LONDON (ShareCast) - Ongoing improvement in the US housing sector - as evidenced by some strong American home-price data on Tuesday - prompted a sharp rise in the construction and materials sector in London.

The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index, which monitors prices in 20 major cities across the States, increased by 10.9% in the year to March, accelerating from the 9.3% rise the month before and better than the 10.2% consensus estimate.

FTSE 100-listed building materials firm CRH was among the best performers in the sector today.

The US is a key growth market for CRH with around a half of its revenue coming from the Americas region. The company saw group sales rise 3.0% in 2012 to €18.7bn with strong growth in the Americas (+15%) offsetting weakness in Europe (-7.0%).

As well as supplying products for home repair, maintenance and improvement, the company is also heavily involved in the infrastructure markets, providing aggregates, cement and ready-mix concrete.

In a trading update earlier this month, CRH said that underlying positive trends in the US are expected to offset trading pressures in Europe in the second half of 2013.

Improving the outlook further for the world’s largest economy today was the Conference Board’s index of US consumer confidence which jumped from an upwardly revised 69 in April to 76.2 in May, well ahead of the 71 consensus estimate.

In the UK, a survey released Monday by Hometrack showed that house prices rose by a less-impressive 0.4% in May, but this was still the largest single-month increase since May 2007 as price in London and the South East continue to grow strongly.

In London specifically, demand over the last six months has grown by 15% while supply has dropped 0.6% - this represents that biggest gap between supply and demand in London since spring 2009.

Construction, engineering and building sector peers Galliford Try, Keller, Henry Boot, Costain and Prosperity Minerals were all making decent gains on Tuesday afternoon.


Top performing sectors so far today
Construction & Materials 3,904.92 +3.19%
Industrial Engineering 9,830.14 +3.04%
Automobiles & Parts 7,131.10 +2.90%
Chemicals 9,695.60 +2.75%
Banks 5,170.50 +2.67%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 1,622.69 -1.02%

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