The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers among London Main Market small-caps on Thursday.
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SMALL-CAP - WINNERS
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Halfords Group PLC, up 9.9% at 228.20 pence, 12-month range 123.9p-234.8p. The motoring and cycling products retailer continues to make gains following its results Wednesday. On Wednesday, it said revenue for the year ended on March 31 surges 15% to £1.59 billion, from £1.38 billion. Pretax profit, however, fell 55% to £43.5 million from £96.6 million. It declared a final dividend of 7.0 pence per share, up from 6p a year prior. The full year dividend totalled 10p per share, up 11% from 9.0p a year prior. Looking ahead, the firm expects year-on-year profit growth in financial 2024 and is comfortable with current analyst consensus of £53.3 million worth of underlying pretax profit.
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SMALL-CAP - LOSERS
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AO World PLC, down 3.3% at 87.64p, 12-month range 37.22p-96.18p. Shore downgrades AO World, believing its shares have reached a point where they can only go higher if the electrical goods seller cuts more costs. Shore now rates AO World at ’hold’, down from ’buy’. Its ‘bull case [is] now priced in’, Shore analysts Bradley Hughes and Clive Black believe. ‘AO is up [over 30%] since our initiation two weeks ago, where we highlighted merit in the group’s pivot to profitability and modelled a number of scenarios detailing how much cost could be stripped out. At 91p, we believe the shares now reflect perfect execution on our bull-case,’ the analysts explained.
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Pantheon Infrastructure PLC, down 2.1% at 83.00p, 12-month range 74.4p-106.68p. The investment fund focusing on infrastructure interests says it has committed to invest close to €23.1 million in the telecommunications infrastructure operator GlobalConnect Group. Pantheon says the investment would be organised through a co-investment vehicle managed by affiliates of EQT AB Group, an investment organisation managing around €119.0 billion in fee-generating assets. GlobalConnect is a Stockholm, Sweden-headquartered digital infrastructure company focused on fibre-based data communication. ‘This high-quality asset complements our existing portfolio of attractive digital infrastructure assets, and further underpins the strong downside protection we have built over the past year through robust indexing, contracted cash flows and a hard-to-replicate network,’ says Richard Sem, partner at Pantheon, which is the investment manager of Pantheon Infrastructure.
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