London pre-open: Premier Foods issues profits warning
Fri 07 Oct 2011
LONDON (SHARECAST) - It is looking like a case of 'after the Lord Mayor's Show' this morning, with share prices set to dawdle higher after the crash-bang excitement of yesterday's trading session, when the Bank of England's decision to resume its quantitative easing programme earlier and harder than many expected had investors scrabbling to get back into equities.
City traders expect the Footsie will crawl past 5,300 at the outset, having closed at 5,291 last night.
Under pressure foods group Premier Foods has issued a profits warning after it saw results for the third quarter of 2011 fall significantly below management's expectations. Group total sales of £477m were down 3.6% from a year earlier, with the promotional programme not delivering the uplift the group had been expecting. Volumes were down 8.0% in the quarter with price and mix contributing 4.4% to the decline. This represents a loss of market share of around 1.9 percentage points (pp) in value and 2.1pp in volume.
Mining giant Vedanta saw an increase in quarterly production of zinc, lead, silver, copper and power in the three months to the end of September.
Pekka Perä, the Chief Executive Officer of Talvivaara Mining, is to hang up his helmet as soon as the company can find a replacement. In the meantime, the company has had a change of policy and said that, in view of the current volatility and uncertainty in the commodity and financial markets, it has developed a revised operating plan and made the strategic decision to focus on maximising profitability of operations rather than the production volume over the remainder of 2011.
LONDON (SHARECAST) - It is looking like a case of 'after the Lord Mayor's Show' this morning, with share prices set to dawdle higher after the crash-bang excitement of yesterday's trading session, when the Bank of England's decision to resume its quantitative easing programme earlier and harder than many expected had investors scrabbling to get back into equities.
