Virgin Media Inc (LON: VMED), ARM Holdings plc (LON: ARM) and BP plc (LON: BP) all boosted by today's news.
After yesterday's fall back under the 6,300 level, the FTSE 100 has so far today regained 35 points to 6,282. There's really no economic news, so the rise just seems like a rebound from yesterday's sell-off. Such things are really just meaningless noise to long-term Fools, who are looking at horizons of five years and beyond.
Individual shares are always helping push up the various FTSE indices. Here are three that are rising as a result of news today:
Virgin
Virgin Media (LSE: VMED) (NASDAQ: VMED.US) piled up a massive 362p (14.7%) to 1,825p in early trading, after the company released a comment relating to recent press speculation about a possible deal with cable telecoms company Liberty Global. Virgin has confirmed that it is in talks with Liberty Global concerning "a possible transaction", but has as yet revealed no details of the nature of the transaction.
The leap takes Virgin shares up more than 80% over the past 12 months. Current expectations for the year to December 2012 put the shares on a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 15, with that falling to under 10 for this year.
ARM
How long can the shares of ARM Holdings (LSE: ARM) keep rising? Well, its not over yet, as the chip designer saw its share price boosted by another 40p (4.5%) today to 932p after the release of full-year results. In sterling, full-year revenues rose by 17% to £577 million, with normalised pre-tax profit up 10% to £277 million. Earnings per share came in 18% ahead at 14.7p. Over the year, 2.5 billion chips based on ARM designs were shipped.
Chief executive Warren East, in a classic example of understatement, said "ARM has seen good revenue and earnings growth throughout 2012". That eps figure puts the shares on a P/E of 63. Overvalued or still cheap? That's for you to decide.
BP
Shares in BP (LSE: BP) put on a modest 6.4p (1.4%) to 468p despite the oil giant's full-year profits falling by 19%. Profit for the year, on a replacement cost basis, fell from $21.7 billion to $17.6 billion. There will be a quarterly dividend of 9 cents per share. These results do include a further $5 billion in costs related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, taking the total cost so far to $42 billion. But it is looking like the company can finally move on from that now.
So, with these figures, how are BP shares looking? Well, we're looking at a P/E of only 8 with a dividend yield of around 5%, and that makes BP look cheap to me -- which is why I added it to the Fool's Beginners' Portfolio.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
