London midday: Footsie slips back as miners give up gains

10th Nov 2010 12:03

Company updates have been given a mixed reception, but a retreat in the mining sector has Footsie in the red.Miners are weak after as profit takers cover some of their gains after the new highs for gold and silver yesterday. Gold miner Randgold and platinum group Lonmin are the worst performers.Sainsbury's sales were pretty much as expected given the supermarket giant updated the market just a month ago. Profit before tax, the benefit of any property deals and other one-offs was £332m for the 28 weeks to 2 October, up 8.1% on last year. Analysts were looking for £330m.Another strong performance from its Asian operations helped Prudential's sales jump 17% over the last three months, though the US and UK also went well. Third quarter sales rose to £809m, up from £689m, to take the year-to-date total to £2.46bn, up 24%.Fears that the dividend of utility Scottish & Southern Energy might be under threat look premature, as the company bumped up its interim dividend by 6.7%. The company hiked its interim dividend from 21.0p last year to 22.4p this time round, and said it is on course for a full year dividend of at least 74.5p per share. The update has impressed investors. Trendy clothing group SuperGroup saw its breakneck growth speed up in the three months to the end of October. Total group sales in the period were up 68% to £57.5m from £34.1m a year earlier. That brought sales for the first six months of the group's financial year up to £90.3m, up 65% on the £54.7m achieved in the first half of last year.Talvivaara Mining is shrugging off losses elsewhere in the mining sector after setting production records in the third quarter.Nickel production rose 18% from the preceding quarter to 3,211 tonnes. Zinc production rose 36% from the second quarter to 7,557 tonnes.Advertising agency WPP has bought I-Behavior, a US consumer and business transaction data firm. I-Behavior is a privately-held database marketing business which provides direct marketing services to multi-channel merchants, based on consumer purchase transaction data. which includes over 8 billion purchase transactions. The database covers purchases by 171m consumers from 110m households.Conveyor belt maker Fenner's results for the year ended 31 August showed revenue up 11% to £552.5m as demand improved markedly in the second half. Underlying pre-tax profit jumped 49% to £46.3m and was up 38% to £57m at the operating level.Engineering software firm Aveva saw a return to growth in sales and profits at the interim stage. Revenue in the six months to the end of September rose 12% to £78.5m from £69.9m at the interim stage last year.FTSE 100 - RisersScottish & Southern Energy (SSE) 1,172.00p +4.83%BAE Systems (BA.) 363.10p +4.19%BT Group (BT.A) 161.60p +1.51%National Grid (NG.) 584.00p +1.48%Tullow Oil (TLW) 1,247.00p +1.30%ICAP (IAP) 494.50p +1.25%United Utilities Group (UU.) 627.50p +1.21%Severn Trent (SVT) 1,445.00p +1.12%SABMiller (SAB) 2,042.00p +0.94%Amec (AMEC) 1,124.00p +0.90%FTSE 100 - FallersLonmin (LMI) 1,838.00p -2.96%Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,080.00p -2.95%Weir Group (WEIR) 1,666.00p -2.52%BHP Billiton (BLT) 2,407.50p -2.49%Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,426.00p -2.40%Kazakhmys (KAZ) 1,516.00p -2.38%Fresnillo (FRES) 1,415.00p -2.28%Rio Tinto (RIO) 4,353.50p -2.26%Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,006.00p -2.04%Xstrata (XTA) 1,379.00p -2.02%FTSE 250 - RisersTalvivaara Mining Company (TALV) 584.50p +6.27%Telecity Group (TCY) 478.50p +5.86%Savills (SVS) 381.10p +4.78%Fenner (FENR) 280.90p +4.38%Computacenter (CCC) 380.00p +4.11%Soco International (SIA) 336.30p +3.83%Heritage Oil (HOIL) 363.10p +3.04%Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 497.80p +2.96%Helical Bar (HLCL) 313.90p +2.48%CPP Group (CPP) 265.00p +2.44%FTSE 250 - FallersSupergroup (SGP) 1,175.00p -2.97%Aveva Group (AVV) 1,475.00p -2.96%Cookson Group (CKSN) 560.50p -2.78%Babcock International Group (BAB) 581.00p -2.52%Xchanging (XCH) 128.70p -2.50%Premier Foods (PFD) 18.66p -2.35%Big Yellow Group (BYG) 325.90p -2.13%Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) 50.85p -2.12%JPMorgan Russian Securities (JRS) 652.00p -2.03%Centamin Egypt Ltd. (CEY) 193.10p -2.03%