LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - The latest raft of earnings reports was the main driver behind sector movements on Thursday afternoon, with Non-life insurers and Mining shares leading the way.
RSA paced gains among the latter, with its shares jumping by 5.81% after it posted a 25% rise in full-year operating profits to £655.0m.

The general insurer also lifted its target for annualised cost saving a third time, from £350m to more than £400m.

That appeared to whet markets' appetite for the shares, possibly on expectations for higher dividend pay-outs.

"For us to become more positive, we would need RSA's yield to increase whether that is via a higher dividend payout or special dividends. Potentially when underlying earnings and actual earnings converge in 2018, this could materialise," analysts at RBC said in a research note.


Over among miners, Glencore was in the centre of the price action as the Anglo-Swiss commodities trader told investors it had slashed its gearing.

Net debt for 2016 fell more than expected by 40% to $15.52bn, compared to the previous year. Glencore previously said that it was targeting net debt at the end of year to be between $16.5bn to $17.5bn.

The news out of Glencore had positive read-across to the likes of Kaz Minerals and helped the entire sector brush off news that new house prices in China increased in only 45 out of the country´s 70 major cities, down from 46 in December.

That was the lowest tally in a year.

Precious metals miners Fresnillo (2.98%), Acacia Mining (1.54%) and Hochschild Mining were also rising as the gold futures tacked on 1.33% to trade at $1,249.70/oz..

Stock in Antofagasta was little changed, despite the decision taken by analysts at UBS to lift their target price from 680.0p to 850.0p.

We believe ANTO faces challenges from grade decline & ore hardness (at LosP); but that the market is becoming increasingly aware of these challenges - reducing the risk of negative stock-specific catalysts in FY17. This, combined with UBS's positive copper price view leads us to see an improved outlook for ANTO," UBS said.

One trader told Digital Look that gains for diversified miners on Thursday were the result of good numbers over the last few days and more importantly a price for iron price which had been on fire year-to-date on fire.

Iron ore prices were the main driver of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation for the sector, the same trader went on to explain.

Traders also appeared to brush off a study from McKinsey according to which by 2020 steel output would decline to 760 metric tonnes from 808mt in 2016, with demand falling from 687mt to 649mt over that same time span, it said.

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