Legal & General Group Plc (LON:LGEN), GKN plc (LON:GKN) and Inchcape plc (LON:INCH) stretch their winning runs.
The FTSE 100 is breaking records yet again, hitting a new 52-week high of 6,172 points during early afternoon trading. As I write, the index of the UK's biggest companies is down a little from that, but still up 37 points on the day at 6,169.
Focus moving away from European gloom and towards stronger-than-expected Chinese economic growth has helped the FTSE 100 to a run of 12 consecutive days of closing above the 6,000 level, and six days above 6,100 -- both of which should extend by another day today.
As the index is reaching new highs, so are a number of its constituents. Here are three achieving that feat today:
Legal & General
The insurance sector recovery is going well, helping Legal & General (LSE: LGEN) shares to a new 52-week high of 152.7p today, with the price currently very slightly down from that on 152.3p. Legal & General shares are now up more than 30% over the past 12 months, which isn't at all bad for a £9 billion FTSE 100 giant.
But even after that rise, the shares are still on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of only 11 based on 2012 expectations, with a dividend yield of around 5% expected.
GKN
GKN (LSE: GKN) shares hit a new 52-week high today, too, reaching 244.7p before dropping back a little to 244.3p. The engineer's October interim update was positive, reiterating its upbeat earlier first-half results, and told us that sales for the three months ended 30 September we up 8% on the same period the previous year. Following that news, the share price embarked on a steady climb.
Forecasts for the year to December suggest an 8% rise in earnings with a 3% dividend yield, and put the shares on a modest P/E of 10.
Inchcape
Automobile distributor Inchcape (LSE: INCH) today climbed above its previous 52-week closing high, to reach 451.4p, and taking the shares up nearly 30% since the beginning of October. The company's interim update on 25 October helped the rise, telling of a "robust trading performance" from its international network of 26 markets, with third-quarter revenue up 4% to £1.5 billion and nine-month revenue up 5.4% to £4.6 billion.
Full-year expectations to December suggest a P/E of just under 12, falling to 11 based on 2013 forecasts.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
