FTSE rallies as Experian shines
Britain's blue-chip FTSE 100 index climbs on Wednesday, with credit data company Experian the top riser.
|||London - UK shares advanced on Wednesday, shrugging off weak Chinese industrial output data as Experian sustained a rise prompted by its results in the previous trading session.
Britain's blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.6 percent at 6,312.43 points at 0946 GMT.
The top riser was credit data company Experian, lifted almost 3 percent by a price target upgrade from broker Citigroup. The stock surged on Tuesday after its earnings beat expectations.
“One thing that a lot of companies have been hit by is... FX weakness coming through, then growth decreasing in the US, but on something like Experian what we have seen is that the numbers are actually pretty solid,” Atif Latif, director of trading at Guardian Stockbrokers, said.
Brewer SABMiller rose 2.5 percent after AB InBev launched a $100 billion-plus takeover bid on Wednesday and agreed to sell SABMiller's 58 percent stake in US joint venture MillerCoors.
Grocer Sainsbury rallied earlier in the session after its earnings beat expectations, yet its shares fell 0.7 percent on its 18 percent fall in first half profit.
“Despite all the positive talk about strategy delivery, Sainsbury continues to lose sales and market share and reduce margins thereby reducing return on capital. Sainsbury expects the tough background to be maintained through the second half so respite is still some way off,” David Stoddart, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said in a note.
Among mid-caps telecoms provider Talktalk, whose share price suffered after a cyber attack in October, jumped 12.3 percent after the company raised its interim dividend by 15 percent and adhered to its guidance for this financial year.
REUTERS