Leading shares are heading lower as Greece once more failed to strike a deal with its creditors after yet more late night talks, and the euro rallied again as bonds fell.
But easyJet has managed to maintain momentum, up 10p at £15.92 after the budget airline released May statistics showing a 7.2% rise in passengers. In a buy note Liberum said:
Marginally better than recent months, which were admittedly distorted by the timing of Easter. Overall, no surprises.
But as hopes of a Greek agreement were once more dashed, with a €305m payment to the IMF due on Friday, European markets are on the slide with Germany’s Dax currently down 1.6% and the Athens market 2.4% lower.
The FTSE 100 is off 94.05 points at 6856.41. Tony Cross at Trustnet Direct said:
The FTSE-100 has stumbled in early trade with investors seemingly finding little love for stocks right now. The sell-off is looking incredibly broad-based and with it now as good as inevitable that Greece will fail to make the €300m payment to the IMF that falls due tomorrow, the focus does appear to be on taking some money off the table. We may get some progress as a result of the weekend’s G7 summit, but with no real consensus emerging amongst the key European creditors, Greece’s future in the Eurozone remains in doubt.
There were also a handful of companies going ex-dividend, with National Grid down 46p at 869.5p and WPP 52p lower at £15.07.
Johnson Matthey has lost 121p to £33.95 after the speciality chemicals business reported a small rise in annual profits from £427m to £440m and forecast a slightly better performance in the current year. The worst performer was its precious metals business which was hit by market weakness and a change in its contract with Anglo American Platinum.
The company also said it was in talks to sell its research chemicals business.
Among the mid-caps Moneysupermarket.com has dropped 28.3p to 277.8p after news after the market closed on Wednesday that Ofgem was seeking information from the company in an investigation into the energy industry. Investec analyst Steve Liechti said:
Ofgem has requested information from Moneysupermarket for its investigation into whether two or more companies providing a ‘supporting service’ for the energy industry have breached competition law.
This is a risk to Moneysupermarket if it is brought into the investigation, but the issue is not new as uSwitch has already received a request, as disclosed in Zoopla’s Class 1 Circular for [the acquisition of] uSwitch. Assuming no escalation/bigger issues, we estimate a worst case scenario for Moneysupermarket of a 9p a share fine, based on Zoopla’s indemnity.
Zoopla meanwhile is off 21.1p at 253.5p.
