LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Boosted by encouraging retail data and a serene Bank of England, the FTSE 100 turned higher by Thursday afternoon, with Morrisons topping the index.
Interim results from the Yorkshire-based supermarket group strongly beat the market's estimates, with first half like-for-like sales excluding fuel and VAT up 1.4% thanks to second-quarter LFL sales up 2% versus a consensus forecast of 1%.

Though total turnover was down 0.4% underlying profit before tax rose 11% to £157m, or up 34% including the prior year's restructuring costs and and around 5% ahead of the consensus forecast of £149m.

With Morrisons the second most shorted stock in the FTSE, with around 18% of its shares on loan, City commentators suggested there was a large technical short position which could lead to some "burnt fingers" among shorters if the company's fortunes continue to recover.

Investors felt sufficiently confident to stock up on fellow grocery giants Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Soft drink bottler Coca-Cola HBC was also bubbling higher after analysts at Credit Suisse upgraded their recommendation and lifted their target price on the shares given the attractive topline growth and earnings potential.

Faster growth in asset turns should also drive stronger returns on invested capital, analysts said, with CCH also offering better visibility on margins via cost synergies and was expected to deliver higher organic growth than peers.

RSA Insurance was also on the front foot, marking its largest one-day gain since June, as a big buyer stepped in during the closing auction.

The Financial Times' FTAlphaville blog noted the talk earlier in the summer about longer-term strategic options at the insurer, including that chief executive Stephen Hester might consider his job done.

Ratings agency Fitch also said UK motor insurance premiums are likely to continue rising because the levels of reserve releases that have supported profitability in recent years are unsustainable in the long term.

Investors liked the look of business intelligence, events and academic publishing company Informa's agreed £1.2bn acquisition of US-based peer Penton, even though a £715m .

Broker Canaccord said the fit between the companies "looks sensible", with Penton bringing 30 large scale exhibitions, representing only circa 35% of revenues and around 60% of operating profit.

"This is an ambitious transaction, paying a similar valuation to the Hanly Woods acquisition of 2014, but for a business five times the size, and with a broader spread of activities. But we expect the balance sheet will remain healthy post deal, with leverage at a still-comfortable circa 2.2 times."

Among the fallers there were several stocks going ex-dividend, led by pensions, savings and investment group Hargeaves Lansdown, whose shares were further hit by a downgrade from Liberum to 'sell' from 'buy' due to further downside risks.

The brokerage said that while there is no doubting the company's "formidable" track record and the strength of the business model, trading on a price-to-earnings of 36x with the prospect of consensus downgrades and significant industry headwinds, the risk/reward is unfavourable.

It pointed out that full-year 2016 results were 4-5% ahead of expectations, helped by a more positive market movement than originally expected, with group net income margin slightly ahead of Liberum's forecasts at 0.56%.

On the day that official retail industry data was confirmed as holding relatively steady, sector heavyweight Next reported mixed interim results and that current trading remains challenging.

First-half PBT of £342m was down on last year but better than some analyst forecasts, with retail margins down 2.5 percentage points mainly due to a the higher markdown from the larger end of season sale, while July's full price sales were subdued.

Trading in August was "challenging and volatile", which was assumed to be due to unusually warm weather.

"On that basis the outlook for September is even worse, giving yet another poor start to Autumn/Winter," said Credit Suisse.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,695.70 0.34%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 17,690.97 0.34%
techMARK (TASX) 3,457.86 0.20%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 207.70p 7.28%
Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI) (CCH) 1,724.00p 3.67%
RSA Insurance Group (RSA) 526.50p 3.44%
Tesco (TSCO) 166.85p 3.18%
Informa (INF) 712.50p 2.74%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,235.00p 1.98%
Diageo (DGE) 2,112.50p 1.86%
Standard Life (SL.) 340.00p 1.64%
HSBC Holdings (HSBA) 570.00p 1.59%
Wolseley (WOS) 4,378.00p 1.39%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 1,271.00p -5.43%
Next (NXT) 4,954.00p -4.91%
Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 313.40p -2.61%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 7,295.00p -1.82%
Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,714.00p -1.63%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 195.40p -1.01%
Fresnillo (FRES) 1,620.00p -0.92%
British Land Company (BLND) 617.00p -0.88%
Barclays (BARC) 168.90p -0.82%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 484.40p -0.82%

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