LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - The FTSE 250 index started strongly on Tuesday morning and held steady through the afternoon, led by encouraging results from several UK companies.
London's second-line index was up 0.77% at 17,400.05 by 15:10 on Tuesday afternoon.

Virgin Money's shares were the strongest performers, regaining some of the ground lost after the sector was hit by George Osborne's summer budget, as the 'challenger' bank declared a maiden dividend and drove strong profits growth in its first results since floating in November last year.

As its share of the mortgage market grew, it launched a range of credit cards and expanded underlying net interest margin, profits of £81.8m were up 37% on the previous year and up 10% on consensus expectations.

Melrose Industries was another share rocketing higher, in this case for agreeing to sell its Elster business to Honeywell International for £3.3bn cash, with plans to return over £2bn to shareholders. Melrose paid £1.8bn for Elster just under three years ago.

Power station operator Drax warmed investor cockles with first half profits up 18% to £120m. Drax reported underlying earnings per share for the six months ended 30 June at 10.2p, up from last year's 9.4p.

Fast food chain Domino's Pizza delivered a hot set of first-half sales, up 14% for the half to £426.7m. The UK market continued to underpin growth, Domino's said, noting e-commerce sales were up 24.4%.

Informa impressed with an 8.6% boost in revenue, which it said reflected disposal of some units and positive returns from new acquisitions, with the business publishing and events business also posting a 21.65% rise in pre-tax profits.

The leading fallers included Wizz Air, Renishaw and Foxtons, which all are due to report tomorrow, with Foxtons in particular coming up against an exceptionally strong first half last year and with this year hit by an election slowdown.

Also going the wrong way was Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group despite reporting a marginal improvement in first half numbers. The insurance and financial services provider said pre-tax profit rose 3% year-on-year to £101.5m on revenue that was up 5% to £590.1m.

Shares in Saga were hit by private-equity backer selling down more of its stake, representing around 6% of existing share capital. Acromas made roughly £141m gross from selling the stake at 205p, with Merrill Lynch sole bookrunner for a private placing.

FTSE 250 - Risers
Virgin Money Holdings (UK) (VM.) 421.80p +12.66%
Melrose Industries (MRO) 277.60p +9.12%
Drax Group (DRX) 275.00p +8.91%
Domino's Pizza Group (DOM) 869.00p +8.15%
Informa (INF) 581.50p +7.19%
Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 164.70p +4.11%
NMC Health (NMC) 861.00p +3.36%
Beazley (BEZ) 339.20p +3.29%
Premier Oil (PMO) 127.60p +2.57%
Paragon Group Of Companies (PAG) 396.60p +2.56%

FTSE 250 - Fallers
Wizz Air Holdings (WIZZ) 1,652.00p -2.82%
Renishaw (RSW) 2,084.00p -2.57%
Foxtons Group (FOXT) 230.80p -2.45%
Saga (SAGA) 208.00p -2.30%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 54.10p -1.64%
Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT) 999.50p -1.62%
Tritax Big Box Reit (BBOX) 116.60p -1.60%
Riverstone Energy Limited (RSE) 970.00p -1.52%
Hays (HAS) 164.90p -1.43%
Pace (PIC) 357.30p -1.38%

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