Stock market report: Thursday close
A big drop in Thomas Cook's share price this afternoon forced the holidays giant to reassure the City and deny claims business in the package tours industry had dropped off a cliff.
Taking stock: Can shares recover from losses yesterday?
It rushed out a statement insisting it is trading well despite impromptu remarks by an executive.
Peter Fankhauser, head of the German business, told reporters at the international Tourism Fair in Berlin that Thomas Cook would meet its summer sales targets only if last-minute bookings came in.
The group said its overall performance remains in line with previous guidance after the shares slumped below 200p following a frantic sell-off.
It insisted the package tours market remained challenging, but the board was confident in achieving its expectations for the year as a whole.
It also said the group remained well positioned for the future. A further trading update will be issued next week.
The shares eventually pared back the damage, but were still left nursing a deficit of 26¼p at 203½p. Rival TUI, down 14p at 226¼p, fell in sympathy.
Shares generally got their nose in front after shaking off early losses. They were underpinned by events on Wall Street this afternoon, where shares posted their third consecutive day of gains.
The FTSE 100 index rose 18.3 to 3712.1 after touching 3616.5.
New York investors warmed to better-than-expected retail sales figures that showed a dip of just 0.1% last month and a smaller-than-forecast rise in jobless claims.
Even so, total claims stand at a record high of 654,000. The Dow rose 87.77 points to 7018.17.
Lloyds Banking Group briefly touched a record low of 39.6p before reducing the deficit to 1.2p at 45.7p. The shares were hit by whispers that a leading US broker has cut its net asset value for the bank, which includes mortgage lender HBOS, to just 9p.
The broker also told clients to switch out of Lloyds and into Royal Bank of Scotland, off 0.1p at 21.1p.
Lloyds last weekend concluded terms to join the government's assetbacked protection scheme for £15bn. The move could see the government's controlling stake in the lender eventually grow to 77%.
Land Securities lost an early lead, dropping 5¾p to 341p, after briefly touching 362½p, while the nil-paid slid 11.5p to 50.5p. Deutsche bank has been catching up with events, and has slashed its target from 970p to 360p while repeating its hold rating.
It says the extra £756m of cash the property developer recently raised has brought little comfort to the shares.
Petrofac celebrated its promotion to the FTSE 100 with a rise of 20¾p to 515p. That coincided with UBS raising its rating from neutral to buy following recent contract wins.
The oil-industry services supplier has been awarded $5bn (£3.6bn) of contracts so far this year. That lifts the backlog in its core engineering and construction division to a new high and gives good revenue visibility until at least 2011.
London Stock Exchange shares continued to nudge towards a four-year low with a fall of 5p to 394¼p after the LSE was dumped out of the 100 companies that make up the benchmark index in this week's quarterly review.
The shares were within a whisker of 2,000p after the LSE received five takeover approaches but the credit crunch and subsequent drop-off in share-trading volumes have taken a toll.
RBS has taken its red pencil to the mining sector. It has dropped its rating on Antofagasta, down 24½p at 511p, from hold to sell, pointing out that the shares have run up 29% in the past three weeks, and it now has the potential for a 20% slide on its 430p target price.
But Antofagasta still has more than £2bn in the bank and is well placed to ride out the recession. RBS has also slashed its target for Xstrata, down 20p at 326¼p, from 1100p to 470p.
Investec Securities has upped Inmarsat, 29p ahead at 459p, from sell to buy and says fourth-quarter numbers demonstrate the company's resilient business model.
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Tomorrow's agenda
No-frills pubs chain JD Wetherspoon slashed the cost of its cheapest pint to just 99p in January - the lowest price since 1989. The move may not have won it any friends in the health lobby or at the beer's brewer Greene King, but drinkers seem keen on the deal. Broker Numis forecasts a 6% rise in sales in the first half, but warns that margins are being squeezed by price cuts and higher food, labour and energy costs. The City will also be keen to hear how refinancing talks between Wetherspoons and its lenders are progressing over a £415m banking facility which is due for renewal before 2010.
AGA Rangemaster, maker of the cast-iron cookers much-loved by the middle classes, is expected to say trading remains tough when the company posts full-year results. Aga warned in autumn, and again in January, that profits for the final six months of last year would be significantly lower than in the first half as consumers stopped spending on big-ticket items.
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