Barclays PLC (LON: BARC), Avanti Communications Group PLC (LON: AVN) and Fortune Oil plc (LON: FTO) respond well to good news.
The FTSE 100 is still bouncing around the 6,300 mark, 19 points up to 6,296 by early afternoon. There's no real macroeconomic news around at the moment, and Asian markets have been quiet after the Chinese new year.
So it's all down to individual company news to drive things at the moment. We take a look at three constituents of the various FTSE indices that are on the way up today:
Barclays
Shares in Barclays (LSE: BARC) (NYSE: BCS.US) put on a further 13.5p (4.5%) today, to 315p, after announcing a 26% rise in adjusted pre-tax profit for 2012 to £7bn. However, once various exceptional items were taken into account, including a £1.6 billion charge for mis-selling of PPI and £850 million to compensate for mis-sold interest rate hedging investments, statutory pre-tax profit was only £246 million.
Still, with new chief executive Antony Jenkins telling us of a woeful 20 years in which the banks "became too aggressive, too focused on the short term, and too disconnected from the needs of customers and clients", and with new promises to refocus the business away from such short-term risk, could we be in for an era of squeaky-clean bankers? We shall see.
Avanti
Avanti Communications (LSE: AVN) shares gained 22.5p (8.9%) today to 274p on the announcement of interim results. Avanti, which provides satellite telecoms services to businesses and consumers, says that sales momentum is growing and that it expects to become cash-flow positive in the second half of the current financial year. Non-executive director Paul Johnson liked that news, and purchased 10,000 shares at a price of 277p.
The price has had a bad run since last summer, dropping more than 40% by the end of the 2012 to 240p before this year's mini-recovery. With profits not expected until the year ending June 2014, it's hard to put a valuation on the company right now, but Mr Johnson seems to think it's a bargain.
Fortune Oil
The Fortune Oil (LSE: FTO) price gained 1.2% to 10.6p, after the China-based oil and gas explorer confirmed the sale of its natural gas business to China Gas Holdings. Proposals for the deal, worth $400 million, were announced in December, and today we heard that the required shareholder approval has been achieved, with a vote of 99.96% in favour.
Expectations for the year to December 2012 put the shares on a P/E of 9, falling to 8 on 2013 estimates, and there's a dividend yield of around 2% expected.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
