After closing last week in a downbeat mood, the FTSE 100 (FTSEINDICES: ^FTSE) started this week with more of the same, slipping a further 17 points to 6,571 by early afternoon. There’s not a great deal of macroeconomic news around right now, and it seems to be just a few company results driving the index at the moment.
But not all responses to news go as expected. Here are three companies whose shares are, perhaps surprisingly, falling today:
Reckitt Benckiser
Shares in Reckitt Benckiser Group initially responded well to first-half results, but the price movement quickly reversed and by midday the shares were down 48p (1%) to 4,578p. That comes despite the half being headlined as “strong” and net revenue rising 6% at constant exchange rates to £4.99bn. A dip in reported operating profit of 17% to £914m might be behind the weak sentiment, though an adjusted figured showed a 2% rise to £1.16bn.
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Highlights included like-for-like growth of 5%, a improvement in adjusted gross margin to 58.7%, and free cash flow of £893m.
Aberdeen Asset Management
A third-quarter update from Aberdeen Asset Management (LSE: ADN) failed to excite, and the shares are down 9.5p (2.3%) to 398p by the time of writing. The firm told us that it had taken on £9.7bn in new business for the quarter, and £34.3bn for the nine-month period — but the quarter did see a net outflow of £3.4bn, and assets under management fell 1% between 30 March and 30 June to £209.6bn.
Aberdeen told us that “global markets remain susceptible to volatility but we continue to trade in line with our expectations and we remain confident that we can continue the organic growth of the Group’s revenue and profit.“
Intertek
In a third example of decent-looking results leading to a share price fall, Intertek Group dropped 48p (1.6%) to 3,015p on the day the firm told us of a 9.5% growth in first-half revenue. Adjusted pre-tax profit was also up, by 3.8% to £145.3m, with adjusted earnings per share up 6.4% to 61.9p. The company lifted its interim dividend by 15.4% to 15p per share.
Chief executive Wolfhart Hauser said that “Intertek delivered good revenue growth in the first half against a very strong performance last year. We saw challenging market conditions in our minerals business and across Europe, but produced robust growth in a number of other areas, most notably in China, India and the Middle East“.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
