Lamprell

Lamprell (LSE: LAM), the provider of engineering services to the oil and gas industry, suffered a modest fall of 1.1% to 89p on the release of interim figures, which showed a net loss of $47.1m, down from a profit of $18.6m at the same stage last year.

The six-month period, which saw the share plunge by around 70%, was plagued by a series of contract delays and led to a series of profit warnings. The firm told us its order book is healthy, its financial position is secure, and that it is implementing changes across the company -- but it may take investors some time to be confident there are no more shocks to come.

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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.

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