There’s very little happening to affect the FTSE 100 (FTSEINDICES: ^FTSE) today and it’s just wallowing around in yesterday’s gloom, having fallen a further 32 points to 6,408 by mid-morning. Syria, economic stimulus tapering — all the latest bugbears are apparently scaring people away from the best long-term investment ever invented.
Still, there are patches of sunshine amid the gloom. Here are three shares from the FTSE indices doing well today:
G4S
First-half results saw G4S (LSE: GFS) shares gain 9.8p (4%) to 255p, with the security firm announcing a 7.2% rise in sales with 5.4% of that organic. But underlying earnings per share (EPS) did drop a bit, from 7.6p to 6.6p, and there’s a 6% fall currently forecast for the full year. New chief executive Ashley Almanza said “Growth was particularly strong in developing markets where we have excellent market positions. There are significant growth opportunities in our key markets and this is reflected in our growing contract pipeline of around £4 billion per annum“.
The company currently carries £1.95bn in net debt, but looks set to attack that with a new equity issue. The plan is to place up to around 140.9m new shares representing up to 9.99% of the current issued capital.
888 Holdings
It was half-year time for 888 Holdings (LSE: 888) today too, and the gambling and entertainment firm told of a 7% rise in revenue to $200m, with adjusted EBITDA up a similar 7% to $38.6m and adjusted EPS up 37% to 9.9 cents. The interim dividend was lifted 20% to 3 cents per share. Chief executive Brian Mattingley told us that “Record revenue for the first half has been driven by the continued strength of our core Casino and Poker products“.
The share price gained 4.4p (3.1%) to 149p in response, taking it up around 80% over the past 12 months, but it has been higher — we saw it at 186p in May.
APR Energy
Our third set of interim results for today were from APR Energy (LSE: APR), and they sent the power equipment provider’s shares up 48p (4.9%) to 1,019p. The company reported a pre-tax loss of $16.1m and a loss per share of 15 cents.
But the key highlights for the growth candidate included a 72% year-on-year rise in new contracts signed, totalling 593MW, with 111MW of extensions in the year to date. APR’s halftime order book stood at 14,439 MW-months, 59% ahead of the same time last year, and chief executive John Campion told us of 147MW in new contracts since the end of the half.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
